On last week's red lines, we heard from the former DUP MLA, Mervyn Story, who unexpectedly lost his seat in North Antrim at last month's assembly election.

Today we're talking to another MLA who lost out, but in her case it was much less of a shock.

She knew she was in a fight to hold on, and in fact, she'd had a taste of what losing was like back in 2016 when she failed to clear the bar

and spent a year in the political wilderness before claiming back her seat in the 2017 Assembly poll.

Dolores Kelly, welcome to Red Lines. It's good to see you.

Thank you. Mark's good to be here.

I said it wasn't entirely unexpected when you lost your seat,

but did you think you might just find a way to hang in there again?

Well, we had obviously done a lot of canvassing.

It had been a long election campaign.

We'd been out and about for quite a number of weeks, if not months,

in advance of election day. The feedback

was good. We invested a lot also in social media, which of course is a new way of engaging

with the voters. And I would have to say that, you know, there was a lot of optimism that the seat

would be retained.

When did you first think that you were in trouble?

I mean, if you were talking to a lot of people on the on the doorsteps in the run-up to the election,

you must have got a sense that it might be tight.

Actually, you know, what was going to be tight? Well, we knew it was going to be tight.

We knew it was going to be tight for a couple of reasons

because in the past I'd benefited from transfers,

you know, from Alliance, for example,

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