Constituency profile: Newry & Armagh.
This is a key nationalist seat where the tussle between Sinn Féin and the SDLP is as keen as anywhere in the North.
Both parties hold two seats each, with single seats going to the Ulster Unionists and the DUP. However, the trend since 1998 has been one of encroachment on the SDLP vote by Sinn Féin, especially in PR elections.
Newry and Armagh takes in the parts of Co Armagh not included in Mr David Trimble's Upper Bann seat, along with the Newry area. It includes Armagh city and the rural area including Crossmaglen down to the Border with Monaghan and Louth.
Mr Seamus Mallon remains the Westminster MP, although there was some surprise at the scale of the Sinn Féin vote in the 2001 election. Mr Mallon won with a majority of under 7 per cent over Mr Conor Murphy.
The local government elections, held the same day, showed a better vote for Sinn Féin than in the parliamentary election.
The SDLP is again putting up Mr John Fee, a relative of the late Cardinal O Fiaich, along with two running mates placed in strategic areas of the constituency. How the party will perform in the absence of such an influential figure as Mr Mallon is difficult to quantify.
Sinn Féin is doing the same, with a team of three led by Mr Conor Murphy.
The DUP now has supremacy with unionist voters, a reversal since the days of the 1983 Westminster election when the UUP's Mr Jim Nicholson won the seat.
Mr Paul Berry of the DUP, the youngest member of the last assembly, was some 1,800 ahead of the UUP's Mr Danny Kennedy.
Mr Kennedy was chairman of the assembly education committee which shadowed the performance of Mr Martin McGuinness as minister. He has enjoyed a higher profile in recent times, and his seat is of key importance to his party.
Mr William Frazer is standing as an independent this time, having contested the 1998 poll as an Ulster Independence candidate. An effective self-publicist, he had been active in a trenchant campaign against the pro-agreement line both on the ground in south Armagh and on his website.
The electorate has fallen due to the tightening of registration procedure by the Electoral Office. There are now nearly 69,000 on the register, down from nearly 74,000 in 2001.