This more or less the northern chunk of the old Londonderry County Council and a little sliver of northeast Antrim. Biggest town, Coleraine. The religious split is much closer than it used to be with Protestants in a majority, but only just at 53%. Catholics are 42%, and others 4.4%.
The Unionist battle is pretty uneven, with the DUP’s Gregory Campbell easily outstripping his UUP rival in 2017 by 48.1% to 7.6%. He faces the same candidate, Richard Holmes again in an area where the election on both sides of the fences has been pretty low.
But if anywhere is likely to give the DUP any kind of a rap on the knuckles for taking a majority Remain constituency (okay, by just 52%) down the rocky road to Brexit it might be here where there’s no actual danger of Campbell actually losing the seat.
Across in the nationalist competition, posters have been less in evidence than those of these two unionist parties. That may be because like their counterparts just to the south them they’re down the Limavady Road in Derry scrumming in the Alisha vs Colum scrap for the Maiden City.
But the subtext in that competition is that Sinn Féin will want Dermot Nicholl to lengthen the distance between himself and Cara Hunter of SDLP the better to try and take the second seat in the next Assembly election that was denied them by veteran SDLP man John Dallat last time out.
Other candidates: Chris McCaw (Alliance) and Sean McNicholl (Aontú).
Likely winner: Gregory Campbell.
“Westminster Bridge, London” by Arran Bee is licensed under CC BY
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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