ON ASSEMBLY election count days through Friday and Saturday, South Antrim could be one of the interesting constituencies to watch where the SDLP will be hoping to cling on by the very skin of outgoing MLA Thomas Burns’s fingers.
South Antrim is where the ill-fated Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force (Ucunf) made its ill-judged gamble in the Westminster election last year. It parachuted in UUP leader Sir Reg Empey from his East Belfast constituency to take on the then outgoing DUP MP, the Rev William McCrea.
Sir Reg failed to unseat Mr McCrea. That and the whole UCUNF enterprise cost him the leadership of the party, to be replaced by Tom Elliott from Fermanagh.
Sir Reg moved to the House of Lords as Lord Empey of Shandon – a reward for his commitment to the peace process and hooking up with the Tories.
But in losing the seat, Sir Reg took more than 30 per cent of the vote, which is two quotas in this Assembly contest. In 2007 the UUP could only manage to win one seat, and this time hopes that Sir Reg’s vote will hold for its two candidates, Danny Kinahan and Adrian Watson.
The DUP took two seats last time but its main vote-winner Mr McCrea is not running because of the party’s policy to phase out double-jobbing between Westminster and Stormont. Still it is running three candidates and also has its eye on Mr Burns’s seat, as has Traditional Unionist Voice candidate Mel Lucas.
This is the Alliance leader and Minister for Justice David Ford’s constituency, and he should be safely returned, as should Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin.
The final seat will be a scrap between the UUP, the DUP, the TUV and Mr Burns. Running against Mr Burns is the fact that boundary changes have made this constituency 2.3 per cent more Protestant and 2.3 per cent less Catholic. It’s hard to call but perhaps the SDLP man in place since 2003 has managed to lodge himself so firmly here that he will be difficult to unseat.
