Constituency profile: East Antrim.
If anywhere in Northern Ireland illustrates the political turmoil of the five years since the Belfast Agreement, it is East Antrim.
Of the 19 candidates contesting the six seats, at least 10 are sworn-in unionists of every shade. They will scrap for the votes of this overwhelmingly unionist and Protestant constituency along with a host of single-issue campaigners, two Alliance candidates (this being something of a heartland for the party) and lone candidates from the Greens, the Women's Coalition, the Conservative Party, the SDLP and Sinn Féin.
More so than elsewhere, the battle for the vital and unpredictable fifth and sixth seats will be particularly fierce in this constituency which has the second smallest population of the 18.
The fragmentation among unionists in general is no more graphic than in this hotch-potch of a constituency which takes in the northern extremities of Belfast, the substantial but depressed towns of Carrickfergus and Larne and the foothills of the beautiful glens of Antrim.
One candidate has been a member of three unionist parties since 1998 and is now one of the four independents.
It is home to both the tolerant and the liberal on both sides of the divide and to some of the most fundamentalist and firebrand to be found anywhere.
Even through the clinging, soaking mists of the "soft" November gloom, the Mull of Kintyre is visible across the North Channel from Larne and there is a detectable Scots burr in some local accents.
Outsiders have branded the place as simplistically loyalist and Neanderthal - an image encouraged somewhat by local paramilitaries. The South East Antrim brigade of the UDA, one of the fiercest in the North, was led until last February by John Gregg - the man who tried to assassinate Gerry Adams - until he himself was murdered.
The winding approach road to Larne along the coast welcomes - or warns - visitors to "Loyalist Larne". Graffiti commemorates Gregg; lampposts and kerbstones are red, white and blue.
While unionists try to dilute the bigoted image, Danny O'Connor of the SDLP - who has the most marginal seat in the North - tells it as he sees it. Faded Union flags hang mournfully on lampposts outside his town centre office, put there "to rub my nose in it", he says. As Christmas lights go up, he says: "They'd try for red, white and blue if they could get away with it."
The holder of the sixth and final seat for the SDLP by some 49 votes, he lives with his mother in a modest home at Craigyhill which has been subject to sectarian attack.
He is in good company, he says, as others among the town's 5,000 Catholics have suffered the same, if not worse. A tour of the estates bears this out, with boarded up windows marking the properties which Catholics have fled.
He dismisses the old remark about "holding your head lower than a Larne Catholic".
"They probably didn't stand up because they had no one to lead them," he says.
Danny O'Connor is facing veteran Sinn Féin councillor, Oliver McMullan, who is well known.
However the SDLP insists the real fight for the last seat is against the DUP.
Sammy Wilson, who leads the DUP candidate team, was nearly the area's MP, having switched from East Belfast. But he came in second to Roy Beggs senior of the Ulster Unionists by just 128 votes in 2001.
The Democratic Unionist campaign could not contrast more completely with the SDLP battle.
The Rev Ian Paisley led his three candidates, two of them sitting Assembly members, on a high visibility walkabout of Larne town centre midweek.
Buoyed by opinion poll findings, Mr Wilson says the unionist undecided will flock to the DUP because the party will negotiate a fairer deal for them.
Despite howls of protest from other parties that the accord is not up for renegotiation and has been voted in by a majority, DUP literature insists "the Belfast Agreement is wrecking Northern Ireland".
The big political picture, portraying widespread unionist dissatisfaction, may be in tune with the DUP campaign. However, local politics in East Antrim has proved a murky business for the party.
Two of the independents are former DUP men "who couldn't accept the outcome of the party selection procedure and decided to stand", admits Mr Wilson. "I don't know that they'll feature that much in this election. Obviously they'll damage us."
It's a candid admission. Mr Jack McKee, who was a near miss in the 1998 Assembly election, is a former Larne mayor and could dent the DUP total.
The other independent is Roger Hutchinson, whose tale illustrates the fragmentation of unionism. Originally elected for Mr Bob McCartney's UK Unionists, he left to help form the Northern Ireland Unionist Party. But he quit them too for the DUP. Now standing as an independent after not being selected, he could harm Dr Paisley's party in his Newtownabbey power base.