LAST Thursday's contest produced much the same balance at Stormont, with a couple of heartening changes.
The doubling of Green representation and the arrival of two People Before Profit MLAs will be unsettling if not transformative. The signs are already there.
Unionist rejection of a Northern Ireland that is Irish as well as British, Sinn Féin's industrial excavation of expenses, SDLP self-pity have all dimmed hopes.
The idea underpinning the Good Friday negotiations, of parity of esteem and real power-sharing, has been vandalised, bit by bit.
The PBP newcomers will struggle to keep their anti-sectarianism to the fore while standing up for McCann's conviction, for example, that the Saville report fingered humble squaddies to exonerate commanders and politicians.
With the Greens they can make common cause on social issues, way ahead for example of SF finessing on abortion.
That will encourage progressive instincts among members of the bigger parties; perhaps, who knows, across the board. But the air won't clear overnight.
Just before polling day it emerged that the Lord Chief Justice had been snubbed, good and proper, by the outgoing executive, his proposals for speeding up long-delayed inquests not even tabled for discussion.
In a BBC `debate', low on substantive discussion of issues, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood made a decent try at forcing Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster to address the subject.
McGuinness said he'd met Sir Declan, smoothly adding that `responsibility for funding the inquests resides with the British government'.
Then he stood politely mute while Foster effectively confirmed she had blocked discussion of the proposals because there had been `too much emphasis lately on the victims of security forces'.
It was a perfect illustration of the limits of DUP-SF power-sharing, Foster's determination to brandish the DUP's numerical superiority and the extent to which McGuinness curbs his tongue to preserve the structures.
McGuinness repeated his `the Irish government told me' line, that they believed the SDLP would not sign up to the `Fresh Start' agreement. Eastwood and he jabbed at each other.
It added up to an unattractive picture of nationalist rivalry, mutual dislike and mistrust. And guess what, the SF-SDLP total vote days later showed yet another fall, like the turnout, fourth in a row.
Enter, stage left, Eamonn McCann and Gerry Carroll. McCann won most attention over the weekend as stylish performer, ideologue with a sense of humour, the veteran who fought his first election in 1969.
But for West Belfast republicanism Carroll is the real stone in the shoe. He could be a textbook model for the left wing movement McCann has spent a lifetime preaching, makes common cause on the visible effects of cuts between the orange and green PBP proudly disdain, has served his time, two years now, in Belfast council.
"When he stands up, before he says a word, you can see them bristle,"' is how another councillor describes Carroll's effect on Sinn Féin in City Hall.
It's an effect with several layers. The young people round him emphasise Carroll's youth, their casualness a contrast with the increasing age of many SFers.
A good seven years younger than the elfin 73-old McCann, McGuinness suddenly looks his age, and no wonder. But the central difference goes deeper than appearance.
North and south, mainstream republicanism is now mainstream politics. Outside the negotiations that have finally produced a Dublin government but now a Dáil fixture, back in harness with the DUP: part of the establishment. The PBP Alliance as represented by 29-year-old Carroll, and McCann, arrives at Stormont with fresher street cred.
An uncomfortable vision appeared in the election count centre not long after Carroll's victory, SF's Rosie McCorley shaken out in the process.
Party leader Gerry Adams arrived in the traditional visit to rally the troops, thank election workers. He was flanked by trusties as well as McCorley; the party's first Belfast mayor Tom Hartley, long-serving lower Falls rep Fra McCann, a Maskey or two.
His first – fatherly, solemn - words congratulated Carroll, his next warned against `taking up populist positions'.
By Sunday that had changed into `shouting about things is all very well, but versus tackling poverty...'
Sinn Féin is of course denounced by the other main Dáil parties as nakedly populist. (To be fair, these are also parties who competed to offer voters ill-costed sweeteners before the recent election.)
But Adams's other comment was that PBP's result was only `a little fragmentation on the edges.' Time for the `sabbatical' he once knew he needed; past time SF looked at itself. Progress will not come from unionism.
