With the election getting closer, BBC News NI is putting some of the key battlegrounds under the spotlight.

In this piece our political correspondent Jayne McCormack looks at the fight for North Down.

North Down covers the north coast of the Ards Peninsula including the city of Bangor, and stretches across to Holywood and down to Donaghadee.

For more than 100 years it was a unionist seat, belonging much of that time to the Ulster Unionists back when they reigned in Northern Ireland politics.

It also moved into the hands of several independent unionists at times.

Until 2019, that was.

With Lady Hermon standing down after 18 years as the North Down MP (first as an Ulster Unionist before going independent in 2010), Alliance’s deputy leader Stephen Farry soared to a win no-one saw coming.

It was the first time Alliance – a cross-community political party – won the seat and it was hailed as a breakthrough moment for the party, with Stephen Farry securing a majority of 2,968 votes.

But almost five years on, there is now a fierce battle within unionism to try and reclaim it.

Plenty – the political landscape has settled quite a bit since then, when you consider the parties fought that campaign along Pro-Brexit versus Pro-Remain lines.

The divide along those lines meant that tactical voting played out in a big way here.

In 2019, only four candidates stood in the race for North Down from the DUP, Alliance, the Ulster Unionists and the NI Conservatives.

One change now is that Alex Easton – who was the DUP candidate in 2015, 2017 and the 2019 elections – is no longer a DUP politician.

He quit the party in 2021 and has remained an independent assembly member (MLA) at Stormont ever since.

But while he is running on an independent unionist ticket this time, he has already been endorsed by the DUP and the TUV.

They have both decided not to run this time, in the hopes of boosting Mr Easton’s chances of unionist victory on his fourth attempt.

In 2019, there were also no nationalist candidates at all in North Down – Sinn Féin and the SDLP decided not to run, instead throwing their weight behind pro-Remain Alliance.

The NI Greens, who at that time had an MLA for North Down, also stood aside.

In 2022, their MLA Rachel Woods lost her seat at Stormont – a result the party has since partially blamed on the decision not to run in the 2019 Westminster election.

While Sinn Féin has decided to stay out of the North Down race again this time, the SDLP and the NI Greens are throwing their respective hats back into the ring with Deirdre Vaughan and Barry McKee running for their parties.

Another candidate, Chris Carter, is also standing as an independent.

The Northern Ireland branch of the Conservatives are also worth a mention, as they have run a candidate here in almost every general election since 1992.

In 2019, their candidate got just shy of 2,000 votes.

This time the party is not running a candidate, bringing those potential votes into play.

North Down has not seen major changes as a result of the new boundaries.

But the addition of the ward of Garnerville from Belfast East has added about 3,500 voters onto the electoral roll card.

Candidates in the running this time have all been spotted on social media out door-knocking and leaflet-dropping in a bid to win over the voters of Garnerville.

While fortune tends to favour the incumbent, Stephen Farry has said he is not taking anything for granted in his fight to try and hold onto North Down.

He defeated Alex Easton five years ago when most pundits predicted the DUP would win the seat, but with candidates from the SDLP and the Greens running here now, those parties could eat into his vote.

One potential thorn in Mr Easton’s side is that the Ulster Unionists are also in the hunt to reclaim the seat.

Instead of running one of their party’s current crop of politicians, retired British Army colonel Tim Collins – who spent his childhood in the constituency – is now trying his hand at frontline politics for the UUP.

Will he fare better than the 5,000-or-so votes the party took when Alan Chambers was the candidate in 2019?

Collins has also rejected claims he will be an “absentee landlord” if he wins, saying the focus should be on regenerating North Down’s towns and villages.

Stephen Farry’s pitch to voters is that he is the only progressive candidate who can win the seat, while Alex Easton has said North Down needs a new MP who will speak up for the union at home and in the Commons.

North Down is a three-horse race this time and who voters end up saddled with come 4 July appears to be a close call.