UPDATE: Recent electoral history...

Adam Wilshaw takes a look at recent election results in our two constituencies. Has it always been a two-horse race in North Devon?

FOR more than 50 years the constituency of Devon North (as it is sometimes known at the ballot box) has been a battleground dominated by two parties: the Conservatives and the Liberals.

But before Liberal superstar Jeremy Thorpe took the seat in 1959, North Devon was solidly Tory.

Thorpe’s influence has continued, with his electoral success mirrored by one of his political descendants, Nick Harvey.

And a glance at the election results of the past 51 years reveals an interesting pattern.

In 1959, when the Conservatives won the national vote, the Liberals took North Devon by a whisker — Thorpe had less than 1% more votes than his Tory rival.

Thorpe then easily beat his Conservative rivals in 1964 and 1966, when Labour formed Governments, and the flamboyant Liberal was perhaps at the height of his popularity locally and nationally.

Over the years Labour never had a strong showing in North Devon, even at the height of New Labour’s powers. Their best polling in recent decades in North Devon was in fact in 1950, when they got 23.24% of the vote.

By 1970 Labour was down to 12.29% and since 1983 they have struggled to hit double figures. In 1970 the Liberals won again in North Devon — but the Conservatives, who won that year’s national vote, were snapping close on their heels. Just four years later Thorpe was back on barnstorming form, thrashing the Tories by 17.22 percentage points.

His political career came to a dramatic halt at the 1979 election when he was easily beaten by Tory candidate Tony Speller. That loss was largely blamed on the extraordinary events surrounding Thorpe’s personal life; he had been accused of conspiracy to commit murder and of having illicit gay love affairs. An ex-model and stable lad called Norman Scott claimed he had a sexual relationship with Thorpe in the early 1960s, when such acts were unlawful.

In 1975, a former airline pilot called Andrew Newton ambushed Scott on Exmoor and shot his Great Dane called Rinka. Newton was convicted of firearms offences and during that trial Scott used the protected privilege of court to make public his gay affair allegations against Thorpe. During Thorpe’s trial for conspiracy in 1978, the prosecution alleged Newton had been paid £5,000 from Liberal Party funds to kill Scott. Thorpe was found not guilty.

As a result, the 1979 election was a colourful and controversial affair in North Devon. The journalist Auberon Waugh stood as a candidate for the Dog Lovers’ Party, a joke at the expense of Thorpe. And 1979 was, of course, the year the Tories came to power under Margaret Thatcher.

North Devon elected Mr Speller with healthy majorities again in 1983 and 1987.

But in 1992, when the Conservatives under John Major won a surprise victory, North Devon decided to elect a 31-year-old Liberal Democrat, Nick Harvey, who won by a small margin. In 1997, when Tony Blair scored an historic win for Labour, Mr Harvey shored up his North Devon support by beating the Tory opponent by a clear 11.28 percentage points.

He won by a slightly narrower margin again in 2001 and 2005.

The picture in Torridge is more complicated because of boundary changes in recent decades.

The constituency of Devon West and Torridge (as it is sometimes known at the ballot box) was created in 1983. Before then, seats like Torrington (last contested in 1970) and Devon West (last contested in 1979) were solidly Conservative, in common with other South West rural seats.

In 1983 the seat was won by Conservative Peter Mills.

In 1987 and 1992 Emma Nicholson won again for the Tories but she defected to the Lib Dems in 1995.

The election in 1992 in Torridge was close between the Tories and Lib Dems, with fewer than six percentage points between them.

And in 1997, the year of the New Labour landslide, the Lib Dem candidate John Burnett won the seat and held it again in 2001, albeit narrowly, against Tory candidate Geoffrey Cox.

Mr Cox took Torridge back for the Tories in 2005, beating the Lib Dem candidate David Walter by five percentage points.