Sir Reg Empey defeated Mr Alan McFarland by 321 to 287 votes in a knife-edge contest last night to determine which of them would succeed Mr David Trimble as the 13th leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
Sir Reg, Assembly member for East Belfast, won most votes in the first count of the election at the special meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in the Ramada Hotel in south Belfast, but one of his two opponents, North Down MLA Alan McFarland came narrowly behind him.
In the first count Sir Reg won 295 votes while Mr McFarland, a former British army major polled very strongly, winning 266 votes. The third candidate, the Strangford MLA David McNarry performed poorly, just winning 54 votes. .
About 760 delegates were entitled to vote. Normally the full complement of the UUC is 860 but since the Grand Lodge of the Orange Order disaffiliated from the Council the numbers on the UUC dropped by over 100.
The three candidates each addressed the delegates for 10 minutes and each candidate fielded questions for 15 minutes. One delegate said that Sir Reg Empey delivered a worthy but "dull" speech, that Mr McNarry performed well in the question and answer session, and that Mr McFarland did well both in his initial delivery and in taking questions.
On their way into the conference room delegates who were questioned said that Sir Reg was probably the most favoured candidate, but there were also quite a number of murmurings that with a good presentation from either Mr McFarland or Mr McNarry they could be persuaded to vote for the outsiders.
One of Mr McFarland's central arguments was that of the three candidates he was the runner with no significant links to the former regime run by Mr Trimble.
There was some surprise that the former UUP leader Mr Trimble did not attend last night's special meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council. His wife Daphne did attend however.
During the questions there was a key intervention from Mr David Burnside, the former UUP MP for South Antrim who lost his seat to the Rev William McCrea of the DUP in the May UK general election.Mr Burnside asked each candidate in the event of the DUP entering into a power-sharing Northern Executive with Sinn Fein would he lead the Ulster Unionist Party into opposition. Mr McFarland and Mr McNarry told delegates that they wouldn't adopt such a stance.
Sir Reg however said he would consider such an option, earning muted applause. Sir Reg during his election campaign indicated that he would not share power with Sinn Féin should the IRA effectively disband in the coming months.
He said that it could until the next Assembly elections, in such an eventuality, before he would be prepared to accept republican bona fides.
The nature of the voting indicated that the party is still divided.
One of the reasons why Sir Reg did not perform as well as expected in the first count, according to delegates, was because he was too closely associated with the Trimble era. The same difficulty applied to Mr McNarry.
Mr McFarland strongly argued during his campaign that an absolutely clean break with the past was required.
He contended that a "grassroots revolt" would serve him well. He made it a point of his campaign to personally canvass grassroots members and to argue the need for the party to pursue bread-and-butter issues in addition to the great constitutional question.