How does one account for the fact that Catholics in the North are increasingly in favour of staying in the UK, but also voting in rising numbers for Sinn Féin? The answer, as with so much in Northern Ireland, lies in the underlying sectarian fear and distrust between the two communities that still has the capacity to poison everything. Even in a recession, dealing with sectarian fear and rivalry is still the biggest problem facing politicians at Stormont, as was shown by last week's eruption of inter-communal violence in east Belfast.
At first glance, the annual Northern Ireland Life and Times survey suggests otherwise.
It has been chronicling opinion in the province since 1998. The headline which caught everyone's attention on this occasion was the rise in support for UK membership among Catholics. Such support has been rising steadily in the peaceful years since the survey started, and passed the symbolic 50% mark this year.
The discovery that 52% of Catholics would prefer to stay in the UK prompted Peter Robinson, the DUP leader, to say that he now intended going after these Catholic votes. "My task is to make voting DUP as comfortable a choice for a Catholic as anyone else," he wrote in the Belfast Telegraph. There is no doubting his sincerity. Robinson has moved his party steadily towards the centre of politics, and has gone much further than Ian Paisley, his predecessor, in recognising Catholic sensibilities.
The stand-out gesture was attending the funeral mass of Constable Ronan Kerr. Robinson has also formed a good relationship with Martin McGuinness, and championed the idea of a shared future, including integrated education, for the two communities.
These were all significant steps in DUP terms, which have required careful management and some courage.
But if more than half of Northern Catholics say they prefer the link with Britain, why do only 1% think of themselves as unionist or consider voting unionist? How can the fact that only 33% aspire to a united Ireland be squared with the fact that 54% consider themselves nationalist? The answer is that for Catholics, nationalism isn't just, or even mainly, about removing the border. It is about standing up to political unionism within Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin has shown itself to be so good at this that a united Ireland has moved off the agenda.
That isn't fully understood south of the border, where the fact that most Northern Catholics now prefer to remain in the UK looks suspiciously like cupboard love. When the Celtic tiger was roaring, irked southerners would say, northern nationalists wanted unity and once the going got tough, they forgot their old friends and snuggled up to the British subsidy.
There may be an element of truth in that. Many people's attitudes to the border are decided on the basis of a rational calculation of self interest. However, even during the Celtic tiger years, the proportion of northern Catholics who favoured the UK link was rising steadily; it reached 39% in 2007, just before the bubble burst. The main reason for this is probably to be found within Northern Ireland itself, where the status and confidence of Catholics has been increasing under the power-sharing settlement.
The main impediment to Robinson's drive for cross-community votes is that most Catholics see these improvements not as boons conferred by beneficent unionism, but as concessions won and defended by nationalism. When Northern Catholics look at the DUP and political unionism, they don't see diversity, multi-culturalism and a recovering economy, which are the features of the UK they like. Instead, they see close links to the Orange Order and distrust of the Catholic church.
They also detect an attitude to Irish culture which is at best lukewarm, and frequently hostile. It is displayed in some politicians' descriptions of the Irish language as "leprechaun talk", and a dismissive or critical attitude by many unionists to the GAA. All this brings back communal memories of the years of unionist majority rule, of the DUP's early history of opposing political reforms and anti-Catholic rhetoric. That is why Sinn Féin stresses the "equality agenda" far more than Irish unity in northern elections. Its message is that a strong nationalist voice is needed if the Catholic community is to hold its own at Stormont and in the social pecking order.
Protestant politics in the North were traditionally built around the fear of a united Ireland in which Catholic interests would be in the ascendant. This was commonly referred to as the siege mentality, and it was fuelled by the IRA's terrorist campaign. In the early years of the state, it also encouraged suspicion of Catholics and an attempt to exclude them from power and influence. The core of the Good Friday agreement compromise was that the question of Irish unity would be subject to consent by referenda north and south; in return, Catholics would get a proportionate share of power in Northern Ireland.
That agreement has brought stability and optimism. Six out of 10 people surveyed by Life and Times felt communal relations had improved over the past five years, and more than half believed they would continue to improve over the next five years. Only one in 20 thought they would get worse.
The survey provides plenty of evidence of the two religious groups feeling increasingly comfortable in each other's company. In both Catholic and Protestant communities, 82% of people wanted to live in religiously mixed neighbourhoods and 94% preferred mixed workplaces. However, 42% of Catholics and 66% of Protestants would not like it if a close relative married someone from the other community.
Both the DUP and Sinn Féin report growing numbers of people from the "other side" coming to their advice centres. It is a first tentative step, but it has not yet translated into votes.
We need to look no further than the eruption of violence in east Belfast last week to see the problem. It was sparked when about 100 masked men, directed by the local UVF, attacked homes in Short Strand, a Catholic estate in the heart of loyalist east Belfast. Guns were brought out on both sides and republican dissidents became involved, shooting a press photographer in the leg.
The eruption of violence was as unexpected as a downpour from a blue sky. A back story soon emerged of low-level sectarian tension, windows smashed and families intimidated on both sides. There was a feeling of loyalist working-class alienation, and of the DUP losing touch with innercity areas as it attracted middle-class support.
Some working-class loyalists around Short Strand felt Sinn Féin was doing a better job defending nationalist interests.
This sort of sentiment can easily be exploited by ruthless figures in the east Belfast UVF and the republican dissidents. The main parties, including Alliance (which represents Belfast East in Westminster), have a big task ahead to address the lingering communal suspicions that still lurk behind the opinion poll statistics.
Despite the underlying suspicions, there is a clear desire for a shared future and more social integration, but sectarian fears are impossible to shake. Achieving a situation where religion no longer determines political allegiance is still a work in progress, and success is not guaranteed.
