#GE24 Constituency Profile: East Antrim
ABOUT THE CONSTITUENCY
The result of the 2023 Review of Parliamentary Constituencies means that there is a realignment between East Antrim and North Antrim. The constituency used to be long and thin, running along the coast. It’s now shorter and squatter, shaped like a terrier dog with its hind legs resting on top of Belfast.
The most northern split ward in East Antrim (Torr Head and Rathlin) now lies fully within North Antrim. In return, there is a sizeable expansion west, transferring all of Glenravel and the remaining parts of Glenwhirry and Slemish from North Antrim. Jordanstown is now fully within East Antrim (formerly split with South Antrim). A couple of southern split wards were transferred into South Antrim and Belfast North. Overall the electorate has increased by around 5,000 voters, the second largest gain (7.7%) in the NI boundary review. It’s likely that the unionist vote share has reduced, Alliance support will be slightly down, and nationalism has been boosted, which could make the fight for the fifth seat in the next Assembly election a closer race than in 2022.
PREVIOUS ELECTIONS
Roy Beggs was returned to Westminster for the UUP (defeating the DUP’s Jim Allister) when the modern East Antrim seat was created as part of boundary changes in 1983. The DUP’s Sammy Wilson came within 128 votes of winning the seat in 2001, and succeeded in 2005, beating Beggs with a majority of 7,304.
This was Séan Neeson’s stronghold for Alliance, polling north of 20% of the vote share in 4 out of five elections before he became party leader in 1998. By 2017, Alliance had taken over from the UUP as the runners up in East Antrim, though it was only in 2019 that an Alliance candidate (Danny Donnelly) finally topped Neeson’s 1987 vote tally (8,582, 25.6%).
2019 RESULTS
Sammy Wilson (DUP) won with a vote share of 45.3% and a majority of 6,706 over Alliance’s Danny Donnelly.
COMMENTARY
Sammy Wilson has been the MP for East Antrim since 2005, and if he is successful at this election, he is on track to beat Roy Beggs’ 22-year term if the DUP stalwart serves more than another three years of the next term. Wilson’s majority of 6,706 is in the middle of the range of seats that the DUP currently hold, making East Antrim an interesting barometer on election night for Unionism’s direction of electoral travel and how motivated their voters are in turning out. East Antrim had the fourth lowest turnout (57.74%) in Northern Ireland in 2019 (Strangford was the lowest at 56.28%).
John Stewart is running for the UUP. He’s been an MLA since 2017. The battle for second place at recent elections has been interesting in East Antrim. In 2019, the then UUP Leader, Steve Aiken came third behind Alliance. Yet in the 2022 Assembly poll, the UUP came second in terms of first preferences, just ahead of Alliance. Can the UUP recover some of the ground they lost in East Antrim in 2017 and 2019?
Danny Donnelly is standing again for Alliance. He gained an Assembly seat for the party in 2022 and he polled well in 2019 securing 27.3% of the vote. This was a 11.7 percentage point swing to Alliance, the fourth biggest boost to their vote share in Northern Ireland. Donnelly will want to consolidate his position as the main challenger to the DUP.
Matthew Warwick is standing for the TUV. His party did not stand in 2019. In the last Assembly election, the party took 9.1% of the vote. It will be interesting to see what damage Warwick does to the DUP tally on polling day.
Oliver McMullan is standing for Sinn Féin, a former MLA who polled 5.7% in 2019. Margaret Anne McKillop is standing for the SDLP whose candidate (Angela Mulholland) polled just 2.4% of the votes at the last General Election. Mark Bailey is standing for the Greens: the party attracted 1.8% of the vote in 2019.
PREDICTION
DUP hold.