Tory Gareth Johnson has held his Dartford seat in one of the highest elections turnouts in Kent.

25,670 voted Conservative compared with 13,325 voting Labour, 1,454 Liberal Democrat, Ukip 10,434, 1,324 Green, and English Democrats 211.

Gareth Johnson MP said: "It's been a long day but I feel very honoured to have been given this opportunity to serve in Dartford.

"It's a fantastic town. Yes, there are improvements we need to make, but I'm very happy to have been given this opportunity.

"I am a Dartfordian born and bred and I am proud to be able to continue serving this town."

An impressive 73% of the electorate went out to vote, delaying the result announcement by over two hours.

Commenting on the increased turnout in the constituency, Mr Johnson said: "I think people recognised that it was a very close call. I think that has motivated people to go out and vote."

Simon Thomson, Labour candidate, said: "It's disappointing here in Dartford. I was hoping for a better result.

"It's particularly disappointing nationally. Labour is going to have to answer some questions about its own approach."

Around 60 hard-working volunteers shuffled through ballot after ballot for over six hours.

The counting of the ballots did not start until around 3.30am due to a prolonged process of verifying both the general and local election ballots.

Local, national, and international journalists recorded events as the night progressed - including Jon Sindrev from the Wall Street Journal.

Jon, who flew over from Barcelona just to be there, was sent to cover Dartford because of its reputation as a bellwether seat - a seat which tends to reflect the overall national result.

He said: "We came here because Dartford is a bellwether seat in the UK and we felt it was an interesting marginal to keep an eye on."

Elizabeth Jones, standing for Ukip, went home before the result was announced apparently due to feeling ill.

Andy Blatchford, the first ever Green Party candidate to stand in the constituency, admitted that he wasn't expecting to get his deposit back, and that his main goal was to "get on the ballot".

Leader of the council Jeremy Kite (Con) was also present for most of the night.

The result is expected to help the Conservatives to reach the brink of forming a majority government after shock exit polls predicted they had won 316 seats.

In Sevenoaks, the Tories held the seat after Michael Fallon was re-elected with 28,531 votes.

Ukip's Steve Lindsay was second with 8,970 votes followed by Labour's Christopher Clark (6,448), Lib Dem's Alan Bullion (3,937) and the Green's Amelie Boleyn (2,238).

The election turnout was 69.99%