For the past three years, this project conducted simultaneous surveys in the north and south that probed people’s attitudes to a possible united Ireland. The surveys provide a representative sample of the population aged 18 years and older in each jurisdiction. The research is a collaboration between the Irish Times and ARINS (Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South), which is itself a joint project of the Royal Irish Academy and the Keough-Naughton Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame (Doyle, Gormley-Heenan & Griffin, 2021; Leahy, 2025; ARINS-Irish Times, 2025). The Irish Times began publishing the 2024 survey results on 7 February, and compared those results to the findings for 2022 and 2023.
The first section below focuses on what this research says, and doesn’t say, about how the people of Ireland intend to vote in a unification referendum. It demonstrates the empirical properties of the hierarchy of constitutional opinion in Ireland. Northern opinion counts, southern and all-Ireland opinions do not. The requirement of northern majority consent to constitutional change—embedded in the Good Friday Agreement—in effect overrules solid majorities for unity in the south and across Ireland as a whole. The second section uses data from the Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) surveys to examine the social composition of this northern brake on a united Ireland. It finds that the capacity of unionists to stifle Irish unity has significantly weakened in recent years but is still considerable. What was once an outright unionist veto over constitutional change is now a unionist-heavy veto that requires some help from others to defeat Irish reunification.
The Hidden Ireland
The ARINS-Irish Times surveys ask respondents:
If there was a referendum ... asking people whether they want Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom or to unify with the Republic of Ireland, how would you vote in that referendum? Northern Ireland to stay in the United Kingdom [or] Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and unify with the Republic of Ireland (ARINS-Irish Times, 2024).
Figure 1 shows the answers to this question in the north and south for the three survey years of 2022, 2023, and 2024. The data in the figure are based on the results that academics John Garry, Brendan O’Leary, Jaime Pow and Dawn Walsh recently published in the Irish Times (Garry et al., 2025). Two points stand out. The results in the south are stable across all three years, with about two-thirds of survey respondents supporting unity, and only some 16 percent choosing union. The north in contrast displays much more variability, especially in the numbers wishing to unify with the south. Support for unity rises by a full seven percentage points, from 27 percent of respondents in 2022 to 34 percent in 2024. This increase is statistically significant.[1] Preference for union is moving in the opposite direction. The numbers choosing to remain in the UK decrease from a high of 51 percent in 2023 to a low of 48 percent in 2024, with the light orange bar for the latter year highlighting that support for union is below 50 percent.
The extent of change in the north can be further illustrated by comparing directly the balance of opinion on the two constitutional options. In 2022, 50 percent support union and 27 percent favour unity, a difference—or net preference for union—of 23 percentage points. In 2024, the net preference for union falls steeply, to just 14 points (48% union - 34% unity). The union option is still winning the constitutional battle, but its relative advantage over unity is declining.
There is, from a republican point of view, a gaping hole in the Figure 1 results. If we have identical, simultaneous and representative surveys in the north and south estimating support for unity and union, where are the corresponding estimates for Ireland as a whole? I was as struck by this omission in the reporting of the 2024 survey results as I was two years ago when the 2022 findings first became available. Maybe the levels of all-Ireland support for unity and union are so obvious from the northern and southern percentages that it’s not necessary even to mention them. But that’s my point. None of the scores of Irish Times articles reporting the survey results ever broaches the question of how many people across the whole island favour constitutional change as against the status quo. Why is there a seeming reluctance to report all-Ireland support for alternative constitutional futures? Let me empirically attend to the omissions in reporting before speculatively addressing the reasons for reluctance.
