A seat created in 1997 and held by Labour during the Blair-Brown years, 2010 saw Tracey Crouch elected for the Conservatives.

She was sports minister and minister for civil society, but quit when the government went back on a commitment to bring in a maximum stake on fixed odds betting machines by a certain time.

She has also turned down a job in Boris Johnson’s cabinet.

Chatham was the boyhood home of one of the most famous journalists ever to be a parliamentary reporter – Charles Dickens (who later lived and died in the neighbouring constituency of Rochester).

Our BBC South East political editor Lauren Moss has been looking at the Exit Poll data.

We met sixth-former Bayden before his first vote. He was feeling the pressure.

The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives will once again be slugging it out over this coastal marginal.

A Conservative stronghold for 72 years, it has changed hands five times since 1990, including at the 2015 and 2017 elections.

Retaken for the Lib Dems by Stephen Lloyd last time, his second spell as MP for the town was marked by him losing his remain-backing party whip when he voted for Theresa May’s deal, and every subsequent deal, including Boris Johnson’s, on the basis that Eastbourne itself voted to leave by 57.5%.

Former teacher Caroline Ansell will be hoping for her own second term as MP for the town in which Theresa May was born, and businesswoman and campaigner Gina Miller went to school.

Since 2010 this has been the seat of the UK’s first and, so far, only Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, and it will take a swing of nearly 13% for challenger Adam Imanpour to win back a seat Labour held for 15 years.

With an estimated declaration time of 06:00 GMT, this contest will also feature candidates from both the Brexit Party (Richard Milton) and UKIP (Nigel Furness), although in a constituency which voted 74.1% in favour of remain in the 2016 referendum, it remains to be seen how much headway they will be able to make.

Emma Louise Hogan will be hoping to pull off a surprise win for the Conservatives, for whom it was a stronghold until 1995.

Completing the line-up are independent Bob Dobbs and the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Citizen Skwith.

The Conservatives are set to win an overall majority of 86 in the general election, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

The survey taken at UK polling stations suggests the Tories will get 368 MPs - 50 more than at the 2017 election - when all the results have been counted.

Labour would get 191, the Lib Dems 13, the Brexit Party none and the SNP 55.

The Green Party will still have one MP and Plaid Cymru will lose one seat for a total of three, the survey suggests.

Read more here.

Seventh on Labour’s list of target seats, the result in this combination of coastal resort and rural community will be eagerly anticipated, and is expected at about 03:30 GMT.

Held by Labour from 1997 to 2010, it then became the seat of Conservative big hitter Amber Rudd, who held several ministerial jobs, including Home Secretary.

She resigned the whip over the Prime Minister’s decision to withdraw it from 21 colleagues who voted in October to block a no-deal Brexit, and shortly after that announced she was standing down as an MP altogether.

With the Conservative majority slashed from over 5,000 in 2015, to just 346 in 2017, Labour, which controls the local council, regard this as a very winnable seat.

Their candidate is Hastings Borough Council leader Peter Chowney, and the woman bidding to succeed Amber Rudd as Conservative MP for Hastings is Sally-Ann Hart.

This constituency is mostly inside the M25 and, unlike many other Surrey constituencies, a decisive backer of leaving the EU, by 60.3% to 39.7% in 2016.

Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng is defending a majority of nearly 13,500.

A result is expected at about 04:30 GMT.

Green Party candidate Caroline Lucas, who previously held the party's only seat in Parliament, Brighton Pavilion, tweets her take on the exit poll result.

The poll predicts her party will win one seat again this time.

If you wish to see more detail on the Exit Poll you can check your constituency here.

It shows that Canterbury may turn blue this year.

Our reporters are at nearly all the counts across the South East.

Brighton is home to the South East’s two sitting Labour MPs, with Lloyd Russell-Moyle hoping to keep the eastern part of the city red.

His constituency takes in Brighton University’s Falmer campus, Brighton racecourse and one of the UK’s largest marinas.

Since taking the seat from the Conservatives in 2017, Mr Russell-Moyle has had a high profile parliamentary career, making headlines for seizing the mace during a debate and holding speaker John Bercow down in his chair during the prorogation ceremony.

He also made a speech in the house revealing that he was HIV positive.

One of the region’s longest-serving MPs will be hoping to extend his stay in the House of Commons in this Conservative seat.

Nick Gibb has represented Bognor Regis and Littlehampton since winning it in the otherwise Labour landslide election of 1997, and this time out is defending a majority of nearly 17,500.

Mr Gibb is also one of the government’s longest-serving ministers, having held the job of schools minister since July 2014.

This coastal seat could be one of our earlier declarations, with a result expected about 03:00 GMT.

It’s a relatively safe Conservative seat, represented since 2015 by Huw Merriman.

Mr Merriman was parliamentary private secretary to former chancellor and outgoing Runnymede and Weybridge MP Philip Hammond. He campaigned heavily on the side of Remain in the referendum and backed a people’s vote despite voting for Theresa May’s deal three times.

Ashford is expected to declare at about 04:00 GMT.

It’s a seat the Conservatives have held almost continuously since its creation in 1885, and with no Brexit Party or UKIP candidates, not to mention a swing of nearly 15% required for Labour to win, it’s unlikely that Damian Green will be out of a job by Friday morning.

The former minister is a close friend of Theresa May, and was effectively her deputy during her time as Prime Minister. He was also a leading member of the Remain campaign during the 2016 Referendum.

This is one of the South East’s more rural constituencies, so a result isn’t expected until about 05:30 GMT, but it will be getting a new MP.

Former policing minister Nick Herbert wrote to his constituents in November announcing he would not be standing again in the seat he has held for the Conservatives since 2005. Instead he is focusing on his new roles as chairman of the Countryside Alliance and chairing the think tank Project for Modern Democracy.

Hoping to replace Mr Herbert in this Conservative seat is Andrew Griffith, a former media executive who became Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s business adviser after Mr Johnson’s victory in this summer’s leadership campaign.

The polls have now closed in the 2019 general election.

Counting begins now with results here in the South East expected to start coming in from about 02:00 GMT.

We’ll be here all night, and into tomorrow morning, bringing you those results as they happen, plus reaction from the winners and losers, in person and via social media.

We’ll also keep you updated on the national picture, as the nation waits to find out who will form the next government.

In the meantime we’ll be taking a closer look at each of the 44 constituencies in Kent, Surrey and East and West Sussex.