General election: Top targets for Welsh party campaigns

Theresa May visited Bridgend on the campaign trail, highlighting it as a key Tory target

Welsh Conservative sources have told BBC Wales they are targeting between six and nine seats in the general election, on top of the 11 won in 2015.

Labour is focusing on three targets as well as aiming to hold its 25 seats.

Plaid Cymru is targeting six seats - including a push against Labour in the south Wales valleys - to add to the three it won last time.

The Lib Dems, who won a single seat in 2015, have their strongest hopes in three other seats they previously held.

Conservatives

Despite downplaying expectations publicly, senior Welsh Tories agree with the results of recent polls suggesting that they are set to make big gains next month.

It is also a significant rise in expectations from the 2015 general election when the Conservatives had three Welsh targets; Gower, Vale of Clwyd, and Brecon and Radnorshire, which were all captured.

The known Tory target seats this time are Bridgend and Wrexham. The other gains that are considered possible are Newport West, Newport East, Cardiff South and Penarth, Cardiff West, Delyn, Alyn and Deeside, and Clwyd South.

Extra campaigning resources to support the candidates will be directed to official target seats over the next month, including help from neighbouring constituencies that are considered safe.

In 2015 the Conservatives had their best general election result in Wales in more than 30 years.

If they made as many as nine gains they would have more MPs in Wales than Labour for the first time in more than a century.

Labour

Jeremy Corbyn surrounded by supporters after a rally in Cardiff

The main focus for Labour is on holding the 25 existing seats it won last time, rather than making gains.

But it insists there are serious campaigns underway in Gower, the Vale of Clwyd and Cardiff North, where the Conservatives have small majorities.

Party sources have also indicated that members in historically safe seats are "upping their game" in keeping with the challenge from other parties.

Plaid Cymru

Leanne Wood hopes Plaid Cymru can repeat her assembly election victory in Rhondda

Plaid Cymru is targeting six seats, on top of the three it already holds.

They are Ceredigion, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent, Rhondda, Ynys Mon and Llanelli.

It already holds Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Arfon, and Dwyfor Meirionnydd.

Plaid believes there is a weak Labour vote in its heartland areas in the south Wales valleys which it will target by approaching them with localised campaigning as if they were a series of by-elections.

Liberal Democrats

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron takes his party's general election campaign to Cardiff

The Liberal Democrats hold Ceredigion, and are targeting Cardiff Central, Montgomeryshire and Brecon and Radnorshire, all seats they have previously held.