Candidates and Constituency Assessments

'At a time of an appalling foot and mouth crisis we now have a seriously overloaded rural development department because Wendy Alexander is too busy running an election campaign for Labour's Westminster candidates.' SNP's shadow transport and environment minister, Bruce Crawford MSP, 27 th March 2001.

Dumfries

7 th June 2001 Westminster Election

Turnout: 42,586 (67.67 %)
Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%	% change
	Labour	Russell Brown	20,830	48.91 %	+ 1.40 %
	Conservative	John Charteris	11,996	28.17 %	+ 0.13 %
	Liberal Democrat	Cllr John Ross Scott	4,955	11.64 %	+ 0.56 %
	Scottish National Party	Gerry Fisher	4,103	9.63 %	- 2.44 %
	Scottish Socialist Party	John Dennis	702	1.65 %	(+ 1.65 %)
	Lab hold	Lab majority	8,834	20.74 %	+ 1.27 %

1 st May 1997 Westminster Election

Turnout: 49,527 (78.92 %)
Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%	% change
	Labour	Russell Brown	23,528	47.51 %	+ 17.92 %
	Conservative	Struan Stevenson	13,885	28.04 %	- 15.05 %
	Scottish National Party	Cllr Robert Higgins	5,977	12.07 %	- 2.71 %
	Liberal Democrat	Neil Wallace	5,487	11.08 %	- 0.60 %
	Referendum	David Parker	533	1.08 %	(+ 1.08 %)
	Natural Law Party	Liz Hunter	117	0.24 %	(+ 0.24 %)
	Lab gain from Con	Lab majority	9,643	19.47 %

Notional 1992 result

	Conservative	21,597	43.09 %
	Labour	14,831	29.59 %
	Scottish National Party	7,411	14.78 %
	Liberal Democrat	5,749	11.68 %
	Others	419	0.83 %
Con win	Con majority	6,766	13.50 %