WITH the UK heading back to the polls on December 12, we are profiling all the constituencies in the Bournemouth Echo readership. Today it’s the turn of Mid Dorset and North Poole.

The constituency was created in 1997 from parts of the seats of North Dorset including Corfe Mullen and includes Broadstone and Canford Heath, as well as Colehill and Wimborne.

The seat was held by the Liberal Democrats from 2001 until 2015, when it fell to the Conservatives in the shape of Michael Tomlinson, former barrister and member of the Eurosceptic European Research Group.

Mr Tomlinson was re-elected in 2017.

In the European Parliament elections this May, the most recent occasion on which the country went to the polls, when the Brexit Party took 34.3 per cent of the vote in East Dorset’s local authority area, the largest share.

The Lib Dems finished second, with 30.2 per cent, and the Greens third with 15.1 per cent.

The South West – the EU constituency in which East Dorset lies – returned three Brexit Party MEPs, two Liberal Democrat and one Green to Brussels in May.

Turnout was, however, much lower in those elections – while 73 per cent of the electorate came out to vote across the three constituencies in 2017, just 41.1 per cent did locally for the European Parliament elections this year.

Both those turnouts, however, were beaten by that for the referendum on the topic which is predicted to dominate December’s general election: Brexit.

The EU referendum in 2016 brought more voters to the polls across the UK than vote for 24 years. In East Dorset, 81.3 per cent of the electorate voted, with a majority in favour of leaving the EU, with 57.6 per cent of the vote. The EU Referendum result in East Dorset in June 2016 saw Remain gaining 42.4 per cent of the votes with leave polling 57.6 per cent.

n The vote share for the top three parties in Mid Dorset and North Poole June 2017. Conservative: 28,585 (59.2 per cent) Liberal Democrats: 13,246 (27.5 per cent) Labour: 6,423 (13.3 per cent)