Today is D-Day in South Antrim as voters go to the polls to decide who will represent them at Westminster. The one thing political commentators appear to agree on is that the result will be too close to call.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. The count will start shortly after polls close this evening, the first time counting is to be done on an election day in the North for over 30 years.
The practice was fairly common in the days before the Troubles but security considerations made such overnight counts increasingly difficult.
The organisers expect a declaration of the result some time between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. tomorrow morning, turnout and recounts permitting.
The by-election was made necessary by the death of the Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Clifford Forsythe, who held the seat with a 16,611 majority in 1997, a margin which should be a comfort to the Ulster Unionist candidate, Mr David Burnside.
In the 1997 elections, the Democratic Unionist Party decided, however, not to field a candidate. Mr Forsythe's closest rival was thus the SDLP's Mr Donovan McClelland, who polled just under 7,000 votes.
A more representative basis for comparison for today's election might therefore be the 1998 Assembly election results, in which the UUP polled 13,000 votes compared to the DUP's 9,000.
All through the campaign, the DUP have played up today's election as a referendum on 1998's referendum result, when 71 per cent of people in Northern Ireland supported the Belfast Agreement.
The party candidate, the Rev William McCrea's campaign slogan has been "Your chance to put things right."
Indeed, in his closing statement Mr McCrea said today's election was about the "heart and soul of this country".
The SDLP seems resigned to see today's election as a test of strength between itself and Sinn Fein.
After the unionist battle between Mr Burnside and Mr McCrea, the struggle for the strongest non-unionist vote between the SDLP's Mr Donovan McClelland, Sinn Fein's Mr Martin Meehan and the Alliance Party's Mr David Ford will certainly be another interesting one to watch out for.
The total electorate is 71,047 but most of the political parties expect the turnout to be much lower.
South Antrim is traditionally an apathetic constituency, and the turnout was only 58 per cent at the 1997 Westminster elections.
The man responsible for running the election is deputy returning officer Mr Will Dewart.
Although he stressed that he was guessing, he thought the turnout would only be around 50 per cent.
"There doesn't seem to be that much interest around," he added.
Mr Dewart's boss is Mr Denis Stanley, who replaced the North's chief electoral officer of 20 years, Mr Pat Bradley, in August. Mr Dewart will oversee a staff of 200 people working at 31 polling stations in schools and church halls in towns such as Donegore, Loanends, and Ballynure. A further 50 staff will be on hand at the count at the Valley Leisure Centre near Belfast.
The candidates in today's South Antrim by-election are: Mr David Burnside, Ulster Unionist Party; Mr David Collins, Natural Law Party; Mr David Ford, Alliance Party; Mr Donovan McClelland, Social Democratic and Labour Party; Mr William McCrea, Democratic Unionist Party; and Mr Martin Meehan, Sinn Fein.