The Mayor election
Ken Livingstone may well lose to Boris Johnson next week. If he does, he should not blame Labour's national difficulties.
says the Guardian.
Now we only have polls to go on at the moment, and the polls are very erratic, partly this is because the 2nd preference votes are hard to estimate with any precision (as noted in the Economist this week) but even the 1st preferences are showing big differences.
But if we average them out, then it suggests Livingstone is performing better relative to the Labour Party than he did at the last election. Then he got 35.7% of the first preferences, when the opinion polls put Labour on 34.6%. This time he is polling an average of 40% when the opinion polls put Labour on 30.6%.
Of course the polls might be overstaing his share of the vote, although the above holds true even for the most pessimistic poll. And the London share of the vote for Labour might be higher than the national share of the vote, or more accurately might be higher relative to the rest of the UK share of the vote than it was back in 2001.
But if the polls are even nearly right, then Livinstone appears to be running about 10% above the Labour share, compared to 1% last time.
Labels: London Mayor
Oona King is not standing for London Mayor
The candidates are
in, and unless I've misread the rules, these are it for the election. So the Oliver Kamm campaign for Oona King to stand now lies in the write-in campaign. I've
warned that this would merely spoil the ballot paper, but I am well aware I cannot stop a Decent tidal wave, and of course this doesn't necessarily rule out its success - if (say) 20% of people spoilt their ballot paper for King I would say it was a success, if not a winning one. If more than 50% on the first ballot did so I'd say she had a moral victory. Anthony Wells will keep you
informed - so far he's not splitting out the King vote but there's no doubt he will when he can.
Labels: London Mayor
Wow
The BBC says of Ken Livingstone:
"So convinced is he of his value to the people of London that he is attempting to win an unprecedented third term as the capital's mayor."
I've checked, and they are right. It would be the first time the London Mayor has been elected for a third time.
Labels: London Mayor
"Writing-in" Oona King's name would simply spoil the ballot paper
An official response:
Writing in a candidate's name is not allowed in UK elections as in America. You must choose from the list of candidates on the paper; you cannot write in another person. This would indeed spoil the ballot paper. The most likely reason for rejection would be uncertainty.
This is a major blow to the "Oona King" for London Mayor campaign. The only way in which this can proceed is now for her to stand as an official candidate. The details are
here - she has until the 28th of this month.
Labels: London Mayor
