North Antrim is the northeast corner of Northern Ireland, including the heartland towns of Ballymena, Ballymoney and Ballycastle. It had the second highest Unionist vote share in 2016 at 74.4%, narrowly pipped by Lagan Valley. That got five Unionist MLAs elected comfortably, and a 20.4% Nationalist vote elected one MLA from Sinn Fein.

All six incumbents are standing for re-election, SF’s Philip McGuigan having replaced previous winner Daithi McKay a couple of months ago. There are only two women among the twelve candidates. The DUP are defending three seats with 2.6 quotas; the TUV are defending theirs with 1.1 quotas; and SF and the UUP are defending theirs with 0.8 and 0.6 of a quota respectively. In 2016 there were 4.5 Unionist quotas and 1.2 Nationalist quotas.

On the face of it, the TUV and SF seats look pretty safe (even with a former SF member standing as an independent), and the question is whether the DUP will make a clean sweep of the other three, or the UUP will manage to hang on (I suppose theoretically the second TUV runner might have a chance, but that would require better balancing than they have demonstrated hitherto). In theory, perfect vote management could keep the DUP ahead; in practice, I think their third seat is the most vulnerable of the current six.