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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Lewis Baston

Weirdness in Torbay

There's at least one constituency where Labour's vote is up - the Devon riviera town of Torbay. The rise came at the expense of the Lib Dems, who held the seat with a reduced majority over the Conservatives.

This is an unexpected variant on "tactical unwind". In 1997 the Lib Dem candidate Adrian Sanders won by only 12 votes and put a merciless squeeze on the Labour vote in 2001 to boost his majority to 6,708. My guess is that it was harder to make the tactical argument when his majority looked so healthy.

The Conservative share, despite a high-profile campaign from Marcus Wood, was up only a shade. It's hard to tell from this, because of the anomalous Labour vote, what the broader picture in the Con/Lib Dem marginals looks like.

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