Election officials are gearing themselves up for many long counts and re-counts after polling day on June 25th. Assembly seats could be won and lost on a single vote. The most bitter contest will be within the unionist family, with the SDLP and Sinn Fein also slugging it out for nationalist supremacy.
"Remember the John Gormley-Michael McDowell count saga?" asked one senior SDLP official yesterday, recalling how Mr Gormley narrowly beat his Progressive Democrats opponent in the last Dail election after a week-long count. "Well, I think we're going to be in for a few of them."
In this election each party will canvass primarily for its own candidates. Thereafter, though, it will be a question of tactical voting. People who want to save or sabotage the Assembly must be clued-in to the system of voting being used for this election - proportional representation using the single transferable vote.
Not all the nominations are in yet for the 18 constituencies, each of which will return six candidates, but there could be as many as 20 candidates running in some constituencies. Voters will face a long ballot paper on which the names of the candidates will appear in alphabetical order, with the candidate's party beside each name.
In the run-up to polling day on June 25th the party machines must impress upon the voters that the success or failure of the Belfast Agreement depends on how they vote and how they transfer. The Northern electorate is quite knowledgeable, and has experience of the PR system of voting. Local government and previous assembly elections were conducted under that system.
The anti-agreement unionist canvassers would wish to see people voting for the DUP and UK Unionist Party, or Independent unionists or Ulster Unionist Party candidates who are known to be opposed to the agreement. Each anti-agreement party obviously will seek first preferences for itself, with transfers going to, and stopping at, the other anti-agreement unionists. But this system is complicated by traditional unionist loyalties. Even if UUP candidates support the agreement, some DUP and UK Unionist supporters will feel drawn to voting for them nonetheless. The Belfast Agreement has divided many unionist families, but the traditional pattern of DUP supporters voting down the unionist card can't be discarded so easily. There will be a lesser tendency to transfer to Alliance, the loyalist parties and the Women's Coalition.
It's much more complicated for the pro-agreement bloc. Here support crosses all groups - unionist, loyalist, nationalist, republican, and non-aligned. It's difficult to imagine UUP supporters transferring to Sinn Fein candidates, even way down the card. Sinn Fein supporters, as Mr Gerry Adams has suggested, might throw later transfers to the UUP, but here also there will be resistance. While there was no limit on the amount parties could spend on the referendum, there are restrictions in this election. Single candidates will be allowed a budget of £4,965 plus 5.6 pence per voter in rural areas and 4.2 pence per voter in Belfast (canvassing in Belfast constituencies is considered cheaper because they are more compact than rural constituencies). With constituencies averaging about 65,000 voters this would mean single constituency candidates being allowed spend in total between £7,700 and £8,600. Where parties have two candidates running in a constituency each candidate will be allowed to spend three-quarters of the applicable figure. Where parties have three or more candidates running they can each spend two-thirds of the applicable figure.
With six seats in each constituency, the quota of votes needed to secure a seat will be 14.3 per cent of the valid poll in that area. Taking the West Belfast Westminster election figures of last year as an example - where there was a valid poll of 45,885 (74 per cent of the electorate) - this would mean successful candidates having to reach a quota of 6,562 votes.
If the Assembly is to work, more pro-agreement than anti-agreement unionists must be elected. It's reckoned that Mr David Trimble will need 30 loyal unionists in the Assembly to ensure that key decisions can be passed with sufficient nationalist and unionist support.
To hit that target he may be glad of every transfer his politicians can get. Dr Sydney Elliott, an electoral expert from Queen's University, Belfast reckons that in most constituencies it can be predicted who will win the first four seats, but the final two seats will depend on the vagaries of PR. Voters don't tend to transfer across the political divide in Northern Ireland. In the local government elections five years ago, of 39,600 UUP transfers only 1,061 went to the SDLP. Of 22,713 SDLP transfers 1,480 went to the UUP. This time, with nationalists and unionists more conscious of the need for tactical voting, the transfer rate could be higher.
As Dr Elliott pointed out, when it comes to who wins the more unpredictable fifth and sixth seats these transfers could prove absolutely vital. The DUP and Sinn Fein know full well the benefit of the transfer system. In the local elections last year the DUP, with 15.6 per cent of the vote, won 92 seats. Sinn Fein with almost 17 per cent of the vote, could win only 74.
It was the UUP transfers to the DUP that catapulted the DUP to 92 seats, and a shortage of SDLP transfers to Sinn Fein that prevented the republican party properly exploiting the PR system. It explains why Sinn Fein is anxious to have an electoral pact with the SDLP. It probably also explains why the SDLP is reluctant to enter into a formal arrangement with Sinn Fein, realising that such a pact would be more to the advantage of the republican party.
Tactically, this election is very troublesome for Mr Trimble. While he must prevail over the DUP, equally it is difficult for him to urge unionists not to transfer to the DUP. He knows what Dr Ian Paisley would proclaim in such an eventuality: "David Trimble wants unionists to transfer to Sinn Fein, but not to the DUP."
But the UUP must get the message across to supporters that transfers to the DUP could make the Assembly unworkable. Ms Brid Rodgers of the SDLP has urged nationalists to transfer to pro-agreement candidates including the UUP.
The UUP deputy leader Mr John Taylor went as far as he could by urging unionists to use their votes "in the best interest of Northern Ireland". The subliminal message therein may be too subtle for some UUP supporters but others will have got the message: don't transfer to the DUP or other anti-agreement unionists. Out on the canvass, UUP people will be advised, with some circumspection, how to vote strategically.
If the UUP could quietly persuade them to give strong transfers to the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party that could increase the chances of the UDP and PUP winning marginal seats, and also strengthen the pro-agreement unionist grouping in the Assembly. Again if these parties, and other smaller groupings such as the Women's Coalition, are to do well they must get transfers across the board.
Alliance could be the party to benefit most from the transfer system. Where pro-agreement unionists and nationalists may be averse to transferring across the political divide each grouping will be less diffident about transferring to Alliance. In this election the pro- and anti-agreement sides know that every vote will count. Transfers will determine whether Mr Trimble or Dr Paisley will be the unionist top dog in the Assembly, and consequently determine whether the Assembly can operate as planned in the Belfast Agreement.