e will need to put on his hiking boots again because he has a very steep hill to climb if he’s to catch Michelle O’Neill.
The DUP has just six days left to make up six percentage points on Sinn Fein, according to LucidTalk’s poll for the Belfast Telegraph.
So, on 20%, can he close the gap on the Shinners’ 26% in less than a week?
You can’t rule out the DUP turning things around, but it’s leaving it very, very late.
Donaldson has been cool, calm and collected throughout the campaign. Behind the scenes, the party position has been consistent. We’re behind Sinn Fein but not as much as the polls suggest.
We could lose the popular vote but still win more Stormont seats than they do.
There may be some criticism from unionist grassroots, but not as much as some suggest. We’re not being chased from doors.
And despite any disgruntlement, our vote will hold up on May 5 because the very idea of Michelle O’Neill as First Minister will overcome annoyance at us.
DUP election literature pays lip-service to health, education and the economy, but a graph crudely conveys its main message.
It shows the party on 28.1% in the last Assembly election, with Sinn Fein on 27.9%.
The significantly smaller UUP and Alliance blocs have arrows pointing to them and the words “can’t win”.
TUV is utterly ignored in the literature, yet it is that party which has preoccupied Donaldson’s mind for over a year now. He swerved to the right to try to win back those hardline voters who had deserted the DUP.
By collapsing Stormont, Sir Jeffrey tried to steal Jim Allister’s clothes. It doesn’t quite seem to have worked to the extent he hoped.
TUV has declined from 14% last summer to 9% in today’s LucidTalk poll, but that is three times what it was on in the last Assembly election.
If that 9% stick with Allister until Thursday — and it remains a big if — then it will be a win for him and one that surely guarantees him company on Stormont’s blue benches.
Reports are circulating the Government is about to reveal it’s preparing legislation to give it powers to tear up the protocol.
That would help Donaldson, but Allister’s argument back will be you can’t trust the treacherous Tories, and a vote for him will keep the pressure on both Downing Street and the DUP to deliver.
While once disdainful of TUV, Donaldson’s party now clings limpet-like to it at anti-protocol rallies.
By comparison, Allister has balanced embracing unionist unity with keeping his political guns trained on his rival.
In a video this week he asks if a Sinn Fein minister would ever have built north-south border posts just because they’d been ordered to. His strategy towards the DUP is one of cooperation combined with contempt.
Up 1% to 14%, the Ulster Unionists seem to have won back some pro-Union Alliance voters and are tying with Naomi Long’s party for third spot.
Under Doug Beattie’s leadership the UUP has set out a very different stall to its two unionist rivals.
By stepping away from the anti-protocol rallies, calling for a new sporting anthem for Northern Ireland, and many other positions he’s taken, nobody could accuse him of lacking courage.
He’s continued with the big, bold steps that began when he became leader last year. He has already stretched rural conservatives in his party to the limit.
He needs to push the UUP vote up next week and come back with more seats if he wants to keep winning the internal argument that these changes represent a winning way forward.
If he can’t improve the party’s performance at a time when the DUP has never been more vulnerable, then his strategy will be questioned internally.
While the competition within unionism is white-hot, it’s almost non-existent within nationalism.
On 26% to the SDLP’s 10%, Sinn Fein seems to be running away with the hearts and minds of nationalist voters in this election.
It’s not as if the party is doing anything special, let alone spectacular.
The Shinners have played it ultra-safe. O’Neill has been filmed in the gym and meeting babies, but has left it to Mary Lou McDonald to face the BBC’s Mark Carruthers for his forensically probing interview.
In this election Sinn Fein has played down its republicanism and the push for a border poll.
Its low-key campaign is pitched towards soft nationalist voters and social progressives across the community who dislike the DUP.
The risk for the party is that it could fail to fire up republican grassroots who might be unmotivated to come out on polling day.
Still, it seems the wisest strategy if Sinn Fein is to become Stormont’s largest party.
The message that it’s ‘them or us’ is delicately delivered. The Shinners do subtlety far better than the DUP.
Posters of O’Neill have appeared on lampposts in constituencies where she’s not standing. The point is unstated but implicit: vote for us and make history on May 5 by electing Northern Ireland’s first nationalist First Minister.
