There’s been a right old furore around betting in this general election build-up, with a number of Tory candidates in England being investigated by the gambling watchdog for allegedly placing a wager on the July 4 date.
But even if you’re a punter with no real knowledge of politics, there’s only one thing you can possibly bet on in Upper Bann - and that’s another DUP win in what has always been a safe unionist seat.
Carla Lockhart took 41% of the poll in what was the eighth safest Westminster constituency in Northern Ireland in 2019, more than 8,200 votes clear of Sinn Fein.
John O’Dowd has been the serial SF runner in Upper Bann in recent decades, but given his now-elevated status in Stormont as infrastructure minister, the party’s candidature rests with the much less experienced former schoolteacher Catherine Nelson.
She has been successful twice at the polls previously though, having been elected to Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council in 2019.
She’d previously also claimed a Sinn Féin seat in Upper Bann in the 2016 Assembly elections, only for Stormont to collapse in January 2017 in the wake of the RHI scandal.
Alliance’s Eóin Tennyson carved his own niche in history in the 2019 general election by finishing ahead of the UUP, something which would have been unthinkable in the days when Harold McCusker and then David Trimble ruled the unionism roost here.
Now his party’s finance and EU affairs spokesperson, he followed this up by claiming an Assembly seat at the expense of the SDLP in 2022 and, aged just 26, he’s the youngest MLA on the Stormont benches.
Success for Tennyson will be consolidating the Alliance vote. And he’ll certainly fancy his chances of again banishing the UUP and SDLP into the minor placings in a seat where just five runners line up (the fewest in any of the 18 NI constituencies).
UUP hopeful Kate Evans has spent more than eight years in the constituency office of Upper Bann MLA and her party leader Doug Beattie, and last year was elected on to ABC Council, so has some personal profile in the area.
The SDLP’s candidate Malachy Quinn hails from Coalisland and currently serves as his party’s group leader on Mid-Ulster Council, where he was first elected in 2014.
So, in the Westminster race with the fewest number of runners, it’s the sitting MP (who’s now been in politics for 17 years) versus one MLA and three relatively inexperienced local councillors.
There’s only going to be one winner here in Carla Lockhart - and you can bet on that.
