Election 2023: Rare absence of bad news for the UUP as it holds firm in Mid and East Antrim

In 2019, the UUP returned seven councillors. And with the count still ongoing today, it has already matched that.

A new face on the council is Roy Beggs, the long-serving UUP MLA who lost his seat in 2022.

A previous councillor for the old defunct Carrick authority, he returns to local government in Larne Lough with 1,139 first-preference votes (just a few dozen behind his nearest unionist rival there Gregg McKeen).

The SDLP, which had one councillor in 2019, is still sitting on zero as the ballot papers are tallied, while Sinn Fein have doubled their crop of two councillors in 2019 to make four.

The DUP is looking fairly steady, as is the Alliance Party, but with six seats still to be announced, that could change.

Despite holding its own in Mid and East Antrim, the UUP’s overall vote share has shrunk by over 3% and it has lost 16 council seats at time of writing.

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