Some of them, he said, live far from their polling stations, so volunteers from kibbutzim that are Labor strongholds were mobilized to get out to drive Russians to the polls.

The unions and local government are Labor strongholds.

Long a Labor stronghold, the district has more recently become a very competitive seat between the two conservative parties.

The big gainer in most local votes was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's hard-line Likud Party, which cut heavily into Labor strongholds.

But unions, a Labor stronghold, welcomed the announcement as "wonderful news" for the nation's slowly recovering shipbuilding industry.

Oxley had once been held by Bill Hayden, and at the time was thought of as a Labor stronghold.

That seat had long been a Labor stronghold, but the latest redistribution reduced Labor's majority to an extremely marginal 1.2 percent.

Mr. John retained his parliamentary seat in the Labor stronghold of Pontypridd in south Wales with a huge 17,277 majority in the June 1987 general election.

The very high no vote in the Labor strongholds of Newcastle and the Lower Hunter offset the majority yes vote elsewhere, although the no margin was not high.

The city's urban population has long made the seat a Labor stronghold.