Daniel Zeichner has been re-elected as MP for Cambridge this morning, with a much increased majority of 12,661 votes.

Labour took 52 per cent of the vote, a 16 per cent increase on the 2015 result, which saw Zeichner elected with a majority of just 599 votes.

Zeichner success reflects the unexpectedly strong performance of Labour nationwide, with the exit poll released at 10pm indicating gains of some twenty seats, enough to deprive the Conservatives of a majority.

Huppert’s handy defeat comes as the Lib Dems have failed to gain traction nationwide, with former leader Nick Clegg having lost his seat this morning, and current leader Tim Farron's position looking increasingly precarious. 

The Conservative candidate John Hayward took 9133 votes, a slight increase on 2015, with his party taking 16.3% of the vote.

The results are consistent with Varsity’s general election poll, which showed overwhelming support for Labour among University members, with 61.5% of respondents who planned to cast their ballot in Cambridge saying that they were intending to vote for Zeichner. 26.6% intended to vote Lib Dem, and only 7.4% of respondents said they would vote Conservative.

Varsity’s poll also indicated an apparent collapse in the student Green vote: at the last election, 22% said they would vote Green, a number which fell to just 2.4% in the new results. The vast majority of respondents who claimed to have voted Green in 2015 said that they now intended to vote for Labour. The predicted drop in the Green vote materialised, and Stuart Tuckwood received just 2.3% of the vote, handily losing his deposit.

Reflecting on his victory, Zeichner offered his thanks to the other candidates. He also emphasised the difficulties of what had been a “long campaign, a difficult campaign, against the tragic backdrop of Manchester and London”.

Brexit was, unsurprisingly, the defining issue of the campaign: in last year’s referendum, Cambridge returned one of the highest Remain votes in the country, with 74% voting to remain a member of the European Union.

Zeichner had strongly emphasised his own Remain credentials throughout the campaign, stressing that he voted against the Labour whip to oppose the triggering of Article 50.

In an interview with Varsity, he recently said: “As people see the costs of a hard Brexit, compared to the benefits of staying close to the EU, we will be able to shift opinion.

“You’re never going to shift the 30-40% who want a ‘little England’… But I’m an optimist; we can stay, if not in the European Union, at least very close. I want a soft Brexit – so soft that, to all intents and purposes, it’s not Brexit at all,” he added