Liberal Dems take safe Labour seat

[depakid]

(Title taken from Guardian front page)

The Labour party today moved to distance Gordon Brown from the shock byelection defeat in Dunfermline, with the Scottish secretary, Alastair Darling, saying he alone took "full responsibility".

Despite Mr Brown living in the constituency - previously a safe Labour seat - and campaigning in it four times, he was today in Moscow for a meeting of the G8, and not commenting on the shock defeat which overturned Labour's 11,500 majority. Instead, Mr Darling put the loss down to a failure to "galvanise own vote" and accepted that a "range of issues", such as tolls on the Forth bridge, had contributed to the defeat.

<snip>

Last night's result - widely unexpected even among seasoned byelection observers - saw the Liberal Democrat candidate, Willie Rennie, take the seat with a 1,800 majority on a 16.2% swing after a bruising campaign.

Amid a low turnout, the Tories' vote also slumped from 4,400 in the general election to 2,700.

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That's a 16% swing away from Labour.

[Greeby]

1. I suspect the reason they voted Labour in 05

Was out of sympathy for the previous MP Rachel Squire, who had been suffering through a second brain tumour since 2003 :(

[Moderator]

2. Duplicate

( and your thread doesn't have a link :-) )

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2097890