Analysis: Sizeable minority of voters from a Protestant background are strongly opposed to unity
Of these, the great majority are people from a Protestant background — almost a third of all Protestant-background voters are in the “impossible to accept” camp. This must be taken in the context of 41 per cent of Protestant-background voters who say that they would “not be happy” with the result but that they “could live with it” and a further 21 per cent saying they would “happily accept” it. So it’s clearly a minority among unionist voters. But it’s a big minority.
This could be particularly problematic given the clear lack of enthusiasm among voters in the South — as demonstrated in the poll findings reported yesterday — to make changes to those institutions and symbols to accommodate unionists.An irredentist core of unionist/loyalist voters who remained opposed to the post-unity state would present significant difficulties for its success. It is not, after all, as if political violence is unknown in this part of the island.
Minorities who are alienated from new or redrawn states are hardly an unknown challenge for politics and statecraft. Northern Ireland has a long and unhappy experience of dealing with the problem in the worst way possible. Those who argue for unity and those who might one day have to find a way to make it work will wish to make sure that the mistakes of the past — here and elsewhere — are not repeated. What today’s poll results tell us is that the existence of the problem cannot be ignored.
While a great majority of people on the island are democrats and would accept whatever results that referendums produced, it’s worth remembering that the majority of people were democrats during the Troubles, too.
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