Look out: here come the elections

  You may want to wish “Happy New Year’ or even ‘Bliain úr faoi mhaise duit’ to your friends. But for some people, the new year is a mine-field of elections.

Start with the big one – the US presidential election. Bad news here, I’m afraid – Trump is ahead of Biden in most opinion polls. Many Americans are struggling with the cost of living, the cost of housing, the sense that immigrants  will cross into the US illegally and that the crime rate will rise. These fears may not materialise in fact, but right now that’s how many Americans see it.  Where Trump’s opponents see him as disqualified from office through his connection with lawless groups and even insurrection, his followers see each Trump sin as virtue, a good man being maligned by shadowy forces. It’s tough to defeat an opponent whose every vice is hailed as virtue by his uber-loyal followers.

In Canada, there will be provincial elections in New Brunswick, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. There’ll be a general election in Mexico and Uruguay, and a presidential election in Venezuela. There’ll be elections to the European parliament, local and probably a general election in the UK and there may be an Assembly election in NEI.

There’ll be lots of other elections too, some general, some local. But the probability of a UK general election, a general election in the South of Ireland and that European general election are probably the most relevant to those of us in NEI.

But does voting matter? Cynics will tell you that if voting changed anything, they’d have banned it long ago. But  think of the national and international impact if Sinn Féin were to lead a government in Dublin and at Stormont. Almost certainly preparation for a border poll would become a very hot topic.

The bad news is that a sizeable number of people on the voting register won’t bother their arse placing their Xs on polling day. The good news is that most of these lazy arses are believed to belong to unionists.