LABOUR put on nearly 10,000 votes in Bournemouth East on Thursday night.

The party still finished in second place to the Conservatives, with Tobias Ellwood increasing his vote from 22,060 to 25,221, however his majority was greatly reduced, from 14,612 to 7,937.

In 2015 Peter Stokes won 7,448 votes for the red rose, but new candidate Mel Semple took away 17,284.

"It is brilliant," said Dr Semple.

"I think this has happened purely because of the Conservative austerity programme."

During the course of the count Mr Ellwood told the Daily Echo he believed Labour had successfully marshalled the student vote.

“We are seeing a jump in the Labour support. I think this is predominantly tied with student input," he said.

“It is based on the knee-jerk promises by Corbyn to write off all tuition fees on the last day of registration.

“When that took place it affected polling.

“We know that Labour don’t have the money to pay for it.

“We will have to do further analysis to work out the causes of any changes that take place.”

However Dr Semple disputed this assessment, and said she believed many people who had been put off voting, or who had been suffering under austerity, had backed her campaign.

"We have had such a mixed response from people," she said.

"I had traditional Conservative voters telling me they were coming directly over to Labour, it was not just the youth vote."

She said that as the campaign unfolded Labour found voters were "upbeat". "There seemed to be hope.

"They felt there was a clear difference between the parties."

Mr Ellwood, MP in the constituency since 2005, said the result showed his party would have to listen to the nation.

"It is an honour and a privilege to be re-elected for Bournemouth East. I think the result reflects the need for the Conservative Party to consider issues raised during the campaign, particularly on welfare and pensions, as well as funding for our care services.

"We are still left with the huge challenge of Britain's place and role in the Brexit negotiations, it is important we get stuck into that with Britain's interests at heart."

Asked what he thought of his party's campaign, Mr Ellwood said: "Clearly we are going to have to look at this in the longer term to see what more we can do to ensure we best represent our constituents and indeed the nation."

Liberal Democrat Jon Nicholas won 3,168 votes, a drop of around 500 from his 2015 total. He said the national campaign had become "a two horse race" and like a "presidential campaign".

"I think it is damaging to our democracy," he said, backing a move to proportional representation.

UKIP's David Hughes picked up 1,405 votes, down from 7,401 in 2015. Alasdair Keddie of the Green Party won 1,236 votes and the Independent candidate Kieron Wilson 304.