On 2 March, voters in Northern Ireland go to the polls. Will they, like the US and Brexit electorates, confound the pundits? Or will it be the same old, same old in Belfast?

Election fever? You’d be hard pushed to reach such a diagnosis in Northern Ireland as it faces its second election in less than a year. There is a greater chance of walking into a cafe in Belfast and overhearing conversations about Donald Trump, Brexit and even Marine Le Pen than the Stormont Assembly election taking place on the doorstep next month.

Recent votes in the UK and further afield have caused upheavals of seismic proportions. Might Northern Ireland’s election continue that anti-establishment trend? The short answer is No. Most people are not expecting any major surprises. But the result could determine whether a power-sharing government has a future, in what looks likely to be an acrimonious new Assembly with months of political brinkmanship ahead.

The latest poll by the Belfast-based research company LucidTalk has the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein neck and neck. They were the two parties in the ruling coalition before Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness stood down as Deputy First Minister in January, causing the devolved government to collapse. Under the political settlement that was set up to end years of conflict, power must be shared between nationalists and unionists.

McGuinness quit over the handling of a botched green energy scheme; this in itself was unusual in Northern Ireland, where in the past it has been an existential crisis that has brought down the government. The blame for the scandal, which is set to cost taxpayers half a billion pounds, has been laid firmly at the door of the DUP, who say it was more cock-up than corruption.