Winchester's Liberal Democrats are confident for the coming local elections

Winchester's Liberal Democrats are determined to prove their strength in May's upcoming local elections. In 2005 they gained a majority of the borough vote at 50.6%.

Since 2005 Conservative seats on the City Council have risen to 29 over the 24 Lib Dem seats, but Martin Tod of Winchester's Lib Dems insists this isn't a major issue:

[Audio clip: "a lot of those Conservative councillors are outside of the Winchester constituency down in the Meon Valley...every year for the last three years there's been a swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats...we have the majority of the seats inside the boundaries of the new Winchester and Chandler's Ford constituency"]

He also believes success in any election rests on assuming you're never in a stronghold position:

[Audio clip 2: "organisationally we're strong, we're starting from a good place...we actually did better in the County Council elections last year than we did the County Council elections in 2005...but we absolutely can't take anything for granted"]