North Antrim and Mid-Ulster:DUP leader Ian Paisley topped the poll in North Antrim, getting elected on the first count with Sinn Féin's sole candidate, Daithí McKay. Paisley's son, Ian jnr, followed on the second count.
A lengthy hiatus ensued until Rev Robert Coulter of the UUP got in on the seventh count, followed by the DUP's Mervyn Storey on the eighth and the SDLP's Declan O'Loan, husband of Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, on the 10th count.
The DUP had hoped to take a fourth seat by clever vote-management, but their fourth candidate, Deirdre Nelson, failed to secure sufficient first-preference votes to have a chance of catching O'Loan. Whereas the UK Unionist Party candidate, Lyle Cubitt, running on a platform of outright opposition to power-sharing with Sinn Féin, secured a relatively modest 1,848 first preferences, this took from the DUP's total and was probably decisive in preventing Paisley's party from bringing in a fourth MLA.
Young Sinn Féin candidate Daithí McKay scored a significant victory by coming in on the first count and well ahead of Paul McGlinchey, brother of the late Dominic McGlinchey, who was opposed to his former party's policing policy and received only 383 first preferences. The SDLP's Orla Black contributed significantly to O'Loan's success with transfers from her initial 2,129 votes.
As always on these occasions, Dr Paisley was in ebullient form, using media interviews after his election to excoriate his opponents and the British government and insisting that he and his supporters would be treated with the respect due to them. However, when all was said and done, the DUP leader had said nothing that finally and definitively ruled out a powersharing arrangement with Sinn Féin, provided the circumstances were to his liking.
Paisley's putative number two as deputy first minister, Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, was also in attendance at the Seven Towers Leisure Centre in Ballymena, where the counts for North Antrim and McGuinness's constituency of Mid-Ulster were both conducted.
At one point, Paisley told reporters that he would not enter government with Sinn Féin until they had declared for "pure democracy". Within minutes, McGuinness told reporters that he was "absolutely" committed to the concept. There was no direct contact between the two men, but the exchanges conducted via the media were not notably hostile on Paisley's part and friendly and diplomatic on the part of McGuinness.
Meticulous vote-management was evident in Sinn Féin's performance in Mid-Ulster, where the party's three candidates were all elected on the first count. As well as McGuinness and sitting MLA Francie Molloy, the party's deputy mayor of Dungannon, Michelle O'Neill, was also elected. Epitomising the new-look Sinn Féin, she took over the seat formerly held by Geraldine Dougan, who resigned from the party on the policing issue.
Republican Sinn Féin candidate Brendan McLaughlin received a modest 437 first-preference votes.