Hove was a key battleground for the newer, kinder, gentler Conservative Party. The Tory candidate was the pleasing-on-the-eyes and openly gay Nicholas Boles. Trendy Hove has the highest percentage of same-sex households in the nation, and Boles was seen as a good bet to restore Tory dominance over a constituency it once dominated.
Alas (for the Conservatives), Boles came up short, by a mere 420 votes out of over 44,000 votes cast. Interestingly enough, Boles barely improved on his 2001 performance, garnering just 284 more votes despite a marked increase in turnout (from 58.9 percent to 64.1). The biggest beneficiaries of this new vote where the Lib Dems, which boosted their vote by over 4,000 votes and upped their percentage of the vote from 9.1 percent to 17.9 percent.
