Priding itself on being the location - at Carrickfergus - where King William of Orange first set foot on the island in 1690, the constituency of East Antrim has always been a staunchly unionist one. It consists of the coastal strip from the southern end of the Glens of Antrim right down to Belfast Lough, and includes as its focal points Larne and Carrickfergus, both towns which have recently made headlines due to economic setbacks and sectarian tensions. In the last Westminster election, it did the sitting MP, Ulster Unionist Roy Beggs, no harm at all that he had been arrested for blocking the main Larne to Belfast road in support of the 1995 Drumcree protest. This time around, voters might feel that Mr Beggs has made the news for the "wrong" reasons; in March he had to apologise to the British House of Commons for failing to disclose property interests in his home town of Larne. Whether this will cause him electoral damage is yet to be seen. Even if it did, however, the Ulster Unionist MP of 18 years has a majority of almost 7,000 votes to fall back on. In 1997, Mr Beggs received almost 39 per cent of the vote, followed by the Alliance Party's Mr Sean Neeson with just over 20 per cent, and the DUP's Mr Jack McKee on 19.5 per cent.
In the 1998 Assembly elections, the UUP's share of the vote was almost 30 per cent, with the DUP polling just over 22 per cent, and Alliance winning 20 per cent. Among nationalist parties the SDLP was front-runner with almost six per cent, while Sinn Fein managed just over two per cent. What might hurt Mr Beggs in the electoral stakes is his perceived ambivalence towards the Belfast Agreement. While he previously appeared to be one of its main opponents within the UUP, Mr Beggs has been nudging visibly closer lately to the Trimble camp.
With attitudes towards the agreement hardening in some of east Antrim's staunchly loyalist estates, this might turn out to be the wrong direction for Mr Beggs.
As well as being the party's chief whip, the Ulster Unionist MP is, however, known as a hard constituency worker who prides himself on being a "local man, through and through".
This could be one of the main handicaps for Mr Beggs's main challenger, the DUP's Mr Sammy Wilson, who, as the current mayor of Belfast, is very much the "new kid on the block" in East Antrim. As he is also running for council in east Belfast, the DUP candidate is further seen as having divided loyalties. Mr Wilson has been "parachuted in" as a high-profile candidate but knows that he is facing an uphill struggle. While claiming he is "running to win", the DUP candidate admits that in reality it is a question of "seeing how much damage I can do". Apart from the defeat of the agreement, Mr Wilson says he has been focusing on local "bread and butter" issues rather than on Mr Beggs's personal difficulties in the Commons. In what can only be described as a bizarre, if not masochistic move, the Alliance Party, in second place in 1997, has replaced its party leader, Mr Sean Neeson, with a virtually unknown candidate, Mr John Mathews.
Party activists allegedly felt that Mr Neeson had become complacent about being reselected as the party's candidate and decided to teach him a lesson. While the move was seen as a wake-up call for established politicians across the North, in electoral terms it is expected to be highly counter-productive, with Alliance voters, who feel Mr Beggs's support for the agreement to be less than committed, likely to stay at home. The SDLP's Mr Danny O'Connor, in recent months repeatedly the victim of a sectarian pipe bomb campaign against his family home, is likely to poll well in nationalist areas where there is great sympathy for him on the ground.
In the local council elections, East Antrim includes the council areas of Larne and Carrickfergus in which the UUP has 10 councillors combined, the DUP six, Alliance six, loyalist parties three, the SDLP one and other independents six.
1997 Westminster East Antrim
Electorate: 59,032
Turnout: 58.2%
Roy Beggs, (UUP) 13,318
Sean Neeson, (Alliance) 6,929
Jack McKee, (DUP) 6,682
Terry Dick, (Cons) 2,334
W. Donaldson, (PUP) 1,751
Danny O'Connor, (SDLP) 1,576
Robert Mason, (Ind) 1,145
Christine McAuley, (SF) 543
Maura McCann, (Natural Law Party) 69