The party whose most famous electoral success of the last 20 years took place in the nationalist rural west, has come a long way since the early 1980s.
Just how far Sinn Féin has travelled was highlighted by its seizing an assembly seat in Ian Paisley's own backyard.
The republican party's North Antrim victory was the headline-grabbing win of this campaign. It marks the latest stage in Sinn Féin's speedy progress through the late eighties and early nineties. But having first eclipsed the SDLP as the biggest nationalist party in the north at the 2001 Westminster election, Sinn Féin now appears to have solidly established its position.
It is a major political transformation from its birth in 1970, when 'Provisional Sinn Féin' emerged from the major split in the republican movement.
Its interest in pursuing success at the ballot box was ignited by the victory of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands who was elected MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in the 1981 Westminster by-election.
In October 1982 Sinn Féin took part in its first Stormont election, winning five seats and 10% of the vote to a 'consultative' assembly formed under a doomed initiative introduced by the then secretary of state Jim Prior.
The electoral power of the party was strengthened when its leader Gerry Adams became MP for West Belfast in 1983.
Sinn Féin's electoral growth, and a desire by the governments to isolate violent republicanism, brought about the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.
In the early '90s, as the troubles took further vicious turns, Sinn Féin's secret engagements with the SDLP and the governments marked the beginning of the current peace process. Following the IRA's ceasefire in 1994, Sinn Féin's electoral fortunes continued to rise.
In 1997, Martin McGuinness took another Westminster seat for Sinn Féin in Mid-Ulster.
In the 1998 assembly elections that followed the signing of the agreement Sinn Féin polled 17.6% of the vote – an increase of 2.2% on the 1996 elections.
Sinn Féin gained 18 seats in the assembly to the SDLP's 24 and as the fourth largest party it was entitled to nominate two ministers to the executive and Mr McGuinness, who was IRA commander in Derry in the early 1970s, became minister for education.
Five years later Sinn Féin has clearly turned the tables on its nationalist rival by exchanging its number of seats for those won by the SDLP in 1998.
Sinn Féin's first Stormont election in 1982 saw it take five seats. Just over 20 years later it has seized 24 seats and surpassed its nationalist rival.
Former Sinn Féin publicity director and author, Danny Morrison, said the party's victory was not a surprise.
"It is confirmation that Sinn Féin is more in tune with the feelings within the nationalist community," he said.
Mr Morrison put much of Sinn Féin's electoral success down to nationalist "admiration for the party's negotiating skills".
The challenge for Sinn Féin now is how to negotiate with the assembly's biggest party, the DUP, which claims it will not engage with republicans.
A Sinn Féin spokeswoman last night said it was a myth that the DUP did not talk to the party.
"The DUP works with Sinn Féin in the councils across the north and worked with Sinn Féin in the assembly," she said.
"Nearly 500,000 voted for pro-agreement parties on Wednesday and the anti-agreement parties will not be allowed a veto in the assembly. We are confident that the DUP will talk to us."
