MOST voters in the north think a border poll in ten years' time would result in a united Ireland.
A new study by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, carried out online among 3,301 Northern Ireland adults, suggested 46 per cent of voters would vote for Irish unity tomorrow.
Just one-in-four expect Northern Ireland will still be part of the union in 50 years.
The online research, which also included eight focus groups held across the north last month, revealed 69 per cent of voters think a unity referendum should happen, while slightly more (85 per cent) accept that it will happen at some point.
It followed an Ipsos MRBI poll for the Irish Times at the weekend, which showed 62 per cent of voters in the Republic would support Irish unity.
A smaller study conducted by Lord Ashcroft two years ago found 51 per cent would vote for a united Ireland. In both cases, the pollster excluded those who answered ‘I don’t know’.
The latest poll found more than a quarter of voters (27 per cent) said they had changed their mind on whether the north should remain in the UK.
And it again exposed how nationalists and unionists remain starkly divided over the issue of Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Despite two-thirds of all voters now believing Brexit has made Irish unification in the foreseeable future more likely, 66 per cent of unionists still think leaving the EU was the right call for Northern Ireland.
A slim majority (52 per cent) of all voters said the protocol is either fine as it is or is acceptable with some adjustment.
Among nationalist voters, there was near unanimity, with 99 per cent of Sinn Féin and 95 per cent of SDLP voters accepting the protocol as is, or with adjustment.
By contrast, 85 per cent of DUP voters said the protocol is wrong in principle and should be scrapped.
Just 34 per cent of UUP voters said the same, but another 36 per cent think the protocol needs serious reform. Just under a third of UUP voters (30 per cent) think the protocol is acceptable with some adjustment.
Alliance voters are also on board with the new Irish Sea border arrangements, but 66 per cent want some tinkering done.
A clear majority (78 per cent) of unionist voters said the protocol is the major factor when it comes to product shortages or delivery issues, whereas nationalists and those neutral on the constitutional question, were more likely to say Brexit is the major problem.
Meanwhile, the polling yielded some more concerns for DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson.
Of the voters who backed the DUP in the 2017 Assembly elections, just 63.4 per cent said they would do the same in 2022, the weakest of the five main parties.
Of Sinn Féin’s voters in 2017, 91.3 per cent said they’ll vote the same way next year.
