We've been highlighting all sorts of battles for seats in the run-up to May's assembly election in this series of Red Lines' constituency profiles.

And this week we're focusing on North Down, Strangford and South Down.

This is the fourth podcast in the series.

And with me today, to cogitate and speculate our David McCann from Slugger-Rotoole, our resident Numbersman,

the Belfast Telegraph's political editor, Suzanne Breenreen and our political correspondent Stephen Walker. Welcome to all of you. David,

last week when we were talking about the three Antrims, North, East and South, we were making

the point that it was all relatively predictable, but still those constituencies made for a

fascinating conversation. In each of today's

three contests, real change could be in the air. Let's start with Northdown. How do you see it?

Yeah, Northdown is absolutely fascinating and it's fascinating for a big reason on the Uniside.

It's Alex Easton who has departed from the DUP and is running as an

independent. And again, just a bit of context here, North Down is a constituency that loves its mavericks

and they love their Mavericks, particularly on the Unis side, going all the way back to Bob McCartney

in the UK Unis back in the 1990s. Alex is really disrupting the contest on the Union side. The DUP hold two seats going in.

Stephen Dunn, who is the son of a former MLA and Stephen is the incumbent. He is standing again with

Councillor Jennifer Gilmore, but they're facing a real challenge from Alex Easton.

And anyone who you speak to on the Union side who is around North Down and even outside of that,

say that Alex Easton is well poised to do some damage to the DEP and is a very popular vote-getter in his own right.

And as someone who's known for that kind of parish pump constituency work and somebody who's very effective on the ground.

So that is a real disruption on the unit side.

But there's change also potentially on the horizon elsewhere.

Richard Woods is standing for the first time for the Green Party.

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