East Antrim.

East Antrim is a Northern Irish seat of roughly 97,000 people, strung along the Antrim coast north and east of Belfast and reaching inland toward the hills. Its median age, at 43, sits a little above the national figure, marking it as a settled rather than youthful area. The seat is not dominated by a single town but spread across a network of coastal and commuter settlements, which gives it a dispersed rather than concentrated character. Local services are run by three district councils -- Mid and East Antrim, which covers the bulk of the constituency, alongside Antrim and Newtownabbey and a single ward of Causeway Coast and Glens -- so the seat crosses three local authorities rather than mapping neatly onto one.

That council patchwork shapes the local politics. No recent ward-election results sit on the record for this seat, so the direction of travel at district level cannot be read with any confidence from the figures available. The parliamentary picture is clearer but tighter than it once was. The Democratic Unionist Party held the seat in 2024 on 28.9 per cent, with the Alliance Party second on 25.6 per cent -- a margin of barely three points. Five years earlier the same parties finished first and second, but on a far wider gap, the DUP then taking 45.3 per cent. Sammy Wilson, the sitting member since 2005, was returned on that narrowed lead.

The contraction of that majority leaves East Antrim looking more contested than its long unionist representation might suggest. Recent local coverage has had a largely administrative tenor, turning on council governance -- rate-setting, leadership arrangements and a disputed naming decision -- rather than on any single dominant controversy. On the figures available the seat appears to be drifting from comfortable toward competitive, with the gap between the leading parties now narrow enough that the result can no longer be treated as a settled question.