Constituency Focus: North Antrim

North Antrim is traditional DUP heartland, though the party only hold 2 Assembly seats currently. The constituency takes in some of the north and east coast and includes Rathlin island. Ballymena is the largest town in the constituency. North Antrim was where the DUP won their first parliamentary seat and it’s been held by a Paisley ever since. 

 

Current seats

The DUP hold 2 seats here with the TUV, UUP and Sinn Féin holding one each. The DUP’s Ian Paisley is the MP for the area having won the seat after his father retired. 

 

Current bloc quotas

Unionism is exceptionally strong here with a recent low vote share of 64.1% and a high of 72.9%. That low was a council election with independents whose constitutional preference I cannot confirm. It is likely there were some unionists among them.

 

Nationalism has ranged from 19.4% to 23.1%. The low score was in 2019 with the following election seeing the bloc improve to just 19.5%. Despite that being a a comfortable quota it may show Nationalism in trouble here, I hadn’t thought that was the case until I looked at the numbers more closely.

 

The non-aligned bloc has ranged from 5.6% to 14.1%. I suspect some of that 14.1% was tactical voting for Alliance from Sinn Féin supporters, however the nationalist vote share was almost the same as that in the previous election that year.

 

Recent electoral trends

The DUP are very strong in North Antrim despite only having 2 seats. The TUV has eaten into a chunk of that vote and look likely to score better in May. The UUP have improved recently but the numbers are skewed as some TUV voters would have backed the UUP in 2019 when the TUV were not standing. 

 

Sinn Féin are comfortably the largest Nationalist party though the gap has been narrowing.

 

Alliance has been growing, most of their growth has come from Unionism but there is that significant chunk coming from Nationalism in 2019. 

 

Candidates

The DUP are only fielding 2 candidates, both are incumbents Paul Frew and Mervyn Storey. The TUV sense a chance of a gain and so Jim Allister has a running mate in Matthew Armstrong. The UUP are also hoping to capitalise on poor DUP polling by running with 2 candidates, Robin Swann is joined on the ballot by Bethany Ferris. Laird Shingleton is standing as an independent Unionist.

 

There are only 2 Nationalists on the ballot in North Antrim, Phillip McGuigan is defending his seat for  Sinn Féin and Eugene Reid is challenging for the SDLP.

 

Patricia O’Lynn is representing Alliance and Paul Veronica is the Green Party candidate. 

 

Battles

There are three safe seats here. The DUP, TUV and UUP all have a safe seat. The second DUP seat is vulnerable and is being targeted by both rival Unionist parties. 

 

The Sinn Féin seat is also vulnerable. Alliance are targeting a gain here and if they are successful it will probably come from Sinn Féin rather than a Unionist. There just are not enough votes to elect Sinn Féin and another non-unionist. The only way I can see it happening is if Sinn Féin  are behind both Alliance and the SDLP on first preferences and all of their transfers split to those parties. Unionism just seems too strong to lose a seat here.

 

Issues

Ian Paisley has been a divisive MP and so some of the vote here may be seen as vote either for or against Paisley. There have been economic problems here in the last election cycle with issues around Wrightbus, a key employer in the area. One of the interesting issues may be “Covid Passports”. Robin Swann introduced the controversial programme during his time as health minister and his most prominent critic in the chamber was North Antrim rival Paul Frew. I will be watching the first preference and transfers of these two candidates very closely. 

 

Predictions 

Logic dictates that if the TUV were to make a gain anywhere then they should get a second here, but I just don’t see the DUP vote dropping dramatically enough. Even in 2019 when the party had less than 2 Assembly quotas they still would have easily won 2 seats with good vote balancing. I also expect Sinn Féin to hold their seat, I suspect some of their 2019 drop was tactical voting for Alliance and even if they are short of a quota after Nationalist transfers, I don’t think anyone else will overtake them. It is a boring prediction but I think the same 5 MLAs will be returned here.