To derive all-Ireland estimates from the ARINS-Irish Times surveys in the north and south is not simply a matter of combining the survey findings. For all three survey years, the northern and southern samples are of equal size, about 1,000 respondents each.[2] But the corresponding northern and southern populations are far from equal. We can’t just add together the two sample findings in any given year to come up with a 32-county estimate because the south’s adult population is much larger than is the north’s. The all-Ireland figure must be proportional to the different sizes of its northern and southern components. To take into account the discrepancy in population size, I’ve applied recent census data in the north and south to the survey percentages. The all-Ireland estimates I report, then, reflect that the population aged 18 years and older in the south (3,930,572) is more than two-and-a-half times the size of its counterpart in the north (1,468,081).[3]
Figure 2 replicates Figure 1 except that it adds three bars at the bottom giving the all-Ireland estimates of support for unity and union. In Ireland as a whole, there is a stable majority of 55 to 56 percent in favour of unification.[4] Figure 2 is a jarring representation of how irrelevant are the constitutional opinions of voters in the south and in Ireland as a whole. These voters support change, but change does not occur. Their constitutional opinions in effect count for nothing because there is not a northern majority in favour of a united Ireland. Converting the sample percentages in Figure 2 into population estimates derived from census data reveals how startling is the inequality in the value of constitutional votes on the island. On average, some 730,000 pro-union votes in the north negate more than two-and-a-half million votes in favour of unity in the south and almost three million pro-unity votes across Ireland as a whole. Even though just one in four people in the 32 counties supports union—less than 1.4 million in an electorate of almost 5.4 million—British sovereignty in the north endures. For kickstarting and completing the process of constitutional change, the only bars in the figure that matter are the top three showing the distribution of public opinion in the north. Nothing will happen until the north is ready, no matter what people in the south and across the island as a whole believe.[5]
The very starkness of Figure 2—showing a hierarchy of public opinion on the constitution, with the north literally and figuratively at the top—might partly explain the seeming reluctance to examine empirically the extent of all-Ireland support for unification.[6] Generally, people dislike being shown that their opinions don’t matter as much as do the opinions of others. But there is perhaps a second, related and more specific reason for the disinclination to discuss island-wide support for unification: it might generate criticism of the constitutional settlement reached in the GFA.
The Agreement is itself a stark depiction of the hierarchy of constitutional majorities across the island. It formally establishes the irrelevance of 32-county opinion on the constitutional status of the north. The GFA acknowledges:
that while a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union ... and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people (Constitutional Issues, 1(iii)).
This provision is routinely cited as a simple description of the rule of northern majority consent to constitutional change. But it is much more than that. It explicitly recognizes the existence of the all-island majority for unity, but then proceeds instantly to nullify that majority. Here in brutally frank prose in a document otherwise known for its ambiguity is an affirmation that the northern majority for union overrides all-Ireland and therefore southern majorities for unity. It is “wrong” to act against the north’s legitimate constitutional wishes, but it is “not wrong” to disregard the legitimate constitutional wishes in the south and in Ireland as a whole. Pointing out, as in Figure 2, the firm majority for unity in the 32 counties is problematic to the extent that it raises questions about the GFA’s relegation of that majority to a position of constitutional insignificance and illegitimacy. Hierarchy revealed. Criticism forthcoming?
Bringing attention to the existence of the all-Ireland majority for unity also exposes the crude deceit of the peace process’s much-vaunted recognition of “the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole”.[7] The plain fact is that “the people of Ireland as a whole” cannot exercise their democratic right of self-determination when the majority of “the people of Ireland as a whole” expressly and consistently supports a united Ireland but that support is brushed aside in subservience to opinion in the north. No, examination of an island-wide majority for unity simply won’t do if it unmasks the excessive constitutional imbalance in the Agreement or stimulates interest in the traditional republican principle that the Irish people as a whole is the only legitimate unit of constitutional determination.
In sum, concretely demonstrating the all-Ireland majority for unity is a politically provocative finding that will unsettle both nationalists and unionists. Northern nationalists and republicans, who are increasingly uneasy with the GFA’s requirement that the south abandon the territorial claim to the north (Hayes & McAllister, 2013), may be further upset by an empirical representation of gross constitutional unfairness. Their counterparts in the south may be equally disquieted by the double marginalization of their constitutional opinions in both the 26- and 32-county contexts. Unionists do not wish to see the northern majority consent rule directly challenged by talk of the island-wide majority for a united Ireland, a notion they thought the Agreement had buried for good. Best not to mention the wider majority at all.[8] Let’s keep that Ireland hidden.
