Sinn Fein In 'Poll Position'

Republicans may be on the way to defeating the North's main unionist party at today's UK General Election poll.

Media coverage showing the pro-activity of parties and candidates over the last four weeks leading up to the election on Thursday shows Sinn Fein narrowly ahead of Peter Robinson's DUP in winning the hearts and minds of the electorate.

Northern Ireland Media Monitoring Services (NIMMS) has conducted an unprecedented survey of all the print media in every constituency throughout the province and has identified the top performing parties and politicians as well as the issues that have dominated this campaign.

Managing Director of NIMMS, Geoff Coustan, has named Reg Empey as the most reported on politician over the last four weeks, followed by Peter Robinson while Margaret Ritchie was well ahead of Gerry Adams in a comparison of the party leaders.

"It has also been fascinating to see that aside from the election itself, the top five issues dominating the media reporting have been the economy, education, crime and policing with agriculture, fuel costs and community issues consistently coming through," he reported.

"The media has played an unprecedented part in shaping this Westminster election both nationally and locally and the trend towards analysing the issues as they are reported in the media will play a significant part in how parties shape their future electoral campaigns," the media expert continued.

"Media presence has had a dramatic affect on voting intentions nationally and as bread and butter rather than tribal issues play a bigger part in our local elections this kind of media monitoring could be the difference between winning and losing in the future.

"This is of particular interest here as we examine the impact of more ‘personalities’ coming to the fore in local parties.

"An examination of some of the key seats show that in Fermanagh South Tyrone Michelle Gildernew has had 300 media mentions in the last four weeks, almost twice as many as the SDLP's ex TV star Fearghal McKinney who is running third behind the Independent Rodney Connor.

"Strangford is also in the public consciousness as Iris Robinson stands down but her DUP colleague Jim Shannon is still just ahead of the other ex TV star Mike Nesbitt for UCUNF.

"However the impact of increased coverage for party leaders may or may not indicate their ability to carry a seat, as Reg Empey has had twice as much coverage as his highly tipped South Antrim constituency rival William McCrea.

"In East Belfast the fact that Peter Robinson has had 428 media mentions are not perhaps so interesting as the fact that the Alliance's Naomi Long has twice as many as her rival Trevor Ringland of UCUNF," he said noting that NIMMS analysis provides the opportunity for all political analysts to look at each constituency in detail.

It is also able to identify the key local issues at a micro level and help build a picture of what matters in virtually every town in Northern Ireland.

"We have had interest from election watchers and ex-pats from all around the world and we will be carrying on our analysis to look closely at the impact on the up-coming Assembly Election," he concluded.

(BMcC/GK)