Election 2024: South Antrim - 'A lot of confidence in the air about Robin Swann's chances tonight'
There is "a lot of confidence in the air” about Robin Swann’s chances in this election, a fellow Ulster Unionist candidate has said.
Jay Basra (the Mid-Ulster challenger) said that if no UUP candidates get through “it just shows we need to go back to the drawing board really and work out new tactics for how we can elect MPs… but we’ll see: I’m confident we’ll get at least one MP back”.
South Antrim is expected to be a relatively tight-fought race.
In the 2019 election, the results were as follows:
DUP: 35.3% (Paul Girvan)
UUP: 29% (Danny Kinahan)
And Alliance: 19.1% (John Blair)
Much like North Antrim, the seat is one where Sinn Fein and the SDLP appear largely as also-rans, and neither are likely to be serious challengers this time around.
Tonight, Paul Girvan and John Blair are back… but this time they are not facing Mr Kinahan but Robin Swann, the more prominent former party leader, who gave up his job as health minister to stand in south Antrim.
He will give the DUP and Alliance a much stiffer run, possibly giving the UUP its first MP since 2017 if he can overcome them.
Added to which is the TUV are standing this time around in the form of ex-DUP man Mel Lucas, who left to join the TUV sometime prior to 2011 and briefly served as a councillor in Antrim for the DUP from 2005 to 2011.
But though he is a low profile candidate, any votes he can siphon off the TUV will help the UUP’s cause tonight.
The Alliance must be watched: prior to 2019, the party polled between 7% and 10% in Westminster elections in South Antrim. It then shot up… by almost double.
The party will be crossing its fingers for similar luck tonight.