General Election 2019: Caroline Dinenage 'honoured' at being returned as Gosport MP
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Caroline Dinenage, who clinched a 23,388 majority, said: ‘I’m so delighted, surprised and honoured by the result.
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Hide Ad‘Brexit has sucked the oxygen out of parliament for years and it’s been almost impossible to move on with other stuff.
‘For Gosport, it’s always about improving access and economic prosperity.’
Ms Dinenage took 32,336 votes, while Tom Chatwin (Labour) had 8,948, and Cllr Martin Pepper (Lib Dem) 5,473. Zoe Aspinall (Green) won 1,806 votes.
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Hide AdTurnout has been announced as 66.25 per cent, with 48,678 votes cast. In 2017 turnout was 67 per cent.
The constituency has been a Conservative safe seat since its creation in 1976 and following the exit poll, the town's Tories have voiced their delight at a potential majority.
Chairman of the Conservative Party in Gosport, George MacAleese, said: 'It's better than we expected. I was hoping for a majority of 25 or so, but this is great for us.
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Hide Ad'I'm expecting a win for Caroline Dinenage tonight, with a majority of around 40,000.
'From what we've seen at the polling stations it's been exceptionally busy so I imagine there'll be quite a high turnout as well. It's good to have so many people engaging with politics.'
According to senior Conservatives, Ms Dinenage isn't due to arrive at the count at Gosport Leisure Centre until the ‘last possible moment’.
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Hide AdThere is a bleak outlook for Labour and the Greens, with the exit poll predicting 191 seats and one seat respectively. But there are hopes these will prove incorrect.
Labour candidate Tom Chatwin is still positive about his chances, and hopes he's given his Conservative counterpart some food for thought.
'Exit polls have been wrong before,' he said.
'I'm remaining optimistic - we are really pleased with how our campaign went.
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Hide Ad'More than anywhere else, the safe seats like Gosport need tough opposition to show people like Caroline Dinenage that their positions aren't a shoe-in.
‘We had hundreds of volunteers helping with our campaign in the town and even if Ms Dinenage does win, hopefully we've forced her to up her game.'
Samantha Pollard from the Green Party said: 'For any party in Gosport it's an uphill battle, but seeing that exit poll was quite disheartening.
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Hide Ad'I don't think this is due to our alliance with the Liberal Democrats, but just that people are voting for Brexit - it's a repeat of the referendum. Evidently, Boris Johnson's 'Get Brexit Done' mantra has worked. It's a shame.'
Cllr Murray Johnstone from the Liberal Democrats says his party's representative, Cllr Martin Pepper, will be at the count shortly.
'I think our campaign went quite well. In the past couple of elections we've done quite badly here but we'll wait and see how it goes tonight.
'We still fancy our chances as being pretty good.'