General Election 2024: North Down profile

Plenty – the political landscape has settled quite a bit since then, when you consider the parties fought that campaign along Pro-Brexit versus Pro-Remain lines.

The divide along those lines meant that tactical voting played out in a big way here.

In 2019, only four candidates stood in the race for North Down from the DUP, Alliance, the Ulster Unionists and the NI Conservatives.

One change now is that Alex Easton – who was the DUP candidate in 2015, 2017 and the 2019 elections – is no longer a DUP politician.

He quit the party in 2021 and has remained an independent assembly member (MLA) at Stormont ever since.

But while he is running on an independent unionist ticket this time, he has already been endorsed by the DUP and the TUV.

They have both decided not to run this time, in the hopes of boosting Mr Easton’s chances of unionist victory on his fourth attempt.

In 2019, there were also no nationalist candidates at all in North Down – Sinn Féin and the SDLP decided not to run, instead throwing their weight behind pro-Remain Alliance.

The NI Greens, who at that time had an MLA for North Down, also stood aside.

In 2022, their MLA Rachel Woods lost her seat at Stormont – a result the party has since partially blamed on the decision not to run in the 2019 Westminster election.

While Sinn Féin has decided to stay out of the North Down race again this time, the SDLP and the NI Greens are throwing their respective hats back into the ring with Deirdre Vaughan and Barry McKee running for their parties.

Another candidate, Chris Carter, is also standing as an independent.

The Northern Ireland branch of the Conservatives are also worth a mention, as they have run a candidate here in almost every general election since 1992.

In 2019, their candidate got just shy of 2,000 votes.

This time the party is not running a candidate, bringing those potential votes into play.