Until such time as the London Elects bods get around to providing ward level data and I can go to town on that, I have been fiddling around with 2008 and 2012 data to see how Boris (hurrah for his re-election, btw) fared on first choice votes relative to his ideological confrères in blue.
Chart one shows the percentage of Boris's vote achieved by each Conservative assembly candidate in 2008 and 2012 and in each case the candidate fared worse than Boris in 2012 than in 2008, or if you prefer, Boris outdid the candidate each time. So, taking
a wholly random example, South West's Tony Arbour polled 76,913 votes to Boris's 90,061 in 2008 - or 85.4% of Boris's total. In 2012 the figures were 69,151 to 92,180 and 75%. This gives a Boris Factor or BF of 10.4.
The lowest BF is in Bexley & Bromley, at 1.8. B&B is a pretty solid seat, so that comes as no great surprise, and it could be argued that folk were more inclined to vote for the slate than elsewhere. Lambeth & Southwark had a BF of 4.9, suggesting that those poor, benighted souls were sticking with the local Streatham lad made bad.
At the other end of scale, Barnet & Camden had an epic BF of 24.5, and Brent & Harrow's was 21.6.
More later, maybe.
From a high level perspective, we can say that a Tory has now twice been elected mayor in a city that is otherwise pro-Labour. Boris has somehow found a way to cross party lines, and its darned impressive.
ReplyDeleteAI - It surely is.
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