Coventry South Jim Cunningham 14,558 25,511 4,617 0 4,495 Coventry South East 22,674 19,770 5,260 0 9,229 Conservative The notional results for the newly drawn seat of Coventry South for 1992 are misleading, and a major word of warning should be entered. Although it appears that the Conservatives 'won' Coventry South by about 3,000 votes last time, they should in fact be regarded as starting behind Labour. The reason is the 'wild-card' candidature in Coventry SE last time of the deselected sitting MP, Dave Nellist, who had been expelled from the Labour party for his membership of the extreme left wing Militant tendency. Nellist was a hard-working, modest and popular MP, even amongst many who did not share his political views, and he nearly won as a Independent in 1992, polling over 10,000 votes. Clearly this split the Labour support massively that year, although their new candidate Jim Cunningham still managed to win narrowly. Barring a re-appearance by Nellist (and even if he were to stand, he could no longer rely on the advantage of nine years incumbency as a sitting MP) Labour will clearly regain many of his votes in 1997. It is true that this new seat is an amalgamation of the old Coventry SE with parts of Coventry SW, which included the most affluent Conservative section in this West Midlands industrial city; but John Butcher only just held SW last time, and not all of its wards are transferred to South. It is safe to say that Coventry South must therefore rank as one of the most easily predictable technical Labour 'gains' of the forthcoming election.

	2,945	7.29	9.03	81
	6,731	16.66	11.17	149
	5,047	12.49	11.25	111
	5,504	13.62	14.70	93
	4,866	12.04	10.45	115
	0	0.00	2.81	0
	1,542	3.82	8.01	48
	3,415	8.45	15.25	55
	3,137	7.76	7.13	109
	7,092	17.55	10.17	173