Peterborough Dr Brian Mawhinney (Contesting different 17,042 24,365 5,170 0 926 Peterborough 26,455 20,201 4,973 0 1,839 Conservative The Peterborough constituency has a distinguished history as the site of ultra-close general election battles and may well have such a future as well. In 1966 Peterborough produced jointly the closest contest of any parliamentary division in postwar elections when the sitting Conservative MP defeated Labour by just three votes. Seven recounts were necessary. In October 1974 Labour finally ousted the Tories in this cathedral city on the edge of the Fens - by fully 22 votes! The Conservatives returned in the shape of Dr Brian Mawhinney in 1979, and have held the seat fairly comfortably since then. But the shakiness of their long-term hold is made clear by Dr Mawhinney's decision to contest the new neighbouring safe seat of Cambridgeshire North West next time rather than Peterborough, which includes most of his present seat. The fact that he is Chairman of the Conservative Party and thus professionally optimistic does not augur well for the Conservatives left behind in Peterborough. In fact the boundary changes, which take the four wards of the city south of the river Nene into Cambs NW, should not make the Tory position in Peterborough significantly worse. They beat Labour by 5,376 votes in 1992, and it should still take a 5 per cent swing to dislodge them. If Dr Mawhinney thought he was going to lose, then he must have thought Labour is likely to win the general election with a comfortable overall majority.

	2,775	6.72	9.03	74
	3,381	8.19	11.17	73
	3,152	7.64	11.25	68
	8,381	20.31	14.70	138
	5,733	13.89	10.45	133
	0	0.00	2.81	0
	2,649	6.42	8.01	80
	7,844	19.01	15.25	125
	3,321	8.05	7.13	113
	3,954	9.58	10.17	94