SINN FEIN ON TRACK TO WIN IN N. IRELAND

The Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, was on track Friday night to emerge as the largest party in Northern Ireland after legislative elections, a seismic political shift that could kindle hopes for Irish unity but also sow unrest in a territory where delicate powersharing arrangements have kept the peace for two decades.

With much of the vote counted Friday evening, Sinn Fein was on track to win the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a distinction that will allow it to name the first minister in the territory’s government.

The party’s potential victory would push the Democratic Unionist Party, which favors Northern Ireland’s present status as a part of the United Kingdom, into second place for the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which created the system under which unionists and nationalists share power.

Sinn Fein made its electoral gains with a campaign that emphasized kitchen-table issues like the rising cost of living and better health care.

But the victory has deeply unsettled the unionists, who have warned that they will not take part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister.