While the opinion polls have been predicting it for many months, the achievement appeared to be no less seismic when the results finally began to trickle through.
Sinn Fein has swept aside many years of history and has become the first nationalist or republican party to take the largest share of seats in a Northern Ireland Assembly election.
The results will be a significant psychological blow to Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s DUP, which has lost its position as the biggest party for the first time since 2003, when it usurped David Trimble’s UUP.
