Gravesham is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

. It elects one Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) by the first past the post system of election. Adam Holloway

Adam Holloway

Adam James Harold Holloway is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Gravesham.-Early life:...

 captured the seat for the Tories in an upset in 2005 and held the seat with an expanded majority in the May 2010 election.

Boundaries

The constituency shares similar borders to that of the Borough of Gravesham

Gravesham

Gravesham is a local government district and borough in North West Kent, England. It has borders with the River Thames to the north; the City of Rochester and Medway to the east; the borough of Tonbridge and Malling ; and the boroughs of Sevenoaks and Dartford to the west.Its council is based at...

. The largest town in the constituency is Gravesend

Gravesend, Kent

Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, on the south bank of the Thames, opposite Tilbury in Essex. It is the administrative town of the Borough of Gravesham and, because of its geographical position, has always had an important role to play in the history and communications of this part of...

.

The boundaries of this constituency are due to change slightly under initial proposals published by the Boundary Commission to include 4,784 electors currently situated in the neighbouring constituency of Dartford. Such changes would also see the constituency renamed Gravesend.

History

The constituency and its predecessor the Gravesend constituency

Gravesend (UK Parliament constituency)

Gravesend was a county constituency centred on the town of Gravesend, Kent which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1868 until it was abolished for the 1983 general election....

 have been called a Bellwether constituency; until the 2005 general election

United Kingdom general election, 2005

The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....

, they had voted for the winning party in each election since the 1951 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1951

The 1951 United Kingdom general election was held eighteen months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Party had won with a slim majority of just five seats...

, and in each election since World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 other than the 1929 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1929

-Seats summary:-References:*F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987*-External links:***...

. In the 1929 and 1951 elections, they voted for the party with the largest share of the vote nationally.

Members of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	1983 United Kingdom general election, 1983 The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...	Timothy Brinton Timothy Brinton Timothy Denis Brinton , sometimes referred to as Tim Brinton, was a British broadcaster and Conservative Party politician...	Conservative Conservative Party (UK) The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
	1987 United Kingdom general election, 1987 The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the British House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive election victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the 2nd...	Jacques Arnold Jacques Arnold Jacques Arnold Arnold is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was the Member of Parliament for Gravesham in Kent from 1987, when he succeeded Tim Brinton, until he lost his seat in the landslide 1997 election...	Conservative Conservative Party (UK) The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
	1997 United Kingdom general election, 1997 The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...	Chris Pond Chris Pond Christopher Richard Pond, is a former Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was Member of Parliament for Gravesham in Kent, from 1997 to 2005.-Early life:...	Labour Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
	2005 United Kingdom general election, 2005 The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....	Adam Holloway Adam Holloway Adam James Harold Holloway is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Gravesham.-Early life:...	Conservative Conservative Party (UK) The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

Elections in the 2010s

Elections in the 2000s

Elections in the 1990s