East of England
The East of England consists of the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Politically it is solidly to the right of the country, it consistently returns large numbers of Conservative MPs. However it contains many marginal constituencies that tend to swing between governing parties.
This is seen clearly during the 1960โs and 70โs, when Labour won a majority in 1966 they had 15 MPs in the East of England, this dropped to 4 when Heath won his majority in 1970. However, in the October 1974 election Labour were back in government and had 13 MPs in the region. The election of Thatcher in 1979 would usher in a long period of Conservative dominance in the East of England as they were able to hold all but a handful of seats. This was in part due to a high vote share, consistently over 50%, but also due to a split in the opposition vote between Labour and the Liberal/SDP/Liberal Democrats.
This decisively changed in 1997 when Labour captured 39% of the vote and 22 seats with a massive 12 point increase in the share of the vote. National polls before that election overstated the Labour lead but the East of England is one area where Labour did make double digit vote share gains. From this high point the Labour vote slowly shrank but it did not flow exclusively to the Tories. UKIP emerged as an electoral force in the East of England, at their peak in 2015 they won 16% of the vote. This combined with by-election victories in Clacton (Essex, EOE) and Rochester (Kent, SEE) were key drivers of the Brexit referendum that would follow in 2016. However UKIP were unable to hold their seats at the general election and they withered after the referendum.
The two post referendum elections had very different vote shares for Labour (33 and 24) but similar outcomes in terms of seats (7 and 5). The Conservatives stranglehold on the region continued. Since 1955, they have always held a majority of seats (even in 1997) and currently hold 52 out of 58. In 2019, all six counties in the region voted more strongly for the Conservatives then did either England or the UK as a whole. This is part of a pattern that stretches back decades.