East Londonderry is a Parliamentary Constituency in the House of Commons and also an Assembly constituency in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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The seat was created in boundary changes in 1983, as part of an expansion of Northern Ireland's constituencies from 12 to 17, and was predominantly made up from the old Londonderry constituency. Since further revisions in 1995 (when it lost parts of the district of Magherafelt to the Mid Ulster constituency) it now covers exactly the same area as the districts of Coleraine and Limavady.
At the time of writing the Boundary Commission has published provisional recommendations for modifying the boundaries of constituencies in Northern Ireland. For East Londonderry, it proposes to transfer two rural wards in Derry district from the Foyle constituency. However the proposals are likely to come under public scrutiny and it is possible that arguments will be successfully made for maintaining co-terminous boundaries with local government districts.
The Member of Parliament since the 2001 general election is Gregory Campbell of the Democratic Unionist Party. In that election he defeated William Ross of the Ulster Unionist Party who had represented East Londonderry since 1983 and its predecessor seat of Londonderry between 1974 and 1983.
The six MLAs for the consituency elected in the 2003 election are:
In the 1998 election the six MLAs elected were:
Changes 1998-2003
In the 1996 election to the Northern Ireland Peace Forum, 5 Forum members were elected from East Londonderry. They were as follows:
For the history of the equivalent constituency prior to 1983, please see Londonderry (constituency).
The constituency is overwhelming unionist, though in many elections nationalists have polled close to 33% of the vote. The main interest in elections has been the contest between the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party. The UUP were normally ahead of the DUP until the 2001 general election when the DUP vote finally overtook them.
The 2001 election was seen at a province wide level as a battle over the Good Friday Agreement with the DUP opposed to it and the UUP generally in favour, however ironically this situation was seemingly reversed in East Londonderry, where the sitting Ulster Unionist MP, William Ross, was completely opposed to all involvement with the Agreement and its institutions, whilst the DUP candidate, Gregory Campbell, was a minister in the Executive set up by the Agreement. Many commentators joked that the DUP's gain meant that East Londonderry now had a more pro Agreement MP than before!