Gavin Robinson slightly ahead of Naomi Long in our mini exit poll in a bellweather polling station in East Belfast

We spoke to hundreds of voters outside Elmgrove Primary School in East Belfast between 3pm and 930pm.

The results had the DUP leader, Mr Robinson, ahead of his Alliance counterpart, Naomi Long, as expected in this polling station. He would typically need to be at least 10% ahead of Ms Long in Elmgrove to win the seat.

Gavin Robinson got the votes of 156 people we asked.

Naomi Long got 134 votes in our sample.

The TUV got 22, although it tends to to better in Elmgrove than in the whole constituency.

Greens got 10.

SDLP got 9.

An independent candidate got 7 votes.

The UUP got 4 votes.

A further 159 people would not say out of the 501 people who were approached.

While Mr Robinson is clearly in front in Elmgrove, he is only so by the sort of minimum level he would hope to have to win overall.

Elmgrove is a bell-weather in East Belfast in the sense that while it leans unionist, it is not very clearly unionist or very clearly Alliance, as is the case in many other polling stations in the constituency.

Another possible source of concern for the DUP is that turnout at Elmgrove was just below 50% by 9pm. The party will then need turnouts to be down also in polling stations where Alliance does well. In 2019, it suffered from turnout being higher in those Alliance areas.

The DUP has not lost votes on a massive scale to the TUV, and can draw comfort from the fact that the Greens and SDLP have taken a small but notable chunk of Alliance votes (in 2019 there were only DUP, Alliance and UUP candidates).

While the East Belfast race was expected to be close, it has not always been so. In 2017, Mr Robinson beat Mrs Long by a handsome 8,000 majority. But his margin in 2015 and 2017 was around 2,000 votes.

Our mini poll suggests that if he wins it will be by a very tight margin, perhaps less than in 2015 and 2017.

We asked each person who responded to our queries how they had voted in in the last general election and whether they had any doubt about how they would cast their vote.

People often get confused on the previous election query and either can’t remember or say how they voted in a previous non Westminster election or in another constituency, perhaps even in Great Britain.

Even so, the great bulk of respondents said that they had voted DUP or Alliance this time, and in the last Westminster election, and that they had had no doubt about where they would cast their vote.

But even so, many people did say give many different answers as to their voting history or their uncertainty on how to vote.

Jordan Cunningham and his wife Amy, who were leaving the polling station with their 10-month old son Kenzie, said that they had voted DUP, and had not had much doubt about doing so.

As Christians, they said that they found Alliance too progressive on social questions.

But Jordan added: “We are not wanting to turn the clock back to the 1950s.”

Jill McCracken, 25, a junior doctor voted Alliance, having previously been an Ulster Unionist voter.

She cited one reason for her switch: “Alliance spoke a junior doctor strikes rally.”

David Connolly switched his vote from DUP to the TUV. He said:

"I have no confidence in the DUP any more. They have told too many lies over the Irish Sea border. Jim Allister, on the other hand, is a straight talker.”

Another voter, Michelle Laffin, had made an even more dramatic journey to the TUV – from Alliance.

Why so? “Because of immigration she said. I like the TUV link with Reform.”

Jason McCrory, who spoke to the News Letter as he left Elmgrove with his son Henry Leahy, 4, said that he had had no doubt in voting DUP, as he had done previously.

"I am a unionist and a loyalist. But I am unhappy at Alliance’s stance on trans issues, such the teaching of children about it.

"I have a sister who is a lesbian and a cousin who is gay, so that does not bother me. But I don’t agree with teaching three year olds that a girl can be a boy and boy can be a girl.”

The SDLP got the support of a family who moved to Northern Ireland from India two years ago.

Liju Lonachan and his wife Aneena spoke to this newspaper as they left Elmgrove with their son Blaise and daughter Sara.

"We decided how to vote at the last minute,” said Mrs Lonachan, and they opted for the SDLP.

East Belfast was a unionist stronghold in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s, but it always had a strong Alliance vote.

Peter Robinson, the former DUP leader, was considered safe in the constituency but dramatically lost to Naomi Long in 2010, an outcome that few people were expecting.

Gavin Robinson narrowly reclaimed the seat in 2015 with a majority of around 2,000 votes.

He then won it comfortably against Naomi Long in 2017, when he pulled 8,000 votes clear of her.

In 2019, his margin of victory narrowed again.

While the seat has so far continued to have a unionist majority overall but only a narrow one over other parties, with the combined unionist vote typically being somewhere in the 50% to 55% area.

Alliance will be hoping that it will not have such an overall unionist majority in the future. In any event, the fact that the TUV and UUP both stood this year shows that divisions within unionism are such as to render the slender majority potentially insufficient to hold the seat.

The News Letter did its first exit poll in Elmgrove in 2010, the year that Mr Robinson won, because we were aware of rumours that he was in trouble. Our sample found Alliance and DUP neck and neck when DUP would have expected to be ahead.

• See below previous findings at Elmgrove (with, in brackets, the vote that would have been expected if such a sample of voters had perfectly reflected the seat):

• December 2019 general election

• Robinson 159 votes (126)

• Long 93 votes (120)

• Ulster Unionist Carl McClean 14 votes (16)

• Spoiled votes 2

• Declined to reveal preference 165

• June 2017 general election

DUP 174 votes (157)

Alliance 91 votes (102)

Ulster Unionists 5 (9)

SF 3 (6)

SDLP 2 (1)

Conservatives 2 (3)

Green 2

Spoiled vote 3. A further 158 people would not say how they voted.

• May 2015 general election

Gavin Robinson DUP 131 (123)

Naomi Long All 102 (107)

Neil Wilson Conservative 10 (7)

Ross Brown Green 6 (7)

Won’t say 55

• May 2010 general election:

Peter Robinson 53 (49)

Naomi Long 52 (56)

Trevor Ringland (UUP-Tory) 23 (32)

David Vance (TUV) 22 (8)

Won’t say 42