North West Hampshire Liberal Democrats celebrate increased vote as Labour and Tories suffer setback.

2.22.54pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 13th Jun 2004

Liberal Democrats in the North West Hampshire parliamentary constituency are celebrating a sharp increase in their share of the vote in Thursday's elections, increasing from 21.8% to 31.0%. They also successfully defended Tadley North from the Conservatives who won the ward last year.

Highlights include:

Increasing their share of the vote from 21.8% to 31.0%.

Conservative and Labour share of the vote declining sharply.

Increasing the number of Liberal Democrat votes by over 1,000

Nearly doubling the Liberal Democrat vote in Tadley from 641 to 1,176.

Trebling the Liberal Democrat vote in Burghclere from 128 to 386

Martin Tod, 39, Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Hampshire, commented:

"These results are very encouraging. Our vote continues to grow at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives. We are now the only serious challengers to the Conservatives in the North West Hampshire constituency."

"Locally people seem to appreciate how hard our councillors and campaigners work on local issues. The council tax also helped us. We're the only party that wants to scrap the council tax and also made sure that the Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council Tax increase was the lowest in Hampshire. At the same time, the Conservatives suffered for having doubled the Council Tax since they took over running the county."