Before the election, Strangford had been mooted as a constituency where the DUP may have been in trouble.
The opposite proved to be the case; in a difficult election night for the DUP, Strangford was one of its success stories.
The sitting MP, Jim Shannon – who has represented Strangford at Westminster since 2010 – was returned with a majority of 5,131, the DUP’s second-best of the night.
His challenger, Alliance councillor Michelle Guy, held her party’s vote largely steady, polling only one per cent less – 27 as compared with 28 – than her colleague, MLA Kellie Armstrong, managed in 2019; it raised the question as to what Alliance might have managed had it run a higher-profile candidate, though it will see Guy’s success as building for the future in the constituency.
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Shannon’s vote share declined – from 47 per cent in 2019 to 40 per cent this time around – but for the DUP it was a solid, and very welcome, win.
In this constituency as in others the presence of a TUV candidate – Ron McDowell polled 3,143 votes – which was not in the mix in 2019 took from the DUP vote.
Fittingly, Shannon’s message from the stage during his victory speech was the perennial appeal to unionist unity.
“Where unionism is divided, unionism loses,” he said. “My urge for all of those of the unionist parties that ran in this election and across this province is simple. Unionism needs to look at themselves and where they are and work together.”
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