South Antrim: Girvan sees off challenge of UUP’s Kinahan

Early in the count it looked like the vote could go either way, but eventually Mr Girvan opened up a clear lead and finished almost 2,700 ahead of the UUP candidate in second place – with Mr Girvan polling 15,149 to Mr Kinahan’s 12,460.

Despite his defeat , the UUP candidate will take some comfort in the fact that he narrowed the gap by more than 500 votes compared to the 2017 poll. Mr Kinahan had held the South Antrim seat between 2015 and 2017 when he lost out to Mr Girvan.

Alliance candidate John Blair will also be celebrating after boosting his party’s vote from 3,203 (in 2017) to an impressive 8,190 this time around.

This Westminster seat has changed hands a number of times between the DUP and UUP since the turn of the century having been a safe UUP seat for decades.

Rev William McCrea of the DUP won a by-election in 2000 and became the MP, however, the UUP won it back a year later.

It changed hands again in 2005 when David Burnside won it back for the UUP, but four years on Mr McCrea triumphed again. He was the MP for 10 years until the UUP’s Danny Kinahan won the seat in 2015, only to lose it to Paul Girvan of the DUP in 2017.

Following election victory confirmation in the early hours of Friday morning, Mr Girvan said he was “more than happy” and “very honoured” to be representing the constituency at Westminster for another term.

Sinn Fein’s Declan Kearney (4,887) was fourth of the five candidates, ahead of Roisin Lynch of the SDLP who polled 2,288 votes.

Turnout was 60.23%

Total electorate: 71,711.