True Blue Tonbridge (with red and orange tints)

It's quite interesting during the run up to the general election to take a quick look at the results for the Tonbridge and Malling Constituency from the last election in 2005. You'll see if you click on this link to the Guardian newspaper site that the Conservatives had 24,357 versus Labour with 11,005 and Liberal 8,980. Now I must admit that I was a little surprised by that. I always assumed that the Lib Dems came a closer second and that Labour were in third place, way behind in the polls. But not so. (If you've glazed over by now then you're obviously not interested in politics which, frankly, I find a little hard to comprehend but there you go!) The results were even closer in the 2001 elections and still closer again in the 1997 election when Labour won by a landslide nationally and the Cons failed to take 50% of the overall vote in Ton and Malling. Now it doesn't take a genius to work out that, if you add together the Labour and the Lib Dem votes from 2005 then you have a much closer result; in fact 43.4% as a combined share of the vote versus the Cons 52.9%. I also think I'm correct in saying that there was quite a swing to the Tories in the last election so the previous results were probably much closer. It's a very similar scenario when you look at the results for Tunbridge Wells in 2005 only this time the Lib Dems have a bigger share than Labour. But the important thing is that the two combined would be very much more serious contenders. Now admittedly this all does rather assume that, if the two parties were to combine forces in certain constituencies, as has been suggested in some quarters, then all the Lib Dem votes would go to Labour and vice versa but, nevertheless, perhaps Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells aren't quite as True Blue as is often made out to be the case....