Election 97

Kingswood

Current MP Roger Berry
Conservative 97 17,928
Labour 97 32,181
LibDem 97 7,672
Nationalist 97 0
Other 97 643
Elected party
Kingswood

Robert Waller wrote
Old constituency Kingswood
Conservative 92 29,562
Labour 92 26,222
LibDem 92 8,771
Nationalist 92 0
Other 92 0
Elected party Conservative

Kingswood is set in the eastern suburbs of the West Country's largest city, Bristol. Since it was created in 1974, it has been regarded as very marginal. The major parties have won Kingswood three times each. The Conservatives won from 1979 to 1987, Labour in both 1974 elections and in 1992. However, further boundary changes create a complication in the parties' calculations for the 1997 contest.

The seat used to stretch into the city of Bristol itself, the St George's wards. Now those 17,000 voters have been removed and replaced with 19,000 very different electors, from the very edge of the conurbation and beyond, around Oldland. These were formerly in the safe Tory Wansdyke seat. The effect of the changes is this: if they had been in force in 1992, the Tories would have won by over 3,000 rather than losing by over 2,000.

This means that the Labour victor then, one of the more active members of the 1992 intake, Dr Roger Berry, must win this seat all over again, with a swing of 3 per cent, in some unfamiliar territory. He will only do so if Labour win the general election itself.


Super Profiles

324 0.76 9.03 8
4,877 11.51 11.17 103
9,543 22.52 11.25 200
11,119 26.24 14.70 178
719 1.70 10.45 16
0 0.00 2.81 0
3,765 8.89 8.01 111
9,671 22.83 15.25 150
1,590 3.75 7.13 53
300 0.71 10.17 7