Ulster Unionist leader Harry West failed to win a seat for the second time, and would resign later that year after failing to win a seat at the first European Parliament election.

Frank Maguire was re-elected as an Independent Nationalist, beating the leaders of both the UUP and the new United Ulster Unionist Party, as well as Austin Currie, a member of the SDLP standing without the support of the party.

Maguire's death on 5 March 1981 led by a by-election won by Bobby Sands, an IRA prisoner who died later that year as a result of a hunger strike.

The Representation of the People Act 1981 disqualified prisoners detained for more than a year from membership of the House of Commons, so the resulting by-election was contested by Sands's election agent Owen Carron, rather than by another prisoner on hunger strike.

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