Two new opinion polls in the last 48 hours suggest that Sinn Féin is on track to be the largest party in government on both sides of the border.
A Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitudes opinion poll published on Sunday shows support for Sinn Féin in the South is up one point to stand at 32 percent. Support for Fine Gael is on 23 percent (unchanged) and Fianna Fáil are down four points to 20 percent.
The Green Party is on five percent (unchanged), Labour are also unchanged on five percent, while the Social Democrats are on four percent, up two points. Independents are also unchanged on nine percent, while Solidarity/People before Profit are on two percent.
The poll was carried out between 4-14 March with a 3.3 percent margin of error.
On Tuesday, an Irish News-Institute of Irish Studies-University of Liverpool poll shows that Sinn Féin are the largest party in Northern Ireland with a 1.6 percent increase in support at 30.6 percent. In the Assembly election in May last year, Sinn Féin were confirmed as the largest party at Stormont with 29 percent of the vote.
This poll, which was conducted between March 3-14, also show the DUP up 2.6 points, standing at 23.9 percent. The Alliance Party are up 1.9 percent at 15.4 percent.
The poll is disappointing for the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP, with the former up 0.1 percent to 11.3 percent and the latter dropping 2.4 percent to 6.7 per cent of the first preference vote.
For the smaller parties the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice have fallen 2.8 percent to 4.8 percent, the Greens are up 1.3 points to 3.2 percent; Aontú are on 0.2 percent; Conservatives 1.3 percent; People Before Profit 2.2 percent and others on 0.5 percent.
