Identity and voting

Introduction

 

Much has been written about “identity” in Northern Ireland, particularly in relation to historical events.  The contents of this page is not an analysis about identity.  What this page does is highlight certain statistics which point to the relationship between election intentions /voting behaviour and identities.  I conclude by asking questions about the statistics and leaving them unanswered.  

 

Readers will note that I have identified a group which I have called “Catholic Unionists”.  Whilst undoubtedly, this group includes people that are the target of Conservative/UUP election campaigning, some of this group may be inclined to be more supportive of the left whilst some “Catholic Nationalists” may be more inclined to the right.  For further analysis of the group of people that are most likely to vote conservative, please refer to the page written under the “normal politics” tab.

 

 Identity

(a) Definition

I would define identity as being any description or information about a person or group of people which enable that person or group to be identifiable.  The following is a definition which I found on Wordnet. 

“The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is recognizable or known”

This represents the widest definition of identity.  The word “thing” does not just refer to people or companies.  Almost anything can have an identity.  That includes political parties as well as people.

(b) Types of identity focused upon in this discussion 

(i)  Religious (Protestant or Catholic background
(ii)  National Identity (British or Irish). This category is later sub-divided to political National Identity and cultural National Identity.
(iii)  A person’s view of constitutional preference or constitutional identity.  (Unionist or Nationalist)

Please note that I fully recognise the crudeness of these classifications.  However, they are labels which are relatively easy for most people to understand.  On the face of it, it is easy to distinguish religious identity from the other two by observation.  It is probably not quite so easy to distinguish (ii) and (iii) in this way.  Statistics, however, tell a different story. 

(c) Research on the extent of the similarity between people’s religious background and their constitutional preference

 The results of a survey published February 2007 by Northern Ireland Life and Times revealed answers to the question of constitutional preference as follows: 

 

Do you think the long term policy for Northern Ireland should be for it:		%	Catholic		Protestant		No religion
(a)	to remain part of the United Kingdom with direct rule	11	4	1.42	17	6.03	10	3.55
(b)	to remain part of the United Kingdom with devolved government	55	35	11.46	72	23.57	61	19.97
(c)	or to re-unify with the rest of Ireland	23	47	15.23	3	0.97	21	6.80
(d)	Independent State	5	6	2.31	4	1.54	3	1.15
(e)	other answer	1	1	0.50	1	0.50	0	0.00
(f)	dont know	5	7	2.33	3	1.00	5	1.67
	Total	100	100	33.24	100	33.61	100	33.14

Table No. 1

It might surprise many people that 66% prefer Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom either with direct rule or with devolved government and that 39% of Catholics prefer that.  One problem with this survey is that the high numbers of “no religion” make it difficult to tell if the sample interviewed was representative.  It is therefore worth comparing this with the last census.  Most of those with “no religion” are likely to have a background which is either Protestant of Catholic. 

 In the 2001 census, 45.6% of the population identified as belonging to Protestant denominations and  40.3% identified as Catholic, 0.3% identified with non-Christian religions and 13.9% identified with no religion.   This 13.9% compares unfavourably with the 33.14%  above suggesting that there has been some secularization in that period.  However, most of those in the non-religious group would have a religious background. 

The 2001 Census breaks the survey down into community background.  It shows that in terms of community background, 53.1% of the Northern Irish population came from a Protestant background, 43.8% came from a Catholic background, 0.4% from non-Christian backgrounds and 2.7% non-religious backgrounds.  Putting these results into a table helps us to break down the proportion of those with no-religion are from which background. 

	Religion %	Community Background %
Protestant	45.6	53.1	+7.5
Catholic	40.3	43.8	+3.5
non-Christian	0.3	0.4	+0.1
No religion	13.9	2.7	-11.2
Total	100.1	100	-0.1

Table No. 2

 Those without a religion (13.9 %) break down into Catholic Background (25.36%), Protestant Background (54.35%), Non Christian (0.72 %), No religious background (19.57%)

With this information, we can now break down the 33.14% no religion sample in the Table 1.  Using the 2001 census, the 33.14 % figure would break down as follows:

Catholic background 8.4%, Protestant background 18.01%, non-Christian 0.24%, Non religion 6.49%

Using ratios of that breakdown, I have created the following table changing table No. 1 so that those who have no religion are broken down into a “Catholic background” and “Protestant background” camp. Non-Christian and non religion have been aggregated into the “No or other religion” column on the right.  Figures in columns not in brackets are rounded to nearest whole number. 

 

Do you think the long term policy for Northern Ireland should be for it:		%	Catholic		Protestant		No religion
(a)	to remain part of the United Kingdom with direct rule	11	5	2.32	15	6.03	11	0.72
(b)	to remain part of the United Kingdom with devolved government	55	40	16.52	67	23.57	60	4.06
(c)	or to re-unify with the rest of Ireland	23	41	16.95	9	0.97	21	1.38
(d)	Independent State	5	6	2.59	4	1.54	3	0.23
(e)	other answer	1	1	0.50	1	0.50	0	0.00
(f)	dont know	5	7	2.76	4	1.00	5	0.34
	Total	100	100	33.24	100	33.61	100	6.73

Table No. 3

<The totals of 41.64% and 51.63% are near enough to the 2001 census (43.8:53.1) except that the Catholic and Protestant percentages are slightly down but with an almost identical differential.  This is well within the margin of error that I would expect for a sample this size  The conclusion I draw in these comparisons is that the 2007 survey is reasonable in accuracy as a representative sample.