From Unionist Veto to Unionist-Dominated Veto
Figure 2 reveals the superordinate power of anti-unity votes in the north to stifle progress towards constitutional change across Ireland as a whole. Most of those votes come from unionists. In this section, I focus exclusively on the north and explore in more detail the unionist “no” vote that plays such an influential role in blocking a united Ireland.
Unfortunately, the ARINS-Irish Times survey has a very unusual and not particularly useful question measuring people’s willingness to describe themselves as “unionist”. The measure appears in the 2022 survey but not in 2023. The 2024 data are not yet publicly available so I’m unable to determine if or how that survey measures the designation “unionist”. I must look to the NILT surveys to examine the unionist composition of the “no” vote. The NILT surveys, like those of the ARINS-Irish Times project, provide a representative sample of the population aged 18 years and older (NILT, 2024).
The NILT uses a standard measure of political identity, asking respondents: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a unionist, a nationalist or neither?” It also measures how people would vote in a unification referendum:
Suppose there was a referendum tomorrow on the future of Northern Ireland and you were being asked to vote on whether Northern Ireland should unify with the Republic of Ireland. Would you vote ‘yes’ to unify with the Republic or ‘no’?(NILT, 2023, pp. M59 & M61, respectively).[9]
The format of this question is different from that used in the ARINS-Irish Times surveys, including its supposition of a referendum occurring “tomorrow”. But the two NILT questions on political identity and referendum vote intention do allow for analysis of the unionist characteristics of the “no, not unify” vote.
Before looking at just the “no” response, let’s briefly examine the full distribution of the variable “vote in a unification referendum tomorrow”. The NILT includes this variable in every annual survey since 2017, except in 2018. The latest survey available is from 2023. Figure 3 shows respondents’ referendum vote intention for these years. Three trends are noteworthy. First, the “yes” vote in support of unification increases steadily from 22.4 percent of respondents in 2017 to 35.3 percent in 2023. Second, over the same period, the “no” vote in favour of continued union declines from 54.7 percent to 46.9 percent. Combining the two trends shows that the net preference for union is cut by almost two-thirds, falling markedly from 32.3 percentage points in 2017 (54.7% for union - 22.4% for unity) to just 11.6 points in 2023 (46.9% - 35.3%). The NILT data show, like the ARINS-Irish Times surveys, that the competition between alternative constitutional futures for the north is increasingly close.[10] Third, the light orange colour of the “no” bars starting in 2021 underlines that support for the union falls below the majority threshold of 50 percent. Not only is unity gaining on union in the referendum contest to secure a majority, but the very democratic rationale of the north, at least as defined by the GFA, is increasingly coming into question (Burke, 2023).
Figure 4 examines in more detail the “no, not unify” response to the unification vote question. It gives the group share of “no” voters in the referendum.[11] In 2017, unionists make up 55.4 percent of all respondents who voted “no, not unify”, nationalists account for 6.2 percent of “no” voters, and those saying they are neither unionist nor nationalist make up 37.4 percent of the “no” total. The same general pattern holds for the other years displayed in the figure: by far the largest bloc of “no” votes comes from unionists, reaching a high of 62 percent in 2020; nationalists make up a miniscule part of this vote; and neithers make up a significant but declining proportion of “no” voters.
No one will be surprised that unionists are consistently the weightiest component of the anti-unity vote. But it is useful for at least two reasons to put numbers to the impact that the unionist community might have in a referendum. First, we can specify the extent of disproportion in the influence unionists wield. Second, we can track changes to determine if that influence has recently strengthened or weakened.
