Before then, it had been held since 2015 by Royston Smith GM of the Conservative Party, who had announced his retirement from frontline politics in 2023 and did not seek re-election in 2024.

The combination of Mitchell as a strong SDP-Liberal Alliance candidate in both 1983 and 1987, together with Conservative landslides, made Southampton Itchen highly competitive.

In those recent elections, save for 2015 when UKIP surged nationally, the third-placed candidate has been a Liberal Democrat, whose candidate lost their deposit in the result perhaps uniquely for an English university city seat in 2017, but which takes in far fewer of the university areas than Southampton Test.

From 2010 to 2017, the three general election results in the seat presented themselves as two-party ultra-marginal (finely-balanced) contests.

Following Smith's retirement for the 2024 election, the seat was retaken for Labour by Darren Paffey on a swing of 12.8%, resulting in a majority of over 6,000.