Stevenage gain from Conservative Timothy Wood 0 ( 0.0%) 16,858 (32.8%) 28,440 (55.3%) 4,588 ( 8.9%) 0 ( 0.0%) 1,500 ( 2.9%) 66,889 51,386 (76.8%) Timothy Wood Stevenage 2,919 ( 5.3%) 24,078 (43.9%) 21,159 (38.6%) 9,379 (17.1%) 0 ( 0.0%) 220 ( 0.4%) Conservative 67,015 54,836 (81.8%) -11.1% +16.8% -8.2% +0.0% +2.5% -0.2% -5.0% The Hertfordshire New Town of Stevenage has produced a series of spectacular and often unexpected results in general elections for over 15 years now. That in 1992 needs to be explained with reference to recent history; on this occasion Labour advanced by no less than 12 per cent, as the Liberal Democrat candidate lost 16 per cent by comparison with the SDP Alliance runner up in 1987; the Conservative Timothy Wood retained his seat with a majority of nearly 5,000. It still surprises many that Stevenage, based on the first New Town to be designated in Britain after the war, should be held by the Tories at all. The reasons are two-fold; one concerns the increasing willingness of the working-class but perhaps upwardly mobile voters of New Towns in southern England to vote Conservative, which led for example to the ousting here of Labour's Minister Shirley Williams in 1979. A second reason is that the Stevenage seat also includes some villages from the extremely Conservative and attractive Hertfordshire countryside around the New Town. Now this rural element is to be reduced after boundary changes, which will make Timothy Wood's task of holding such a volatile seat even harder. If Labour can recapture Stevenage, they will demonstrate that they can put the troubles of the last two decades behind them, and win power once more. 3,161 8.27 9.03 92 1,729 4.53 11.17 41 4,380 11.47 11.25 102 17,269 45.20 14.70 307 2,921 7.65 10.45 73 324 0.85 2.81 30 1,679 4.39 8.01 55 4,350 11.39 15.25 75 1,318 3.45 7.13 48 1,022 2.68 10.17 26