Figure 5 examines the disproportionate unionist effect. It shows that, on average during this period, unionists make up 32.1 percent of the entire sample, but they make up fully 59.2 percent of respondents who vote “no” in the referendum. That is, unionists wield a disproportionate influence on the “no” vote that far exceeds their weight in the electorate as a whole. The unionist community is, of course, strongly overrepresented among “no” voters mainly because of the near-homogeneity of unionist opinion on the constitution. Almost all unionists vote against unification almost all the time. They are much more loyal to the “no” side than are neithers or nationalists. Over the years 2017 to 2023, the number of unionists who vote “no” averages 93 percent, compared to averages of only 44 percent of neithers and just 9 percent of nationalists.[12]
To assess recent changes in the unionist impact on the constitutional status of the north, Figure 6 looks at a crucial measure: the capacity of unionists by themselves to defeat unification in a referendum. Is the number of unionists voting “no” greater than the total number of people voting “yes”? In other words, is the unionist veto still in play? Figure 6 expresses unionist “no” voters as a percentage of all “yes” voters. Using percentages allows comparison across samples of different sizes. A figure of 100 percent means that the number of unionist “no” voters exactly equals the total number of “yes” voters. A percentage greater than 100 means that unionist “no” voters outnumber all “yes” voters; a percentage less than 100 means that there are fewer unionist “no” voters than there are “yes” voters. The immediate overall impression from the figure is that the percentages fall year after year, indicating that the number of unionist “no” voters relative to the total number of “yes” voters is consistently shrinking.
The real key to interpreting Figure 6 is that any percentage above 100 signifies that the unionist veto is intact, any percentage below 100 signifies that the unionist veto is gone. In 2017, for example, the percentage of 136.9 indicates that there are 36.9 percent more unionist “no” voters than there are “yes” voters. That is, the 360 unionists in the sample voting against unity considerably outnumber the 263 respondents voting for it. Unionists can on their own defeat unification. The same power of veto holds for 2019 and 2020. But starting in 2021, unionists lose that power. The percentages in the last three years are below 100. In 2021, for instance, the percentage of 86.1 indicates that there are 13.9 percent fewer unionist “no” voters than there are total “yes” voters: the 403 unionists in this larger sample who vote against unification are not enough to beat the 468 respondents voting for it. The votes of unionists alone can no longer block Irish unity. The percentages in the last three years of the figure are also dropping further below 100, which means that unionists are losing the ability to recover their outright veto power. Unionists still dominate among “no” voters, but each year the support of nationalists and especially neithers becomes more and more necessary to keeping Irish unity at bay. Unionists are no longer in control of their constitutional destiny. The fate of the union is in others’ hands. In broad terms, then, the six years in Figure 6 break down into two distinct periods indicating significant change. The first three years are characterized by a strong unionist veto; the last three by a weaker unionist-dominated veto.
Recall that in all the years covered in the figures, union is the choice of most respondents, which is a pattern unionists will find reassuring. But remember also that union’s lead over unity is declining over time, a situation that will disconcert unionists. Figure 6 brings to light two developments that will add to unionist anxiety about the north’s constitutional future. First, the light orange colour of the bars in 2021, 2022 and 2023 reminds readers that the overall percentage of respondents choosing union falls below the majority threshold of 50 percent, a point already examined in Figure 3. Second, as we just discussed, the shortened length of those three bars—below the cutoff point of 100—shows that unionists as a group no longer hold a veto over a united Ireland. In other words, the union is increasingly in jeopardy at the same time that unionists are losing the independent power to maintain it.[13] This dual trend is partly explained by the declining number of unionists in the northern electorate, which is itself a result of broader demographic and political changes. Almost all unionists continue to reject unification, but there are fewer people identifying as unionist. The changing constitutional preferences of nationalists and neithers are also relevant. Both groups show declining support for union and increasing support for unity over the years 2017 to 2023.
The two principal conclusions of this section should be considered together: unionism’s capacity unilaterally to defeat Irish unity in a referendum has vanished (Figure 6), but unionists as a group still have a disproportionately large impact on holding back constitutional change (Figures 4 and 5).
Conclusion
We should never lose sight of the political importance of the all-Ireland majority for unity, even though the GFA relegates it to constitutional oblivion. And we should never overlook the unfairness of the unionist or unionist-dominated veto over a united Ireland, even if the GFA defines it as democratic. Highlighting the island-wide majority for reunification and foregrounding unionism’s unequal influence on blocking a united Ireland may help to mobilize constituencies in support of constitutional change.
Notes
[1] That is, the increase is greater than one would expect to occur simply by chance (due to sampling error), nineteen times out of twenty.
