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Constituency Profile: Bristol West
Bristol West is a seat which Labour needs must hold if it is to maintain a decent Commons majority.
With the chancellor and the prime minister all paying visits it's clear that the leadership knows this is a key battleground.
Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives have hopes of winning Labour's 38th most vulnerable seat.
The constituency is number 18 on the Lib Dem hitlist of winnable seats, and number 50 on the Conservative's.
However, the history of the seat and major issues such as Iraq and university top-up fees have combined to make it a more marginal seat than may first appear.
Bristol West was held by William Waldegrave, now Lord Waldegrave, and he even managed to increase the Tory majority in 1992 against a trend away from the party in the South West.
When the Boundary Commission moved 8,000 voters from Bristol West in 1995, his position actually appeared more secure. It was a major upset, therefore, when Valerie Davey, the Labour candidate, was able to unseat Waldegrave in the 1997 general election, completing Labour's sweep of Bristol.
Davey increased her slim majority to a more impressive eight per cent in the 2001 elections, but the seat is far from safe for Labour.
It was one of the few three-way races in the area, and was a highly placed target seat for both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats in 2001.
And while Labour's majority increased in 2001, the 2003 local election results saw Labour losing ground to the Lib Dems.
The major employers in the constituency are the two universities, Bristol University and the University of the West of England.
Within its borders is also the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the Dental and Eye Hospital, and the BBC headquarters for the South West.
The constituency is therefore more institutional than other areas of Bristol, and is said to have the highest concentration of residents with doctoral degrees of any constituency in the UK.
The high number of students and academics in the seat mean that the government's decision to introduce university top-up fees could be a major factor.
And while both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have pledged to scrap the policy, it is the high profile Lib Dem campaign on the issue which could pay dividends in a seat such as this.
The Lib Dems edged the Tories into second place into 2001, and their commitment on top-up fees along with their opposition to the Iraq war is thought likely to make them the main challenger to Labour this time round.
To Davey's advantage, however, extra government cash for education and the health service may woo local voters.
And Bristol has also been chosen as a 'science city' by the government.
Whether this will be enough to see off the challenge of Liberal Democrat candidate Stephen Williams remains to be seen. And for the Conservatives, David Martin will also be hoping to make up some, if not all, of the ground lost in 2001.
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