TORY candidate Anne Marie Morris is remaining hopeful despite the exit polls predicting Theresa May’s party won’t gain a majority.

The 59-year-old who is at Newton Abbot Leisure Centre for the count said: ‘Well I think at the moment we are all looking at the exit polls and wondering how realistic a picture that paints.

‘What is interesting is if you look at the detail, I think there is 76 seats of the 100 marginal seats which are said to be too close to call.

‘So while at the moment it is not the result that clearly Theresa was after if those 76 don’t go the way as currently predicted then we have everything to play for – so let’s just wait and see,’ she said.

Ms Morris is hoping to retain her Newton Abbot seat in Westminster, which she has held since 2010 after pinching it from Lib Dem Richard Younger-Ross. Talking about retaining her seat she said: ‘I haven’t seen enough boxes emptied to be able to tell you that.

‘I think at this stage we are right at the verification – it is really much too early to say.’

She agreed it was such a short amount of time to campaign since the Prime Minister called a snap general election on April 18.

She said: ‘It was a good campaign, we managed to get out as much as we possibly could.

‘It was clearly quite different to the last campaign when we had much more time.

‘When you are running something which is five or six weeks long, that is not very long to actually get everything done.

‘But that said we have put absolutely everything into it and we will have to wait and see if that has paid off.’

During the campaign Ms Morris attended several hustings including one at the South Devon UTC, where her partner and agent Roger Kendrick made a racist out-burst. Mr Kendrick said the strain on the country’s education was down to immigrants and their high birth rates.

When asked if she felt if it has had a bad impact on her campaign she said: ‘What Mr Kendrick has to say and what I think are two different things and I think most people recognised you can have two people, who think completely differently and that does not mean to say that one accepts the view of the other.’