A constituency built out of the old Omagh and Strabane districts, the recent tweaking with boundaries means West Tyrone now stretches to just outside Derry in the north and close to Cookstown in the east.
But the addition of Pomeroy and the entire ward of Slievekirk will do little to change Sinn Féin’s 23-year hold on the seat.
Voter apathy is the incumbent Órfhlaith Begley’s biggest challenge, as she faces into her third Westminster poll since winning the 2018 by-election following the resignation of Barry McElduff.
What may concern Sinn Féin is the fall in vote share since Mr McElduff took 22,060 votes and a 50.7% share in 2017.
The 40.2% the party took in 2019 was its lowest share since 2005, when independent health campaigner Kieran Deeny disrupted the status quo.
Some of those votes appear to have gone to Alliance, which took almost 10% in 2019, while the SDLP has increased its vote in the past two elections, albeit Daniel McCrossan’s vote share marginally dipped last time.
Aontú also won just shy of 1,000 votes last time around.
But with the unionist vote split four ways for July 4, Sinn Féin looks like it can afford to lose those votes.
DUP veteran Tom Buchanan has been runner-up in the last five Westminster elections in West Tyrone.
But he has never faced a TUV challenge in a Parliamentary poll.
Jim Allister’s party took just over 4,000 first preference votes in the last Assembly election, and could well retain its status as the second largest unionist party in the constituency on July 4.
West Tyrone is the only constituency in the north to have never produced a minister at Stormont.
The failure to progress the A5 dual carriageway and the Strule Shared Education Campus will do little to dissuade voters that West Tyrone is a forgotten constituency.
However the scale of Sinn Féin’s election machine in the constituency, on the back of its strong performance in last year’s local elections, leaves little chance of change on July 4.
