Every election candidate knows the rules of the game but there must still be an extra sense of deflation if you lose out by a handful of votes. Hence the bitter-sweet speech at the council election count in Swansea by Louise Gibbard, who took one of the three Dunvant and Killay seats but said she was "heartbroken" that her Labour colleagues had just missed out.
The new ward was one of six particularly hard-fought areas, although county-wide the voting patterns were broadly similar to those in 2017 with Labour winning by a large majority. The top six candidates in the three-seat Dunvant and Killay ward polled between 1,248 and 1,442 votes. Liberal Democrat husband and wife Jeff and Mary Jones finished first and second, with Cllr Gibbard close behind in third.
The three winning candidates had previously represented Killay North, Killay South and Dunvant, which had four seats before the electoral map was redrawn last year. "We thought all along it was going to be very close," said Cllr Mary Jones.
