MONMOUTH will remain Conservative after incumbent Nick Ramsay comfortably held his seat in the National Assembly for the third time.

Mr Ramsay, an AM since 2007, won 43.3 per cent of the vote, down on 50.3 per cent from 2011.

Labour’s Catherine Fookes saw her party’s share of the vote also fall from 29.9 per cent five years ago to 26.9 per cent. She won 8,438 votes. The party won 8,970 in 2011.

Ukip’s Tim Price won third place. The party did not contest the constituency in 2011.

Mr Price won 3,092 votes and 9.8 per cent of the ballot.

Independent and Monmouthshire county councillor, Debby Blakebrough finished fourth with 1,932 votes; while Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan Clark finished fifth, with 1,824.

The Liberal Democrats’ Veronica German finished sixth with 1,474 votes and the Green Party’s Christopher Were seventh with 910 votes.

The English Democrats’ Stephen Morris finished eighth with 146 votes.

Mr Morris, Mr Were, Mrs German and Mr Clark had all stood in the constituency in last year’s general election.

Mr Ramsay said: “Tonight’s result in Monmouthshire is I believe a clear message to the Labour establishment in Cardiff Bay that the people of Monmouthshire are not prepared to be pushed around and told what our local identity should be.

“I’ve been fighting this campaign on a Save Monmouthshire basis over the last few months and I know that from my travels across the Monmouth constituency that people are not prepared to put up with Labour’s flawed and faulty merger plans. We need to support our local identity; we need to make sure that Monmouthshire survives in the future.”

The architect in Welsh Government hoping to reducing the number of local authorities in Wales down from 22, Leighton Andrews, lost his seat to Plaid Cymru’s leader Leanne Wood in Rhondda.

His plans involved merging Monmouthshire along with Newport, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Torfaen to form a so-called Super Gwent county.

Mr Ramsay added: “Across Wales tonight we’ve seen many, many votes for the Conservative party. The Welsh Conservatives have made inroads in areas that we’ve never thought of making inroads before. That has been an excellent result.

“The people in Wales have had enough," he said.