South East England
South East England consists of the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Sussex. It is solidly to the right of the country as a whole, in fact, all eight counties in the region voted more strongly for the Conservatives than the UK as whole in the 2019 election. This is pattern that has held since at least 1955.
The counties themselves do vary from the very blue (Kent, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and West Sussex) to light blue East Sussex and Oxfordshire. Since 1955, the region has never had fewer than 48 Conservative MPs. This low came in 1966, when Labour won a solid majority nationwide and had 12 MPs in the South East. Labour were virtually wiped out in 1979 and did not recover until 1997.
This reflects a Labour vote that is very thinly spread, it can take a lot of votes to elect Labour MPs in the South East. In 2017 they won 29% of the vote but only 10% seats (8 Seats). This problem is even more apparent for the Lib Dems; who consistently win 20 to 25% of the vote in the South East but have struggled to convert that vote share in to seats. They rose as high as 8 seats in 2001 but then fell back later in that decade.
However, the Liberal Democrats are stronger at the local level and were for a time in the late 90โs the biggest party in local government in the South East. Their falling support during and after their coalition with the Tories (2010 to 2015) has been mostly reversed in recent years. They currently hold 854 council seats compared to the 1,214 for the Conservatives and 624 for Labour. The Conservatives remain the dominant party in the South East and hold 74 out of 83 seats in the House of Commons.