The SDLP could become the largest party in the North if an Irish Times opinion poll is accurate, the party claimed last night. In the poll the SDLP secured 26 per cent support, one percentage point below the Ulster Unionists.
It believes it could win more votes than any other party in the North, although it admits the UUP will benefit more from transfers and will win the highest number of seats in the Assembly.
The party's chairman, Mr Jonathan Stephenson, said recent opinion polls showed the SDLP going from strength to strength.
The party won 24 per cent of the vote in last year's Westminster election. The 2 per cent swing shown in the Irish Times poll could win it a seat in Lagan Valley, which has never had a nationalist representative, Mr Stephenson said.
It could also secure key second seats in North, South and West Belfast and Fermanagh and South Tyrone, he added.
"The Irish Times poll reflects the very positive feedback which our canvassers are getting on the doorsteps across the North," he said.
"A strong turnout for the SDLP next Thursday could change the face of Northern Ireland politics for ever, maximising the representation of the party which has worked hardest to bring about this agreement and maximising the presence of the party which is best able to make the new institutions work."
The dissident republican group, the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, has called on nationalists to either boycott the Assembly elections or spoil their votes. Mr Francie Mackey, an expelled Sinn Fein councillor who is a leading member of the group, said the Assembly was an attempt to make British rule in Ireland more acceptable. Sinn Fein's eight women candidates yesterday said all political parties in the North needed to seriously address the women's agenda.
The party's candidate in Upper Bann, Ms Dara O'Hagan, said more than half the women elected to the Assembly were likely to be from Sinn Fein.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein's candidate in Lagan Valley, Mr Paul Butler, is suggesting that the Maze prison becomes a museum. There is speculation that the jail could close following the release of most of the loyalist and republican prisoners.