(d) Identity of Northern Ireland political parties and vote share

Political parties in Northern Ireland can simply be classified as Unionist or Nationalist.  It is right to acknowledge that there are different brands of unionism and nationalism but for the purpose of analysis, it is easy to place the Democratic Unionist Party (“DUP”) and the Ulster Unionist Party (“UUP”) in the category of Unionist identity and Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (“SDLP”) in the category of Nationalist identity.  Other parties are not so easy to categorise but their vote share size enables me to put them to one side for the purpose of analysis.  I say that with the greatest respect to the Alliance Party who polled 5.2% of the vote in the 2007 assembly elections.  One used to assume that you could classify them as a unionist party.  Today,  their position on constitutional long term preference is ambiguous.

 

Party	2007 election %	Combined U & N
DUP	30.1	45
UUP	14.9
SDLP	15.2	41.4
Sinn Fein	26.2
Alliance	5.2	5.2
Other	8.0	8.0

Table No. 4

The figures in the 3rd column of table No. 4 show a combined Unionist and Nationalist totals which run very close to the figures in the 2001 census leading to a conclusion that voting in elections is very much along religious lines.  What is not clear is the reason for this.  When a comparison is made of tables 1 and 3, the question which has to be raised is “Why do the unionist parties not attract a significant number of Catholics who are unionists?”  In the next section, closed questions are put forward which suggest a possible answer.

(e) National Identity

 In the NILT survey of 2007, people were asked the following

Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a unionist, nationalist or neither:		%	Catholic		Protestant		No religion
(a)	Unionist	36	0	0	70	28.64	18	7.36
(b)	Nationalist	24	56	21	0	0	8	3.00
(c)	Neither	40	43	11.7	30	8.16	74	20.14
(d)	Other	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
(e)	Dont know	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00
	Total	100	100	32.7	100	36.80	100	30.50

Table No. 5

These figures are interesting when compared to the answers relating to constitutional preference but they raise more questions than they provide answers.  What is clear is that the identity between voters and nationality blocks is not as strong amongst a large section of the population as the election results would suggest.  The zero number of Catholics who say they are not Unionists and the zero number of Protestants who say they are not Nationalist is very startling.  Taken with the clear identities of the political parties along “Unionist” or “Nationalist” this is very strontg evidence that almost all Protestants do not vote for a Nationalist party and almost all Catholics do not vote for a Unionist party at elections.

As the next table indicates, a lot of people make a distinction between the classifications “Unionist of Nationalist” to “Irish or British”.  This suggests that there are two types of National Identity – a National Political Identity and a National Cultural Identity

 In the NILT survey of 2007, people were asked the following

Some people think of themselves first as British. Others may think of themselves first as Irish. Which, if any, of the following best describes how you see yourself?
Irish not British	18
More Irish than British	17
Equally Irish and British	17
More British than Irish	24
British not Irish	19
Other	4
Don’t know	0

Table No. 6

(f) Conclusion

It is clear that the results of the elections do not match the survey relating to constitutional preference.  A substantial number of Catholics (somewhere between about 13% and 18% of the total population and about 39-41% of the actual Catholic population) would prefer Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. At the same time, it appears from election results that voters vote along religious lines or religious background lines.    

With this limited amount of analysis it would not be right to say conclusively that a large section of the Catholic population of Northern Ireland are politically disenfranchised in the sense that they do not have a party to vote for that substantially recognises their views.  However, there is a case to answer and the large number of people who said “neither” to the question in table No. 5. may be support this theory.

Another limitation on these surveys is that none of them say anything directly about “normal” politics.  However, these surveys may provide some important pointers as to how to bring about normal politics and what the realistic expectations are for the Conservatives and UUP towards achieving that.  There are quite clearly a very large number of Catholics who would clearly prefer Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom.  The conservatives/UUP are seeking the votes of Catholics who are conservatives, who are not necessarily unionists and who may be nationalists.  Nevertheless, it is reasonable to suppose that Conservative Catholic Unionists are the most likely group of voters to switch allegience from voting either SDLP or Sinn Fein.

At the end of this post, I leave questions for the reader to consider.  Comments, opinions and pointers to other relevant research would all be welcome.  If anybody flags research material which would enhance the value of this page, such material will be used to update this page

(g) Questions

(i) Do you consider the statistics referred to in this post to be reliable?

(ii) Assuming that the 2007 survey has been carried out professionally, is there a suspicion that not enough of the answers are honest?

(iii)  What could be the reason why insignificant numbers of Catholics vote unionist.  Is it:

(a)  Mistrust of Unionist politicians who are members of the Orange Order?

(b) That the Unionist parties do not “talk the Catholic language”

(c) That Catholics feel they are more likely to have their views represented by Sinn Fein or the SDLP

(d) That Catholics still have not forgotten political oppression from the past?

(e) That Catholics dont consider Unionists to be capable of representing them?

(f) That Catholics are all left wing and Protestants are right wing?

(g) that Unionist Parties simply dont try to canvas votes from Catholics and therefore are never likely to get them?

(h) that Catholics carry on voting for a nationalist party out of habit or tradition?

(iv) Are the nationalists over complacent about the support they receive from Catholics?

(v) Will Cartholic voters who support grammar schools become disillusioned with the Nationalist parties over academic selection and vote for Unionist parties as result?

(vi) Is there some other “X” factor that we have not touched upon.  The secret political formula which will dislodge a voter from voting along lines of political national identity or religion.

(vii) is identity likely to change much in Northern Ireland in the near future.  Could a third identity evolve in Northern Ireland?

 You may be a Catholic who is disillusioned with the nationalist parties and is thinking of voting Conservative or UUP.  If you are, please send us your words and let off steam.  You may also be a protestant who is a nationalist.  The survey says some of you exist.  We would like to hear from you too.