Election 2022: Five strong hopefuls for the five North Down seats

As traditionally Northern Ireland’s wealthiest constituency, North Down has long been somewhat apart from other electoral areas.

It was much less hit by the violence of the Troubles than many other locations, and its politics has been at times closer to that of the mainland.

The Tories in 1992 came near to taking the Westminster MP seat in North Down, and turnout has traditionally been low, akin to low turnouts in prosperous parts of England. For most of the last 50 years, North Down has been softly unionist, with a large Alliance vote that never seemed to threaten that unionist dominance.

This changed in 2019. While all MPs stretching back decades had been either Ulster Unionists or ex Ulster Unionists, the Alliance MLA Stephen Farry oversaw an Alliance surge on the general election of two years previously, when the party won a mere 3,600 votes. Mr Farry soared to 18,300.

Many pundits had assumed that Alex Easton, the then DUP MLA, would win, such was the constituency’s prior reluctance to elect an Alliance MP.

The imponderable in that election was the outgoing MP Sylvia Hermon’s voters. While she too was a former Ulster Unionist, Lady Hermon had defeated Robert McCartney (himself ex UUP) with the support of Alliance standing aside in 2001.

So were her many supporters more unionist in orientation? Or more middle of the road? The extent to which they transferred to Mr Farry suggested the latter.

And yet, the combined DUP-UUP vote in 2019 of 20,300 was ahead of Alliance. Throw in the Tory vote and the ‘unionist’ margin was almost big.

All this history is important in understanding why this is quite a hard seat to predict for Stormont.

There are five parties, or entities, that each have a good chance of picking up one of the five Stormont seats. They are the DUP, the UUP, Alliance, the Greens and an independent.

The first three of those all hope to get a second seat, and could do so, but it might be a struggle for them.

The DUP incumbent Stephen Dunne is a relative newcomer to politics, having been a councillor who was co-opted on the death of his popular father, Gordon last year, aged only 62.

Mr Dunne will benefit from family name recognition and being higher up the alphabet than his DUP running mate, Councillor Jennifer Gilmour.

However, DUP hopes of a second seat are much diminished by the presence of Alex Easton in the contest. He was first elected to Stormont for the DUP in 2003, and has topped all assembly elections in the area since.

Mr Easton quit the party when it was in leadership turmoil last summer, saying he was at the “end of his tether” and saw no “respect, discipline or decency” in the DUP ructions.

The two Alliance hopefuls are Andrew Muir, who was co-opted to replace Mr Farry in 2019. He had been a former mayor of North Down (indeed the first openly gay one). This higher profile is likely to put him at an advantage to the other Alliance candidate, a young councillor Connie Egan.

But Alliance too has a big challenge in securing two MLAs. Its potential voters are often tempted to go Green. Indeed, it was an ex Alliance councillor, Brian Wilson, who first became a Green MLA in North Down in 2007. The party has had an MLA here ever since. Steven Agnew was elected several times and then, when he left politics, replaced by Rachel Woods, the party’s current nominee.

The Ulster Unionists also have two contenders, Alan Chambers and Naomi McBurney. Mr Chambers will benefit from being much better known, particularly in his long-time base, Groomsport, and from being higher up the alphabet than Ms McBurney, who came to prominence campaigning on the excessive price of school uniforms.

The TUV candidate John Gordon, who is secretary of his Orange Lodge, will be hoping that North Down’s long unionist history will help him snatch a late seat.

The SDLP’s Déirdre Vaughan and Sinn Fein’s Therese McCartney will struggle from the fact that neither party has ever done well in the area, and the independent councillor Ray McKimm from the difficulties facing most independents. Chris Carter has stood as such many times, and does again now, but has never won a big vote.

Matthew Robinson is the Tory standing in their best seat, but the party’s fortunes locally have declined.

A big local issue is the re-development of Queen’s Parade on Bangor seafront, which has been in the pipelines since the 1980s.

But parties are not sharply divided on the matter, so NI-wide factors will probably decide how people vote.

• Outgoing MLAs

Chambers, Alan (UUP)

Easton, Alex (Independent)

Dunne, Stephen (DUP)

Muir, Andrew (All)

Wood, Rachel (Green)

• Candidates (14)

Carter,Chris (Independent)

Chambers, Alan (UUP)

Dunne , Stephen (DUP)

Easton, Alex (Ind)

Egan, Connie (All)

Gilmour, Jennifer (DUP)

Gordon, John (TUV)

McBurney, Naomi (UUP)

McCartney, Therese (SF)

McKimm, Ray (Ind)

Muir, Andrew (All)

Robinson, Matthew (Cons)

Vaughan, Déirdre (SDLP)

Woods, Rachel (Green)

• December 2019 general election result

Stephen Farry Alliance 18,358 45.2

Alex Easton DUP 15,390 37.9

Alan Chambers Ulster Unionist 4,936 12.1

Matthew Robinson NI Conservatives 1,959 4.8

Alliance Majority 2,968

• March 2017 Stormont election result

Alex Easton DUP 8,034 21.3 ELECTED

Alan Chambers UUP 7,151 18.9 ELECTED

Stephen Farry Alliance 7,014 18.6 ELECTED

Gordon Dunne DUP 6,118 16.2 ELECTED

Steven Agnew Greeen 5,178 13.7 ELECTED

Melanie Kennedy Independent 1,246 3.3

William Cudworth UUP 964 2.5

Caoímhe McNeill SDLP 679 1.8

Frank Shivers NI Conservatives 641 1.7

Kieran Maxwell Sinn Féin 591 1.6

Chris Carter Independent 92 0.2

Gavan Reynolds Independent 31 0.1%