Your New Rochester & Strood MP is: Mark Reckless, Conservative, GE2010

I was privileged to attend the count last night and can honestly say it was quite a buzz! Until 5.20am, when I began to get worried about getting home before hubby left for work ...

I managed to grab a chat with Mark earlier on in the evening/morning, who said he had a great response on the doorsteps today, with lots of good luck wishes. He was very pleased with the way his campaign was run, and happy to receive the support of UKIP. A colleague stated that they were looking forward to getting the result they truly and justly deserved for a team that has worked extremely hard over the campaign period. His victory speech was, as expected, very strong on the idea of UK independence –“We should chart our own path” and called for a referendum on whether we should be ‘In’ or ‘Out’ of Europe. Teresa Murray, for Labour, was very gracious in defeat – and promised to keep an eye on Mark! Stats wise, it was a huge majority, with Mark polling 23,604 votes to Teresa’s 13651, with Geoff Juby, the LibDem on 7800, Ron Sands of the English Democrats on 2182 and Simon Marchant, Green party on 734. This result saw a 9.8% swing to the Tories.

The Conservative team also felt that results coming in were better than the exit polls suggested and were quietly optimistic for the overall result.

Simon Marchant, Green Party candidate, felt they’d run their best campaign, considering they’re entirely self funded and are new to Medway (it’s the first time they’ve fought the election here since 1983). They did all they could and are looking to the future, they’ll be especially focused in Rochester, feeling that we are a ‘green’ area – they hope to secure a councillor in the next local elections.

For the records, Tracey Crouch took Chatham & Aylesford for the Tories from Labour’s Jonathan Shaw by 20,230 to 14,161, an 11.1% swing, with the Gillingham and Rainham making it a hat-trick for the Conservatives, Rehman Chishti gaining 46.2% of the vote - 21, 624 to Labour's Paul Clark on 12,944, a 5.5% swing.

Check out the gallery for the result in pictures.