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> United Kingdom > England > South West > South West
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| Established | June 09, 1983 |
| Disbanded | Still Active |
| Contributor | RP |
| Last Modified | RBH May 28, 2021 01:03pm |
| Description |
This constituency covers much more than the town of Christchurch itself. To the north-west of the town are such centres as Hurn, Ferndown and Verwood on the northern boundary. The seat includes Bournemouth's International Airport and there are some defence-related industries based here. It is predominantly a retirement area and in fact is home to the highest proportion of pensioners of any seat in the country. Most of the electorate are homeowners and it has the second lowest proportion of council tenants in the UK. As such, it is generally regarded as safe Tory territory. As part of an earlier Bournemouth seat, it was represented by Nigel Nicholson, the son of Vita Sackville West and Sir Harold Nicholson, during the 1950s. From February 1974 the constituency was represented by Sir Robert Adley, whose sudden death in May 1993 led to one of the most spectacular by-election results in political history when the Conservative government suffered a 35% swing to cede the seat to the Lib Dems' Diana Maddock. However, this proved to be an unsustainable anomaly and Christopher Chope reclaimed the seat in 1997 with a relatively slender majority of 3.9%. In 2001, this leapt back up to 27.3%.
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