South East Cornwall is a constituency[n 1] represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Anna Gelderd, a Labour politician.

The current constituency territory contains the location of several former borough constituencies which were abolished as 'rotten boroughs' by the Reform Act 1832: The predecessor county division, Bodmin, serving the area from 1885 until 1983 had (during those 98 years) 15 members (two of whom had broken terms of office serving the area), seeing twelve shifts of preference between the Liberal, Liberal Unionist and Conservative parties, spread quite broadly throughout that period.

Having moved into second place in 2017 for the first time in the history of both constituencies, this trend ceased with the Labour Party capturing the seat at the 2024 general election.

The villages and towns in the South East of Cornwall often serve as a commuter base to the city of Plymouth, over the border in Devon.

Workless claimants were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 2.5% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.