Kingswood called early at the last GE..when the results are announced, along with places such a Bolton West, Dudley South, Birmingham Edgbaston, then the tears of sadness will be flowing into the Labour champagne glasses – !!

B’ham Edgbaston?

Oh sure Neil, the Conservatives are bound to win that.

Just like they were bound to win it in 2001…….and 2005…….and 2010.

Don’t think Labour will be too sad to have won two of those four.

Birmingham Edgbaston is NOT changing hands. If they can hold Edgbaston in a terrible election like 2010, they will do it with an increased majority in 2015!

The seat is trending towards Labour for your information. Has a very large public sector workforce and growing Asian population (though it’s true that some could vote Conservative). Moreover Gisela Stuart is the incumbent. Ashcroft ran two polls here and showed very comfortable majorities.

Christ, some of these posts lack some common sense…

Nor is Bolton West changing hands.

Ben :

I did post a rant on the Labour Target Seat page yesterday about Cameron’s travel itinerary to date and what that tells you about his real expectations (as opposed to “I’m aiming for an Overall Majority”). I suppose in fairness I should point out that he has visited Bolton so I guess it is still viewed by the Conservatives as an outside chance. (One of a very few Labour marginal which he has honoured with his presence).

Sorry Neil, I thought that you said that ‘some of these POLLS lack common sense’

“I suppose in fairness I should point out that he has visited Bolton so I guess it is still viewed by the Conservatives as an outside chance.”

More likely because it’s just down the road from Bury, Rossendale, Pendle etc. He might as well pop in if he’s passing through anyway. I agree there’s been no focus on Labour marginals at all, even the most winnable ones like Itchen and Hampstead.

Cameron spent much of the last week down in Cornwall…he took the sleeper from Paddington to Penzance the night before I did. The Tories are really going hard for LD seats in the south west but the problem with that is that it won’t alter the combined Con+LD seat total so won’t help the coalition to continue.

So Cameron has in fact visited incumbent Labour held marginals – !!! I guess that this is what StephenPT meant by illogical posts on this site.

There’s still a week and a half to go….Cameron will visit some more incumbent Labour marginal before GE day.

Neil,

My apologies if you are struggling with my line of thought. My original post on Camerons travels was on the Labour Target page.

My point is if Cameron is as confident as he claims that he will get an overall majority he should be spending much of his time visiting marginal Labour seats. The fact that he has visited so few strongly suggests he does not believe he can win them.

And leaving it to the last week and a half is cutting it fine.

Perhaps Cameron is focussing on the seats where they are vunerable to Labour, and then attacking Lib Dem Marginals and then he will try and make some noises in a few Labour held marginals

We don’t need people who behave like this in parliament:

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Labour-candidate-Kingswood-issues-apology/story-26424317-detail/story.html

I said the same about the Tory MP for Sherwood when he said something stupid recently.

I already had this seat down as the fourth most marginal Tory seat that the party will retain after Pudsey, Halesowen and Gloucester.

I wonder which journalist had to scroll down her Twitter page far enough to dig those out?

Conservative Hold. 1,500 maj.

Con hold 2200

Kingswood was one of the standout results of the night.

Con 48.3 (+7.9)
Lab 29.6 (-5.7)
UKIP 14.8 (+11.6)
LD 3.8 (-13.1)
Gre 2.8 (+2.0)

Con majority 9006

And this, a seat with a notional Lab majority of almost 14% in 2005.

An extraordinary result for Skidmore here. Even with the benefits that incumbency undoubtedly brings an MP, I still didn’t think he would do that well. I, like many others, had for quite a while suspected a Tory hold to be almost certain, and probably with an increased majority, but that massively increased majority suggests a heavy pro-Conservative trend in their favour in the long-term- this seat being a major base for many Bristol commuters is probably changing the seat.

Crikey,
that woman with those tweets.
Can’t even invent a good pseudonym like Gloy Plopwell.

Chris Skidmore has been appointed Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, replacing Sam Gyimah.