Sinn Féin candidate Dáire Hughes is overwhelmingly predicted to win the general election in the Newry and Armagh constituency.
If he manages to triumph, it will be a first electoral victory for the 34-year-old following defeat in the local council elections 10 years ago.
The Newry man failed to gain a seat in the newly formed Newry Mourne and Down District Council, garnering less than 900 first preference votes in South Armagh’s Slieve Gullion district electoral area.
He is one of only three Sinn Féin candidates in Newry or South Armagh to fail to be elected at local level in the last decade.
However, he was a councillor for some 15 months after being co-opted in early 2014 on to the old Newry and Mourne council and was even Mayor for a time.
Since, he has worked for Sinn Fein in Europe as a political manager and is also the party’s deputy general secretary. First Minister Michelle O’Neill announced Mr Hughes as the party’s candidate three days after the election was called.
If as expected he is elected, Mr Hughes will replace Mickey Brady, the long-time city community worker who topped the poll with 40% of the vote, a more than 9,000 majority
The party has not dropped below that percentage since Conor Murphy wrested the seat from the SDLP in 2005. But it did represent a dip of more than six percent on 2017.
Current council chair Pete Byrne of the SDLP, who increased the party’s vote by about two percent in the last election, will be hoping an across constituency high profile and strength in his home village of Crossmaglen will erode Sinn Fein’s dominant position.
All the unionists are based in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon (ABC), with the DUP polling second in the last two elections, taking more than 20% of the vote.
However, ABC Councillor Gareth Wilson, in his first general election, faces a challenge from a relatively strong TUV candidate, Keith Ratcliffe, the party’s chairman and well known local businessman.
Mr Ratcliffe was elected to the council last year, gathering more first preference votes than Mr Wilson in the Markethill-centred but otherwise heavily rural Cusher DEA.
Sam Nicholson, son of Jim, more than 40 years ago the last unionist elected in the constituency, may be further squeezed, and also faces a challenge for votes from the Alliance’s Helena Young, a Newry native only recently co-opted on to the council but a former chair of the party.
Jackie Coade managed to increase the party’s vote by six percent, overtaking Mr Nicholson, in 2019. Ms Coade left Alliance for the SDLP in 2022 over the party’s handling of a complaint she lodged against a male colleague.
New York city-born Liam Reichenberg, living in his mother’s home area of south Armagh for more than 30 years, will stand for Aontú,, hoping to add to the approximately 1,600 votes the party gathered n 2019.
The list of eight also includes a councillor of eight years, four as deputy leader in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Samantha Rayner, the NI Conservatives candidate, lost her seat last year and is not known to have many previous ties to the north.
