Liberal Democrats second most popular Party in Rugby

12.09.49pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 12th Jun 2004

· Lib Dems hold all seats on Rugby Borough Council

· Lib Dems push Labour into third place in total vote

· Rugby Lib Dems outperform the national average

· Andy King's seat at risk?

On 10th June Rugby Liberal Democrats held all the seats they were defending in the face of major Tory campaigns in Hillmorton and Caldecott and gained over 40% more votes than Labour to become the second most popular Party in Rugby.

Jess Upstone held her Hillmorton seat despite major Conservative and Labour campaigns. Jess turned last year's majority of 2 to Labour into a Lib Dem majority of 121 over the Conservatives with Labour pushed into third place, over 400 votes behind.

Gwen Hotten successfully defended her Caldecott seat where, as usual, the Conservatives were the only challengers. The strongest Conservative campaign for many years did no more than dent last year's majority reducing it from 212 to 180. The Labour vote sank even further to the lowest ever figure in the past 10 years; little more than half their vote in 1994.

Sue Peach was returned in Eastlands with 1214 votes, the largest vote for any councillor in 2004. Sue took 68% of the votes and won with a massive majority of 844.

In Paddox Deputy Group Leader Richard Dodd was an equally convincing winner taking 69% of the votes.

Apart from the successes Sally Ravenhall gave the Tories a bit of a fright in Dunchurch & Knightlow were she increased the Lib Dem Vote by 245 and slashed the Tory majority from 348 last year to 101.

In Fosse, Dick Gunstone increased the Lib Dem share of the vote by 7% but unfortunately this was still not enough to take the seat from the Conservatives

In addition to these results Liberal Democrat candidates came second in 3 other seats. This means the Liberal Democrats were 1st or 2nd in 9 of the 16 seats contested on 10th June.

The Liberal Democrat vote in Rugby out performed their national average, gaining 2% more of the overall vote than the national picture

Liberal Democrats Rugby - Total Votes - 7816 = 32%; National - 30%

Labour Rugby - Total Votes - 5555 = 23%; National - 26%

Conservative Rugby Total Votes - 10295 = 42%; National - 38%

• The percentages do not add up to 10% because the votes for Independents and Others have been ignored in both cases.

Labour's share in Rugby was 3% worse than their national average. Admittedly this may have been partially due to the fact that Labour failed to field candidates in 2 seats. But that alone shows how their popularity is waning.

What does this do for Andy King's chances of remaining an MP after the next General Election?