CONSTITUENCY PROFILE:WITH 70 per cent of the vote last time this is Sinn Féin's most reliable constituency. Party president Gerry Adams has the largest percentage share of any constituency vote.
He first won West Belfast from the late Gerry Fitt in 1983 and has held on to it at every election since except for 1992, when Joe Hendron of the SDLP snatched it with unionist tactical support from the Shankill area.
Sinn Féin won it back in 1997 and has consolidated it, winning five out of six Assembly seats in 2007. If there is such a thing as a political certainty, the outcome of the election here must come close. The bookies agree, offering 1/750 on an Adams victory.
The results here make troubling reading for the SDLP and its candidate Alex Attwood. Elections since 1998, bar one, show a steady slide in the party’s support.
Boundary changes have enlarged the area slightly but failed to change in any meaningful way its character – it is overwhelmingly Catholic, republican and underprivileged.
West Belfast also takes in areas of the Shankill, including the poorest ward in Northern Ireland, and it is virtually impossible to travel directly from loyalist to republican heartlands without crossing a peace line.
Alliance is running east Belfast councillor Máire Hendron. This used to be a constituency where Alliance did well thanks mainly to exemplary work by husband and wife team Will and Pip Glendinning. But that was more than 20 years ago.
In the unionist areas, the DUP, Ulster Unionists and smaller parties have generally failed to maintain a grasp on an Assembly quota despite there being enough votes.
William Humphrey (DUP) and Bill Manwaring for the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force complete the ticket. But their candidacy will, if anything, be focused on next year’s Assembly poll and the effort to consolidate enough unionists behind a single unionist candidate.
In the republican areas of the constituency – in other words, most of it – Sinn Féin’s position seems unshakeable.
During this campaign Gerry Adams has worked in Fermanagh South Tyrone where party colleague Michelle Gildernew is fighting to retain her seat, and in South Down where new SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie is trying to replace the now-retired Eddie McGrady and hold off the challenge from Sinn Féin’s Caitríona Ruane.
And while there is no need for him to canvass the streets where his party dominates, he believes he ought to. Adams can canvass by standing still and allowing the electorate to approach him. They do just that outside shops and supermarkets, or in car parks. They reach out to him, not the other way around. Many are known to him by name.
Car horns are sounded, drivers wave, shoppers shake his hand. Even the solitary voter who has an issue to raise with him is dealt with and the departure is marked by smiles rather than scowls.
There are, however, two possible problems. The obvious one is apathy. With such a majority, the party is keen not to let discipline slip especially with the next Stormont campaign, which relies on the ultimate in vote management, coming into view. The other is the growing personal threat from dissident republicans. Despite the public adulation, Adams is accompanied now by guards.
It has been a difficult few months for the Sinn Féin president with bad headlines concerning his brother and his father. Some of the coverage may tarnish his standing elsewhere, but seems highly unlikely to cause him any problems at home.