Although at the time of writing the actual voting figures for the Northern Ireland local elections do not seem to be available, some provisional conclusions on the voting pattern can be drawn from the data that have been published in respect of the seats won by different political groups.
However, in order to assess the relative sizes of the unionist and nationalist vote some assumptions have to be made about the proportion of the votes cast for Alliance and Independent candidates that came from people of a nationalist background.
As the total of the seats won by such candidates was only 8 per cent, the possible margin of error involved here is relatively small.
If one assumes that 30 per cent of the votes cast for Alliance candidates came from members of the nationalist community, and if, on the basis of the names of Independent candidates elected, one assumes that 20 per cent of those who voted for them were also from that community, the election results would suggest a 58 per cent-42 per cent split between voters with unionist and nationalist backgrounds.
But if these assumptions underestimate nationalist support for such candidates, that divide might be 57 per cent-43 per cent. A 42 per cent-43 per cent ratio for the nationalist population is closely in line with census data for people of voting age.
Incidentally, if one takes account of the 15 per cent-20 per cent of people from a Catholic background who in polls in recent years have continued to express a preference for remaining in the United Kingdom as against joining the Irish State, these election figures suggest that a Border poll today would probably yield a two-to-one majority against unification.
If, however, Northern Ireland voters believed that unification was a real, rather than a theoretical, prospect and that it would involve the loss of the very large financial transfers from Britain that currently sustain Northern living standards, the proportion opposing Irish political unity might be a good deal higher than that.
The geographical split between unionist and nationalist candidates elected is set out in the accompanying table, derived from the data published in Wednesday's Irish Times on the almost 100 constituencies into which the 26 council areas are divided.
For quite different reasons both Belfast and Derry are sui generis. The migration of unionists to suburbs of Belfast, especially North Down, has left the formerly unionist city almost equally divided between the two sections of the community, with Alliance once again holding the balance of power in the City Hall.
The intensification of sectarian feelings in recent years has clearly swung Belfast voters towards Sinn Féin, which has won almost twice as many seats there as the SDLP. Only in two areas of south Belfast did the SDLP win more seats than Sinn Féin.
By contrast, in Derry Mark Durkan's victory over Sinn Féin, by a margin of 6,000 votes in the Westminster constituency of Foyle, was fully matched by the SDLP in the local elections. In only one of five areas of that constituency did Sinn Féin even succeed in matching the SDLP's seat count; in none of them did it secure more seats.
Outside these two cities the outcome was quite different, however. In east Ulster the DUP won 60 per cent of the unionist seats, and on the nationalist side the SDLP secured half as many seats again as Sinn Féin. It is clear that in these parts of Northern Ireland, where unionists outnumber nationalists by four to one, minority voters prefer to vote SDLP.
Something similar is evident on the other side of the political divide in west and south Ulster, where the unionists, out-numbered two to one by nationalists, have elected almost as many UUP as DUP councillors - whereas in east Ulster the DUP has secured 70 per cent more seats than the UUP. So, outside the two cities, whichever tradition finds itself in a small minority tends to react by taking a more moderate stance than it does in areas where it is dominant.
Outside Belfast, Sinn Féin's greatest strength lies in the west. Except in Derry, it won almost 2½ times as many seats as the SDLP in west Ulster. In Down and Armagh, by contrast, the SDLP won 24 seats to Sinn Féin's 22, with Sinn Féin ahead of the SDLP only in south Armagh.
Thus, while in this election the SDLP lost about one-seventh of its seats to Sinn Féin, in Northern Ireland as a whole that party still holds 101 seats to Sinn Féin's 121. Only in parts of Belfast and in west Ulster outside Derry - areas which between them hold less than 30 per cent of Northern Ireland's population - is Sinn Féin now the dominant nationalist party.
In the remainder of Northern Ireland the SDLP is still the preferred political choice of nationalists, a fact that has been obscured by much of the political commentary on these local elections.
One must hope that in the light of this outcome our Government and its British counterpart will modify the approach they took during most of last year to a settlement of the Northern Ireland problem, one that gave privileged access to Sinn Féin and at times excluded the SDLP from crucial consultations.
An enduring settlement must take full account of the 45 per cent of Northern nationalists who despite immense political pressure and the dismissive attitude of the two governments have held fast to the constitutional nationalism to which 90 per cent of the people of this State are also committed.