East Antrim: Before most of his rivals had put up a poster, the DUP's Sammy Wilson had been canvassing for days, writes Joe Humphreys.
Sammy Wilson is a man under pressure. Four years ago he had nothing to lose when he ran a close second to Roy Beggs in East Antrim. But this time round he is hot favourite to win.
"Within the party there is an expectation that I'll deliver this seat," he said. "From my point of view, I have to show that I fought for it as hard as I could", which explains the DUP candidate's early start to campaigning.
Before most of his competitors had put up a poster, Wilson had been canvassing for several days in Carrickfergus, and the reaction wasn't always to his liking.
"Why would I support you?" one woman in a loyalist housing estate sniffed. "I love politics, but it nearly drives me daft the way youse sit around and banter. If Sinn Féin gets more votes than you what will you do?"
"That's why we need your vote," Wilson replied, "to stop them getting more than us."
Something of a protest candidate in 2001, when he lost out by just 128 votes, the former Lord Mayor of Belfast has remodelled himself as a serious politician. Eighteen months ago, he led the DUP to three of the constituency's six Assembly seats, thereby humiliating the once dominant Ulster Unionists. But, as other members of his party have discovered, with power comes responsibility - not to mention extra flak.
"We are getting a bit of that," Wilson admitted. "But the feedback in general has been good - even from people who were pro-agreement." Indeed, for every critic on his walkabout around the village of Eden, there seemed to be at least one cheerleader.
"I am very glad we have people like you in this country sticking up for us," said a woman resident.
The Northern Bank robbery and Robert McCartney's murder have undoubtedly made life easier for the DUP. Where a few months ago it might have got more criticism for failing to reach a deal on power-sharing, "people are now saying, with hindsight, we were right", said Wilson.
Although he has ground to make up on Wilson, based on the Assembly election result, Beggs will be slow to give up the seat he has held since 1983. The 69-year-old may not be the force he was within the party, but he retains a loyal support locally, particularly in the farming community from which he sprang.
With more than 30 years in politics, Beggs has gone through several incarnations: unionist firebrand, Trimble-loyalist and latterly elder party statesman. Once a DUP member, he was arrested in 1995 for blocking the main Larne to Belfast Road in support of the contentious Drumcree protests.
But for this election, he is focusing on bread-and-butter issues rather than the national question, believing his record as a Westminster advocate on local concerns to be his selling-point.
Yesterday, admittedly, it wasn't so much bread-and-butter on Beggs's mind as lettuce and salad. Before the launch of the UUP's manifesto on Monday, the party chief whip was claiming credit for getting extra funding for a government plan to "Jamie Oliver" school dinners across the North. Under the Northern Ireland Office initiative, a team of celebrity chefs, including Paul Rankin and Jenny Bristow, has been lined up to prepare healthy dinner menus for pupils.
The Ulster Unionists are also hoping to damage Wilson by portraying him as a "blow-in" from Belfast. But a major obstacle to their ambitions is the selection of Seán Neeson for Alliance.
Runner-up in the 1997 Westminster poll, Neeson was surprisingly dropped from the ticket in 2001. He is unlikely to challenge the top two, but he could take enough of Beggs's vote to bring Wilson home. A former schoolteacher in Larne, he has pockets of support throughout the constituency and a strong record protesting against water charges, the campaign's hottest local issue.
Sinn Féin has entered Larne councillor James McKeown in the race, while long-suffering nationalist Danny O'Connor lines out for the SDLP.
A repeated victim of sectarian pipe bomb attacks, O'Connor has lost more elections than most MPs have won, and most recently he failed to hang onto to his Assembly seat in 2003. He said getting people to run for the SDLP, or even canvass, was difficult because of intimidation.
An added source of discouragement was "the prophets of doom" who wrote off his party's chances. "I don't see us falling any lower," he stressed. "I think we bottomed out at the end of the last Assembly elections."
Not surprisingly, O'Connor advocates a list system of voting rather than first-past-the-post, not only to give nationalist voters better representation in the constituency, but to counter the kind of tactical voting that dogs all elections in the North.
O'Connor predicts less intimidation at polling booths than at previous elections. But some damage has already been done.
"In Larne," he said, "in the last five to six years the Catholic population is down by 500, and another 500 have been displaced."