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Labour all over the place in the South

Peter Henley|04:56 UK time, Friday, 7 May 2010

Denham

We've just heard that John Denham, Labour's most senior politician in the South, has squeaked back in Southampton.

It should have been the safest seat - with a 9,000 majority - so what cost him so many votes? Boundary changes play a part, but his colleague Alan Whitehead took a pasting too, and fellow cabinet minister Jim Knight paid a price for a high profile in this government.

Compare that result with Oxford East, where Lib Dems really thought they'd beaten another Labour top gun - Andrew Smith.

He won that 4,000 majority with a strategy of door-to-door campaigning, positively rejecting media interviews for the best part of three years.

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