Seats visited by party leaders on day eight: Key election data
The Labour and Lib Dem leaders both visited target seats on Thursday morning.
Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Abergavenny in the constituency of Monmouthshire for his main campaign visit on Thursday, ticking off another seat of the kind that Labour would need to win on July 4 to be sure of a majority in the next House of Commons.
Monmouthshire is a brand new constituency at this election, but is being treated as one that is notionally held by the Conservatives, based on calculations that suggest the Tories would have won the seat in 2019 with a majority of 10,837.
This ranks it at number 111 on Labour’s list of targets, needing a swing of 10.3 percentage points to change hands.
The new seat incorporates part of the previous constituency of Monmouth, which had been held by the Conservatives since 2005 but was won by Labour in 1997 and 2001.
Of Labour’s 14 targets in Wales, Monmouthshire is one of the more ambitious ones, with seats such as Bangor Aberconwy (number four on the list), Vale of Glamorgan (number 22) and Bridgend (number 28) needing much smaller swings for the party to make a gain from the Tories.
Elsewhere, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey visited one of his party’s key targets in south-west England: Frome & East Somerset.
This is another new constituency, with a notional Conservative majority in 2019 of 12,395.
It ranks as 43rd on the Lib Dems’ target list and would need a large swing of 13.0 percentage points for the party to win, though it has managed much bigger swings at recent by-elections.
South-west England could offer rich pickings for the Lib Dems on July 4, with 11 of the party’s top 50 targets located in the region, including St Ives – visited on Wednesday by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – which ranks at number six on their list.
Mr Sunak chose Milton Keynes Central as the location for two campaign visits on Thursday, yet another brand new constituency, with a notional Tory majority in 2019 of 4,952.
The seat is reasonably high on Labour’s target list – number 46 – and Sir Keir’s party would need a swing of 4.7 percentage points to take it from the Conservatives.
Every constituency visited by Rishi Sunak so far this week has been one that the Tories won – or notionally won – at the last general election in 2019.
