Candidates on both sides know about the poor view the outside world has of this part of Antrim - but insist things are changing. Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor, reports from Larne
This constituency emerges from the estates of Newtownabbey on the northern fringes of Belfast and includes the solidly unionist towns of Carrickfergus, Ballyclare and Larne before venturing towards the hurling-loving Glens of Antrim - most of which are in the Rev Ian Paisley's North Antrim.
Home to the ferry port and the culturally important link with Scotland, the Larne skyline is still influenced by the stacks from Ballylumford power station.
There was a time when unionist industrial might was put to great political effect here. The lights went out over Northern Ireland in the wake of Sunningdale in 1974 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. But that was then.
Local community arrangements are changing both the outside perception and the reality on the streets. They used to say no-one kept their head down lower than a Larne Catholic. But the young Catholic generation here haven't heard that one.
The Larne under-10s are Ulster hurling champions while the under-16s are Ulster Scór champions and all-Ireland finalists.
Local nationalist-loyalist arrangements have resulted in a more controlled and agreed display of flags and bunting and one loyalist paramilitary mural has been replaced - by an image of Oliver Cromwell.
To some, this may hardly seem an improvement. But for the first nationalist mayor of the borough, that's precisely what it is. Danny O'Connor jokes that any man who chopped the head off an English monarch can't be all bad - in spite of his record in Ireland.
The big SDLP man knows all about sectarian attacks in his home town, having been on the receiving end of hundreds of them.
Life is better these days, he says, and he's out to win 700 preferences from unionists sufficiently impressed by his cross-community work to give him the benefit of the doubt. With that in mind he says he has worn a poppy, remembered the Somme and dealt with the fringe loyalist parties.
His was the most marginal Assembly seat in 1998 and he duly lost it in 2003. To get it back he has to win friends - unionist friends.
Larne's unionist councillors agreed a four-year deal some time back to share the top jobs of mayor and deputy mayor - thus giving O'Connor the mayoral chain and the deputy's position to the UUP's Mark Dunne.
The 20-something councillor now finds himself on the UUP ticket in the company of poll-topper Roy Begs jnr and Ken Robinson, a retired Shankill Road primary school teacher.
They scoff at notions that their party is in electoral freefall just as they scoff at the tensions faced by their arch-rivals in the DUP as they ponder sharing power with Sinn Féin. No-one is convinced locally that the DUP will "do the deal" - the alternative being the continuation of drift or the even less palatable option of continued direct rule but with a distinct Dublin input. Either way, the UUP stands to say "I told you so", they claim.
Their enjoyment of perceived DUP discomfort was heightened by the weekend meeting of disgruntled and anti-St Andrews Agreement unionists.
It was attended by Robert McCartney and other powersharing sceptics - not least of them Jack McKee who quit the DUP after St Andrews and now brands Dr Paisley a traitor.
Whether the affair was a sounding-off exercise or the beginnings of an anti-DUP electoral revolt in the constituency, the next 24 hours will tell.
Sammy Wilson, outgoing Assemblyman and the area's DUP MP, believes his party's position is not in any real trouble.
DUP canvassers will challenge any emerging anti-St Andrews Agreement campaigners by accusing them of splitting the vote and helping Sinn Féin and challenging them to provide an alternative.
The tactic is clear - if attacked, it will attack back, accusing the UUP and anyone else of having failed to have produced "sustainable devolution".