With the vote-counting underway for the future of North Antrim’s parliamentary seat, Sammy Wilson has voiced confidence that his colleague Ian Paisley will be home free.

Though long the dominant holder of the seat Mr Paisley now faces Jim Allister, leader of the TUV, whose increased profile due to his fiercely anti-DUP, anti-Protocol stance could translate into a surge in votes.

In general terms the DUP has been losing ground in North Antrim in the last few elections, as these charts show – something also down partly to a rise in the Alliance vote and the UUP vote.

But Mr Wilson, an ally of Mr Paisley, told the News Letter: “Having stood against Ian Paisley on a number of occasions and lost, Jim Allister knows that all he can do is dent the majority, he’s not going to win the seat.

placeholder image — Chart of recent Westminster election results in North Antrim

"But of course you always want to maximise your vote. At the end of the day, it’s whether you win by 1,000 or by 10,000 – the seat is still held by your party.”

WHAT HAVE THE PAST POLLS SAID?

Whilst Mr Allister has always comfortably held an Assembly seat in North Antrim, he has always been some distance away from unseating Mr Paisley as MP.

But after years of intensive enmity towards the DUP from Mr Allister over the NI Protocol, could that gap narrow tonight – or be closed altogether?

The TUV did not stand in the Westminster election of 2019, which Mr Paisley won with 47.4% of the vote, so no comparison between the two parties is possible for that election.

As the charts here show, the distance between the DUP and TUV has been great in prior Westminster contests, but narrower during Assembly ones: for instance, the TUV took 21.3% of 1st preference votes there in the 2022 NI elections, against 25.7% for the DUP.

Past election results show a decline in DUP fortunes in North Antrim, and a rise in that of the UUP, and Alliance – with both enjoying a notable rise in support in recent elections as well as the TUV.

However in past years the UUP had run popular Robin Swann for the seat, and the Alliance had been running serial contender for the seat Patricia O’Lynn.

The UUP are this year running the relatively low-profile Bannside councillor Jackson Minford (who ran once before, garnering 7.2% in the 2017 Westminster contest), and the Alliance are running Sian Mulholland.

She was co-opted onto Belfast council in 2015, Lisburn and Castlereagh in 2022, and into Patricia O’Lynn’s former seat as North Antrim MLA following Ms O’Lynn’s resignation last year.