Battle for NI nationalist vote

By CNN's Nic Robertson

OMAGH, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- In Northern Ireland, the battle is on between Sinn Fein and the SDLP to be the leading Catholic nationalist party.

West Tyrone is the scene of one of the fiercest three-way electoral battles in Northern Ireland, where Brid Rodgers -- Northern Ireland's agriculture minister and Social Democratic and Labour Party candidate -- is hoping to win big in an area where Catholic Irish nationalists make up the majority of voters.

Farmers say they liked how Rodgers handled the recent foot-and-mouth crisis. She was voted the most popular politician in Northern Ireland, and she now believes she could even win key votes from Protestant Unionist farmers.

"It would be the beginning of the new future where people were voting on the basis of the common good and … the real issues," Rodgers says.

At the last election, the SDLP split the nationalist vote with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, allowing a Protestant Unionist to take the seat.

It could happen again this year, when the stakes are even higher.

"That really is the seat where you have a battle for Nationalists going on. ... At the moment it is simply too close to call," says political analyst Paul Bew.

Sinn Fein is bringing in its big guns: Education Minister Martin McGuinness is helping get out the vote for candidate Pat Docherty, Sinn Fein's vice president.

Docherty's message: His party is making the peace process work.

"We will win this election, and what it will mean is people will feel more proud and more confident in their Irish heritage and have more faith in the concept that politics works," says Docherty.

Across Northern Ireland, divisions within unionism have put three new seats within the grasp of Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Who wins them will determine who becomes the main party for the nationalists -- and therefore who will carry the most weight at future peace talks.

Sinn Fein believes that after 20 years in electoral politics, this election could finally put it ahead of the SDLP.

The results here will be keenly watched not only by the clearly divided Irish nationalists, but also by the Protestant unionists on the other side of the religious and cultural divide.