Brighton and Hove include three of Labour’s 30 most keenly targeted seats

The Labour Party believes that it needs to recapture the three parliamentary seats in Brighton and Hove to win back power at Westminster.

The party published its target seat list for the 2015 election campaign on Tuesday (8 January).

It is made up of 106 seats that Labour hopes to win from other parties.

In order of the swing required to take the seats, Brighton Pavilion is Labour’s top local target at 19th.

The party calculates that a 1.2 per cent swing would be required to overturn the Greens’ 1,252 majority.

Greens believe that Caroline Lucas, who won the seat in 2010 to become the party’s first MP, may not be as vulnerable to a national swing to Labour as some other MPs.

She has a higher profile than most backbench MPs. In part this is because of the novelty factor of being the first Green MP and in part because she was the leader of her party until last September.

In addition her considerable media exposure and the performance of her party running Brighton and Hove City Council will be among the factors affecting the local swing.

Former Brighton council leader David Lepper held the seat before Dr Lucas. He retired in 2010.

Brighton Kemptown is the next local target. The seat, held by Conservative MP Simon Kirby, is 25th on Labour’s list.

The party believes that a swing of 1.6 per cent would be enough to overturn Mr Kirby’s 1,328 majority.

He won the seat at the last general election from Labour when Des Turner retired.

Also high on the list is Hove which Labour hopes to retake from Conservative MP Mike Weatherley with a swing of 1.9 per cent. Mr Weatherley has a majority of 1,868.

The list was drawn up after examining different factors that would affect voting behaviour.

These included the uniform national swing needed to dislodge the sitting MP, demographic models, regional vote share models and local government election results.