The seat is strongly unionist and one of the few areas of Northern Ireland which voted to leave the European Union.

Prior to the 2010 general election the Boundary Commission originally proposed two significant changes for East Antrim.

It consists of: The constituency was a strongly conservative then unionist area, where republican and nationalist candidates were not elected.

From 1886 to 1974 the Conservative and Unionist members of the United Kingdom House of Commons formed a single Parliamentary party.

Sinn Féin contested the general election of 1918 on the platform that instead of taking up any seats they won in the United Kingdom Parliament, they would establish a revolutionary assembly in Dublin.

In the local government elections for the equivalent area many votes often go to independent candidates or groups such as the Newtownabbey Ratepayers Association.

As part of a pact to oppose the Anglo-Irish Agreement the DUP did not contest the seat until 1992 but they still failed to come close, though in the 1996 elections to the Northern Ireland Forum they were only slightly behind the UUP.

But in the 2001 general election they achieved an astonishing result when they came with 128 votes of winning the Westminster seat, despite not having targeted it.