[2] The 2022 samples sizes are 1015 (north) and 1043 (south); in 2023 they are 1009 (north) and 1019 (south); and in 2024 are 1000 (north) and 1005 (south).
[3] I use the 2022 census in the south (Central Statistics Office, 2023) and the 2021 census in the north (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, 2022).
[4] Colin Coulter (2024) produces revised ARINS-Irish Times estimates for unity and union in the north in 2022, but these revisions do not meaningfully alter the all-Ireland estimates shown in the figure. According to his revised 2022 estimates, 49 percent of northern respondents support union and 29 percent support unity. Using these new estimates in the calculation of the all-Ireland figures produces one change: the number supporting unity in Ireland as a whole in 2022 increases from 55 percent to 56 percent. This change is statistically insignificant.
[5] I have said elsewhere that, for initiating constitutional change, opinion in the north does not really matter because the Secretary of State has arbitrary and unaccountable power over calling a border poll, and need not order a vote even if there is a northern majority for unity (Burke, 2025b). Here, for the sake of argument, I assume the opposite: that the Secretary will follow the plain wording of the GFA and order a constitutional vote in the north once he believes a likely majority for unity has emerged. That is, the initiating process depends entirely on northern opinion. The purpose of this argument is to uncover how the north’s constitutional wishes take precedence over constitutional opinion in the south and across Ireland as a whole. For completing as opposed to initiating constitutional change, this order of precedence remains in place: a northern “no” vote defeats southern and all-Ireland “yes” votes. In this argument, I’m not considering that the Secretary of State will use the discretionary power to call a border poll or that the south would vote against unity. Both are unlikely, although many commentators are busy either imagining a form of Irish unity or constructing doomsday scenarios of change that may cause some people in the south to rethink their traditional constitutional ambitions.
[6] The last time there was a concerted empirical discussion of all-Ireland estimates of support for unity was in the late 1970s and mid-1980s, before the GFA cemented northern public opinion at the apex of Irish constitutional beliefs. (Davis & Sinnott, 1979). W. Harvey Cox framed this discussion in the most anti-unity way possible. The very first sentence of his study entitled “Who Wants a United Ireland?” describes the IRA’s attempt to kill Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet at Brighton in 1984 (Cox, 1985a). From these beginnings, it’s easy to discern Cox’s posture towards a united Ireland: total and unremitting hostility. See also Cox (1985b).
[7] In the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, the Irish government accepted “that the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland” (Joint Declaration, para. 5). This statement is completely contradictory: it no sooner mentions the “whole people” than it splits that people into separate northern and southern parts. It also renders meaningless the entire notion of Irish self-determination (Burke, 2025a).
[8] The Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland—of which ARINS academics John Garry and Brendan O’Leary were members—seems reluctant to reveal an all-Ireland pro-unity majority for the reasons I suggest. In its final report on unification referendum designs, the Working Group recommends holding a vote in the north first, followed by a vote in the south only if the north supports unification. The Group members are concerned that other possible referendum sequences—south first, then north or simultaneous votes—could show southern and all-Ireland majorities for unity but a northern majority for union, in which case unification would not proceed. They felt it best to avoid such a “potentially destabilising outcome” (Working Group, 2021, para. 10.32). If a sequence were adopted that could potentially lead to such a destabilising outcome, they recommend that all parties declare at the start of the referendum campaigns that they will abide by the rule of northern majority consent enshrined in the GFA (para. 10.67). To summarize, the Working Group is determined to ensure either that any all-Ireland majority for unity remains hidden or that its constitutional and political implications be neutralized in advance.
[9] The NILT’s unification referendum question in 2017 has a different format from other years. It reads: “If there was a referendum tomorrow about whether Northern Ireland should leave the UK and unite with the Republic of Ireland, how do you think you would vote? I would vote for Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. I would vote for Northern Ireland to unite with the Republic of Ireland.” (NILT 2017, p. M27). To ensure comparability in the NILT’s two question formats, the figures represent the 2017 response “I would vote for Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK” as “no, not unify”; and the 2017 response “I would vote for Northern Ireland to unite with the Republic of Ireland” as “yes, unify”.
