Last night. Malone House Hotel, Belfast.
Alasdair McDonnell was in pretty good form officially launching the South Belfast Campaign.
Fearghal McKinney MLA made a short speech (first pic) before Alasdair spoke. There is a good mood in SDLP these days.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
FJH,
Haven’t been here in a while – what a prodigious output.
Any chance you can put your (considerable) reputation on the line and predict the outcome – by party %?
Surely the most bizarre(i.e. non-Norn-Iron like) constituency where a seat can go to ‘ussuns’ when ‘themmuns'(I’m including non religious themmuns here) are in a majority.
Alasdair has built up a wide coalition of voters here, Sammy.
Mark,
re. ‘Alasdair’. He is to be commended for that.
SB surely also underlines the differences in how the ‘National’ question is perceived as less important by the more well off social economic groups(class).
What was a shock last time out (at least for me) was that the good people of EB moved away from the ‘hardline’ Unionist DUP to the ‘Unionist-lite’ Alliance. They will undoubtedly move back after the flag campaign – surely the most expensive ‘election campaign’ since the hunger strikes.
FJH,
Percentage Prediction by party?
Yes….bit of a lottery.
Nice to see you Sammy.
I am keeping a lot of notes. And I am visiting every constituency. Obviously I am a SDLP member and thats where I have most access. The intention is to draft a lot of posts for publication between 10pm and midnight on Election night.
As I’ve just tweeted, I get why the SDLP didn’t do a pact in S Belfast of FST but they really, really should have done one in N Belfast.
There’s things that are widely available on the net about Dodds on this site, out of respect for John ( I know he would delete them anyway) but Nige os a character that needs defeated.
If I had my choice of a DUP person, I would like to see defeated it would be Gregory Campbell.
That’s a jab. Hitting Dodds is a Suzy Q
Within a year or two, nigel will be leader. That’s just one reason to take him out.