BBC NEWS | VOTE 2003 | Clwyd South


CANDIDATE	PARTY	VOTES	%	+/-%
Karen Sinclair	LAB	6814	36.5	-5.6
Dyfed Edwards	PC	3923	21.0	-4.2
Albert Fox	CON	3548	19.0	-0.1
Marc Jones	JMIP	2210	11.8	11.8
Derek Burnham	LD	1666	8.9	-2.2
Edwina Theunissen	UKIP	501	2.7	2.7

	MAJORITY	2891	15.5
	TURNOUT	18762	35.1	-5.7

DESCRIPTION: Clwyd South

As the home of the annual International Eisteddfod at Llangollen, Clwyd South is accustomed to attention from further afield. Even more eyes were turned on the area during last year's festival when many businesses in Llangollen accepted the euro. Stunt or otherwise, it was an effective marketing tool for an area which receives plenty of valuable tourist income from the event. Clwyd South is one of the new Welsh constituencies created in 1997. Many of the extra voters came largely from the industrial areas of Wrexham, which helped to reassert Labour control. Much of the seat had been in Clwyd South-West, which was held by the Conservatives in the 1983 Thatcherite landslide but reverted to Labour in 1987.

At Westminster, it is the Tories who have usually taken second place. But the high-profile candidature of star Tory journalist Boris Johnson, now the editor of the Spectator and MP for Henley, failed to revive their vote in 1997. The constituency has a Labour MP and elected a Labour AM in 1999, although AM Karen Sinclair's majority of 16.9% in 1999 was rather less than MP Martyn Jones' 26.6% in 2001. Plaid Cymru did well in the first assembly election to come second with 25% of the vote, but the party slipped to third behind the Conservatives in the 2001 general election.

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