[10] In 2022 and 2023, both the ARINS-Irish Times and NILT surveys give separate estimates of people’s vote intention in a northern referendum. Comparing the results in Figures 2 and 3 shows that the ARINS-Irish Times surveys produce lower estimates for unity and higher estimates for union than do the NILT surveys. Most of these differences between the two sets of surveys are statistically significant. There are various explanations for such differences, including variations in question format mentioned above. But over all the years surveyed, both ARINS-Irish Times and NILT show the same trends of increasing support for unity and declining support for union, yielding a noticeable drop in the net preference for union.
[11] Generally, any group’s contribution to the “no, not unify” vote is a function of the group’s size and its loyalty to the “no” side. A large group can contribute more “no” votes than can a small group. And a group fully committed to voting “no” can contribute more votes than can a group whose constitutional loyalties are split. The unionist share of “no” voters, then, is a combination of the proportion of people who describe themselves as “unionist” (group size) and the proportion of unionists who vote against unification (group loyalty). Likewise for the nationalist and neither shares. I briefly examine group size and group loyalty in the text. American political scientist Robert Axelrod (1972) gives the general formula for components of voting coalitions, which I’ve adapted for the purposes of this paper.
[12] John Coakley frequently notes the asymmetry of northern Protestant and Catholic opinions on the constitution: Protestants are more solidly in favour of union than are Catholics in favour of unity (Coakley, 2007, 2015 & 2020; see also Coulter et al., 2021). This asymmetry has declined sharply since 2017 primarily because the number of Catholics supporting unity has steadily increased. The corresponding discrepancy between unionist support for union and nationalist support for unity has also declined, and for the equivalent reason: the number of nationalists backing unity has grown since 2017. The disproportion evident in Figure 5 for unionists is even greater for nationalists. Proportionally there are many more nationalists among “yes” voters than there are nationalists in the electorate as a whole. Nationalists, however, exhibit a slightly different structure of disproportion than do unionists. Nationalists are heavily overrepresented among “yes” voters both because their constitutional views are becoming more homogeneous—although still not as uniform as unionist opinion—and because of the almost complete lack of support for unity among unionists and the relatively small (but increasing) number of neithers who vote “yes, unify”.
[13] These two trends do not necessarily coincide. If sufficient numbers of nationalists or neithers choose union over unity, keeping the overall level of support for union well above 50 percent, unionists losing their veto would not seem so perilous to them.
References
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ARIN(S-Irish Times. 2025). North & South Research 2024: Sample Information for Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland Results. February. Retrieved from.
Axelrod, R. (1972). “Where the Votes Come From: An Analysis of Electoral Coalitions, 1952-1968.” American Political Science Review 66:1 (March): 11-20.
Burke, M. (2023). “The Crisis of Democratic Legitimacy in the North.” The Pensive Quill. 18 July. Retrieved from.
Burke, M. (2025a). “Beguiling Constitutional Narratives 1: ‘Self-Determination’ Without Self-Determination.” The Pensive Quill. 5 February. Retrieved from.
Burke, M. (2025b). “Beguiling Constitutional Narratives 2: What Border Poll Criteria?” The Pensive Quill. 12 February. Retrieved from.
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Coakley, J. (2015). “Does Ulster still say ‘no’? Public opinion and the future of Northern Ireland.” In The Act of Voting: Identities, Institutions and Locale. ed. J.A. Elkink and D.M. Farrell, 25-55. London: Routledge.
Coakley, J. (2020). “Public Opinion and Irish Unity: Some Comparative Data.” PublicPolicy.IE: Evidence for Policy. 9 December. 6 pp. Retrieved from.
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⏩ Mike Burke has lectured in Politics and Public Administration in Canada for over 30 years.
"Why is there a seeming reluctance to report all-Ireland support for alternative constitutional futures?"
ReplyDeleteBecause there are two polities on the island and the vote is for one of them to cease to be, and that one, one could argue, should have a wee bit more weight to it. It didn't go without notice that you couldn't bring yourself to refer to this polity as "Northern Ireland" either, save when citing the ARINS-IT article. There's another glaring omission for you.