East Antrim is a parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The MP is Sammy Wilson of the Democratic Unionist Party.
The constituency of East Antrim is used for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The seat covers the east coast from Cushendun down to Carrickfergus. The seat is strongly unionist and one of the few areas of Northern Ireland which voted to leave the European Union.
The pre-1922 constituency was a strongly conservative then unionist area, where republican and nationalist candidates were not elected. A victory for the Unionist candidate in 1918 by 15,206 votes to Sinn Féin's 861 votes demonstrated the virtual unanimity of the unionist support. Sinn Féin did not contest the 1919 East Antrim by-election.
Similarly, the post-1983 constituency has been overwhelmingly unionist, with the combined votes for nationalist parties rarely exceeding 10%. However, there have been above average votes for parties outside the traditional unionist block, such as the Alliance and the Conservatives. In the local government elections for the equivalent area many votes often go to independent candidates or groups such as the Newtownabbey Ratepayers Association. While the SDLP sprung a surprise in 1998 by overtaking a DUP candidate to win the final seat due to Ulster Unionist transfers â the first time that any nationalist candidate has benefited in this way.
The main interest in Westminster Elections has been the contest between the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party. In 1983 the UUP were only 367 votes ahead of the DUP. As part of a pact to oppose the Anglo-Irish Agreement the DUP did not contest the seat until 1992 but they still failed to come close, though in the 1996 elections to the Northern Ireland Forum they were only slightly behind the UUP. But in the 2001 general election they achieved an astonishing result when they came with 128 votes of winning the Westminster seat, despite not having targeted it. In the 2003 Assembly election they followed this up by gaining two additional MLAs and outpolling the UUP for the first time.
The DUP remained eager to take the Westminster seat and in the 2005 general election they did so.
From 1801 to 1885, County Antrim returned two MPs to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom sitting at the Palace of Westminster, with separate representation for the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Carrickfergus. Under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, Carrickfergus ceased to exist as a parliamentary borough and the parliamentary county was divided into four divisions: North Antrim, Mid Antrim, East Antrim, and South Antrim. The division of East Antrim was defined as:
It was not affected by the Redistribution of Seats (Ireland) Act 1918. Sinn Féin contested the 1918 general election on an abstentionist platform in its election manifesto pledging that instead of taking up any seats at Westminster, they would establish an assembly in Dublin. All MPs elected to Irish seats were invited to participate in the First Dáil convened in January 1919, but no members outside of Sinn Féin did so.
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 established the Parliament of Northern Ireland, which came into operation in 1921. The representation of Northern Ireland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom was reduced from 30 MPs to 13 MPs, taking effect at the 1922 United Kingdom general election. At Westminster, the four divisions of County Antrim were replaced by a two-member county constituency of Antrim. A seven-seat constituency of Antrim was created for the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, which formed the basis in republican theory for representation in the Second Dáil. Under the Representation of the People Act 1948, all two-member constituencies were divided. Antrim was divided into the county constituencies of North Antrim and South Antrim.
The constituency of East Antrim was recreated in 1983, from parts of North Antrim and South Antrim, as part of an expansion of Northern Ireland's constituencies from 12 to 17.
Prior to the 2010 general election, the Boundary Commission originally proposed two significant changes for East Antrim. In the south of the constituency it was proposed to transfer a further part of Newtownabbey to the North Belfast constituency whilst in the north the seat would have gained the Glens and Ballycastle in Moyle district from North Antrim. East Antrim would have been renamed Antrim Coast and Glens. However, this latter part of the proposal raised many questions, with some already arguing that the Glens have no natural ties to Jordanstown (and in 1995 the previous Boundary Commission cited this very reason when rejecting such a proposal). Following consultation and revising the recommendations, the new boundaries for East Antrim were confirmed. The constituency boundaries were amended again by the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies, and first contested at the 2024 general election.
The Member of Parliament since the 2005 general election is Sammy Wilson of the Democratic Unionist Party. In that election he defeated Roy Beggs of the Ulster Unionist Party, who had sat for the seat since it was created at the 1983 general election.