Constituency profile - West Tyrone: Borderlands are different. West Tyrone could also be called "West United Kingdom", the extreme edge of the union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But the sitting MP doesn't sit: at least not in the House of Commons.
He is Pat Doherty, vice-president of Sinn Féin, a party with a long-established policy of abstentionism from Westminster. The next-door constituencies of Mid-Ulster and Fermanagh-South Tyrone are also held by Sinn Féin abstentionists Martin McGuinness and Michelle Gildernew. The edge of the union has a decidedly green tinge these days.
It was not always thus. In West Tyrone, for example, the seat was held by William Thompson of the UUP, but the prospect of a unionist taking it back seems remote at present. While it would make tactical sense to run a single candidate, the vote is going to be split between the UUP's Derek Hussey and Tom Buchanan of the Democratic Unionist Party.
The main nationalist challenger for Doherty's seat is Eugene McMenamin of the SDLP but the figure attracting most attention is the independent "hospital" candidate in Omagh, Dr Kieran Deeny, who had initially hoped the SDLP and other parties would stand aside for him. His campaign against the downgrading of the town's hospital saw Deeny to the top of the poll in the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly two years ago. He draws support from both sides of the community in the town but his challenge is to attract voters from the rest of the constituency, principally from Strabane, which is serviced by the Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.
"I would say 'Londonderry'," says the UUP's Hussey with a grin. But while he may prefer Londonderry to Derry as a placename, he is a proud member of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, the Royal Black Preceptory and the Orange Order.
He calls himself "a pragmatic unionist" and has strong views on the role played by the British prime minister in recent times. "Tony Blair has shafted David Trimble and the UUP, and the centre ground." He worries that apathetic unionist voters are staying at home.
His rival for the unionist vote is Tom Buchanan from Drumquin. Buchanan believes the UUP should have stood aside on the basis that the DUP secured the majority of the unionist vote in the last Assembly and European elections. He accuses the UUP of "putting self before country".
On the hospital issue, he feels a member of a political party can achieve far more than an Independent.
As an Assembly member since 1998, the SDLP's Eugene McMenamin is a well known figure in Northern Ireland politics. But he has an even better known brother, at least among the more mature age groups - namely Derek McMenamin, who had a successful musical career in the showband era under the name Derek Dean. He and the late Billy Brown performed with the Freshmen, who were Ireland's answer to the Beach Boys. Appropriately enough, Derek now lives in California but has come home specially for his brother's election campaign.
In line with SDLP policy, Eugene McMenamin is a member of the District Policing Partnership in Strabane and, like other members, has paid a heavy price for this in terms of threats and intimidation. He lists a shocking catalogue of about 20 episodes including blast-bombs thrown at his car, a suspect device attached to his windscreen, a postal bomb, threatening phone calls, wreaths pinned to his front door and two protests outside his home with republican dissidents climbing on to the roof.
"I have been called the most-attacked politician in Ireland," he says, "but those type of things will never, ever defeat me." The alternative, as he sees it, is "balaclava justice".
In the spacious conference room of the Omagh Sinn Féin office, Pat Doherty is clearly optimistic about next week's vote.
As a senior member of the Sinn Féin leadership who played a key role in persuading the IRA to buy into the peace process, Doherty could get Tony Blair's office on the line within minutes. He dismisses criticism of the fact he does not go to the House of Commons, saying the rate of attendance by some of the non-abstentionist MPs is "a bit of a joke".
Unless Kieran Deeny can pull off a major surprise, Doherty looks a sure-fire winner on May 5th. And after that? "We'll be moving into negotiations with the governments and the DUP."