At least one newspaper wrote in the aftermath of the referendum on the Belfast Agreement that a "new people" had been born in Northern Ireland. A good name for this society-in-waiting might be "agree-to-differ-land".
Most people believed they were choosing a dispensation whereby the philosophies of nationalism and unionism could live side by side in peace and harmony. If, in due course, enough unionists changed their minds, agree-to-differ folk could join with their neighbours to the south in a united Ireland. If not, the status quo would remain.
That's one of the pillars on which the Belfast Agreement rests. But in order to get Northern nationalists and the electorate in the Republic to accept this arrangement, guarantees had to be given that the lot of nationalists would improve significantly on the old Stormont regime, with its overtones of second-class citizenship.
To implement those guarantees it has been necessary to provide for an unusual kind of parliament, where majority rule is qualified and hedged about with a variety of guarantees for minorities.
Ironically, minority guarantees which were mainly intended for the benefit of nationalists could end up being used by unionists opposed to the agreement and the new dispensation it seeks to underpin.
We will hear a lot of figures between now and polling day, June 25th. One that will be heard over again is the magic number 30. That is the number of members required to designate a motion before the Assembly as a "key decision". When a motion acquires this special status, it must have cross-community support to be passed.
One could imagine a situation where nationalist members supported a particular cross-Border initiative but unionists were split on the issue; one wing of unionism believing it was a reasonable move, the others denouncing it as a betrayal and the high road to a united Ireland.
Opposition unionists would first need to seek 30 signatures to have the motion designated a key decision. They would then need at least 60 per cent of unionists to vote against the proposal.
The possibilities for frustrating the aims of the agreement are contained in the document itself. That is why the numbers game is going to be particularly critical in this election.
That is also one of the reasons there was so much tension over the selection of Ulster Unionist candidates. It was important for the Trimble leadership to ensure as many as possible of those selected had supported the agreement in the referendum. These could presumably be relied upon to support Mr Trimble in his efforts to work the agreement in the Assembly and the other institutions provided for in the Good Friday document.
Nominations don't close until Wednesday so it is somewhat premature to start speculating about the likely composition of the new parliament. The best guess of some observers at this very early stage is that the nationalist parties will win about 40 out of the 108 seats, the SDLP getting 22-24 and Sinn Fein 16-18.
The Alliance Party intends to keep clear of the two big power blocs and take the designation "non-aligned" or "other". If the Forum election results of 1996 were repeated, Alliance would take seven seats. They might be joined in the "other" camp by a handful of members from smaller parties, such as the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.
However, it seems likely the total number of members accepting the designation "unionist" will be close to 60. Here is where the real battle will be fought out. In the first instance, Mr Trimble will be trying to keep his opponents below the 30 mark. Based on the Forum results, the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists would win 26 seats and Mr Robert McCartney's UK Unionists two. Since some UUP candidates are avowed opponents of the agreement, those figures would make it easy for anti-agreement parties to petition for key decisions.
Based on the Forum results, the UUP would win 30 seats. Given that a small but significant number of their members are likely to be anti-agreement, Mr Trimble needs to score higher than that.
The UUP percentage of the vote in the Forum poll was considerably below average. The bare minimum number of pro-agreement unionist required to keep the Assembly ticking over and to ensure the agreement works more or less successfully appears to be about 24 or 25.
Even if these included members of the pro-agreement loyalist parties, such as the Progressive Unionists - seen as having a chance of three seats - or the Ulster Democratic Party, that still leaves very little margin for error.
That is where the "new nation" born on May 22nd comes in. Judging from the RTE exit poll, large numbers of unionist and nationalist voters who normally stay at home came out to support the agreement. The question is, will they now come out a second time to support the pro-agreement parties?
The Northern electorate has previous experience of proportional representation in local and European Parliament elections but traditionally voters support candidates on their own side of the religious divide and leave it at that. There will be considerable interest to see if, this time, voters continue down the ticket, with nationalists voting for the SDLP and Sinn Fein, and then opting for a UUP candidate to keep out the nominee of the Democratic Unionists.
UUP voters might choose to continue down the list and vote for a candidate from, say, the SDLP.
Not so much a new nation, perhaps, but a new consensus. Pragmatic unionist meets realistic nationalist is one way of looking at it. Anti-agreement parties might prefer lukewarm Lundy makes common cause with closet republican.
But if this de-facto alliance, which had a major effect in the referendum, should manifest itself a second time for the Assembly elections, the results could be decisive.