Candidate selection news: Shortlists for Bedford and Bury North

Updated, plus: the results of four recent contests in target seats – Bishop Auckland, Bristol North West, Crewe and Nantwich, and Ipswich.

Candidate applications open for next target seats: Bedford and Ipswich

There are early signs of a common profile of the seats chosen as targets.

Sunder Katwala: How ethnic minority voters cost May her majority

If the Conservatives had won 42 per cent from them too, our research projects that she would have won with a comfortable 42-seat majority.

Mark Lehain: Cutting the Free School programme would be short-sighted, damaging to standards, and un-Conservative

Free schools are changing lives for the better, and have proved popular despite the early naysaying. Greening must shut down talk of scrapping the policy.

Battleground Seats 11) East of England

Continuing our ConservativeHome series on the key contests in each region or nation.

Cllr Anthony Boutall: How our EU membership means broken pavements in Bedford

More spending for the EU has meant sharper austerity for local government.

Battlegrounds Revisited 4) East of England

A handful of gains from the Liberal Democrats do little to disguise a total stalemate between Labour and the Tories in this region.

Sunder Katwala: Here is early evidence that the Conservatives are now winning more ethnic minority votes

A Survation poll commissioned by British Future finds that David Cameron’s party won a majority of Hindu votes – and also polled well with other Asian voters in the south.

The Election Battleground 4) East of England

The fourth in our series investigates the East of England, where the minor parties are making their presence felt in a traditional Tory-Labour front.

Andrew Bell: 15 hospitals whose fate could swing the next election

Health is a key issue at local as well as national level, and 11 of these troubled institutions are in Conservative-held seats.