A regional daily pulled out all the stops to provide blanket coverage of the crunch by-election in Eastleigh last Thursday.

With the eyes of the nation’s media on the Hampshire seat, the Southern Daily Echo brought out a special early morning edition carrying the results and early reaction.

The paper was first to break the news of the Lib Dem victory and the fact UKIP had snatched second place from the Tories, putting the placings on-line and in Tweets just before the candidates took to the stage for the official announcement.

And the Echo editorial team kept up a constant stream of live updates, Tweets and blogs from the count itself.

Throughout the campaign the paper concentrated its coverage on local issues, and predicted that those factors would decide the eventual winner.

It carried out a poll of 1,000 local residents at the start of the final week of compaigning which predicted a strong showing for UKIP but with the Lib Dems still likely to retain the seat, made vacant by the resignation of disgraced MP and former cabinet member Chris Huhne.

Echo editor in chief Ian Murray said:  “It had been quite a circus with the nation’s media and political big-hitters in town for the last three weeks, but we didn’t let that phase us.

“I believe we proved once again that although these events are seen as national issues, voters are really interested in what matters on a local level.This is where the local paper proves its worth.”

“I’m really proud of the team here. In the final stages of the campaign we were also having to contend with major breaking and on-going news items on our patch, including the three-day search in woodland for a missing teenager from which we provided live up-dates, the closure of a motorway following the death of a 16-year-old in a hit and run incident, and on the day of polling itself a jewelery shop ram raid in the city centre involving a lorry and police persuit of the robber through streets packed with shoppers.

“The team were fantastic and were on top of every angle.”