their seat, such as Vince Cable and Ed Davey, or won new ones. Despite the net gain in seats, several were still lost, such as Clegg's, whilst Farron's majority was reduced to less than 1,000. The ERS identifies what it calls "super safe seats", which have been held continuously by one party since the 19th century. In so doing, it equates seats with their rough equivalents under previous boundaries. For example, following the 2010 general election, it identifies the national representative of the area forming Haltemprice and Howden (drawn as a constituency in 1997) as having been a Conservative since the 1837 general election. Similarly, it considers that Wokingham (and a few others) have been held by the Conservative Party since 1885, Devon East, Fylde and Arundel and South Downs since 1868, Hampshire North East since 1857, and Rutland and Melton, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and East Worthing and Shoreham all since 1841. (For historical reasons, the Conservative Party being older than the other current main parties, it holds all the oldest safe seats.) Even the safest of seats can be – and sometimes are – upset. Whilst it is rare for the opposition to take such seats, outside candidates may be able to. Examples include the election of Peter Law and George Galloway in very safe Labour seats in 2005, Jim Murphy in the Eastwood constituency in Scotland in 1997, Martin Bell in the safe Conservative seat of Tatton in 1997, and most recently, Helen Morgan in the Conservatives' historically safest seat, North Shropshire, in a by-election in 2021. The loss of safe seats can become historic moments: the defeat of Michael Portillo in his "safe" Conservative seat in 1997 created the "Portillo moment". That expression has since been used to describe huge voting swings that generally usher in a new government, as occurred in 1997. Similarly, in 2015, the Labour Party lost many formerly safe seats in Scotland, including Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, which had previously been held by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Paisley and Renfrewshire South, the seat of shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander. In both cases, swings of over 25% to the SNP were recorded. In the 2019 general election, Labour lost many formerly safe seats that were part of its 'Red Wall' in northern England. These defeats represented about 20% of the party's overall 2017 vote in such seats. United States Many American commentators