Votebook

Excellent advert from the BBC

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:01:32 +0100

Excellent advert from the BBC

The US Electoral College (video)

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:44:00 +0100

Click here for a link to a video from The Economist explaining the Electoral College used to choose the US President, its effects in recent elections, and a hint at what recent population changes have done to the prospects of the Democrats and Republicans in November’s Obama versus Romney line-up.

Analysis: Mayoral election

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:12:00 +0100

Boris Johnson has been re-elected as Mayor of London.

First round—
Boris Johnson (Conservative) 971,931 (+1.53%)
Ken Livingston (Labour) 889,918 (+3.92%)
Jenny Jones (Green) 98,913 (+1.33%)
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrat) 91,774 (-5.47%)
Siobhan Benita (Independent) 83,914 (n/a)
Lawrence Webb (UKIP) 43,274 (+1.05%)
Carlos Cortiglia (BNP) 28,751 (-1.54%)

Boris and Ken got 44.01% and 40.3% respectively, so a second round was needed. All of the other candidates were eliminated. 53.44% of those who had voted for one of the eliminated candidates put Boris or Ken as their second preference. Of those who did 82,880 picked Boris and 102,355 picked Ken.

Second round—
Boris Johnson (Conservative) 1,054,811 (-1.64%)
Ken Livingston (Labour) 992,273 (+1.65%)

Excellent!

In terms of the first round: everyone except Boris and Ken lost their £10,000 deposit.

The Greens overtook the Liberal Democrats for the first time (which was mirrored in the London-wide Assembly vote). Siobhan Benita did laudably for an independent, but many of those who fell for the bookies touting her as the third favourite to win may be kicking themselves. UKIP did okay considering it didn’t actually say UKIP next to their candidate on the ballot paper (see previous post). The BNP were trounced into last place - they were the only party other than the Liberal Democrats which saw their first round share of the vote fall: perhaps, as I expected, by picking a natively Uruguayan candidate they didn’t fool anyone into thinking they’re not racists and instead just annoyed many of their existing supporters.

Analysis: London Assembly

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:10:00 +0100

Labour gained two constituency seats on the London Assembly (Barnet & Camden and Ealing & Hillingdon). After applying the modified d’Hondt formula and awarding London-wide seats the make-up of the London Assembly is as follows—

Labour 12 (+4)
Conservative 9 (-2)
Green 2 (±0)
Liberal Democrat 2 (-1)
UKIP 0 (±0)
BNP 0 (-1)

UKIP would have regained London Assembly representation, for the first time since the 2004 election, (at the expense of the Liberal Democrats!) had they not fallen just short of the 5% threshold, perhaps due to an error in which put their tagline but not their party name on ballot papers.

The BNP were thrashed; the Assembly would need to be nearly twice as big for their vote share to have warranted a seat. The Christian Peoples Alliance - whose ballot paper tagline was explicitly opposed to marriage equality - got even fewer votes. The National Front came second to last; they were outpolled by an independent candidate.

There are only sixteen non-Conservative Assembly Members. This falls just short of the two-thirds needed to amend Mayoral budgets.

(Graphic from the BBC)

Analysis: Mayoral referenda and elections outside London

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:08:00 +0100

Outside London there were eleven referenda on, and two elections for, directly elected Mayors.

I know it’s Liverpool, and Labour had a very good Thursday, but Joe Anderson should be chuffed with his 59.33% majority, and first round victory, in an election with twelve candidates. The Labour candidate also won in Salford.

Doncaster voted to keep its Mayor by 62% to 38%.

Of the ten cities deciding whether or not to change to having a directly elected Mayor these were the results—

Bristol 53.3% Yes
Manchester 53.2% No
Bradford 55.1% No
Nottingham 55.7% No
Birmingham 55.8% No
Newcastle 61.9% No
Wakefield 62.2% No
Leeds 63.3% No
Coventry 63.6% No
Sheffield 65% No

So not much approval for directly elected Mayors, then. That’s a shame. I do support directly elected Mayors.

Having said that these cities are run by one local authority, rather than the thirty-three with whom the Greater London Authority shares power. They’d probably have constitutionally ended up with more power than the London Mayoralty. I don’t think I’d like that so much.

This was the wording of these Mayoral referenda—

“How would you like ______ council to be run? By a Leader who is an elected councillor chosen by the other elected councillors. This is how the council is run now or by a Mayor who is elected by voters. This would be a change from how the Council is run now.”

That’s not a yes / no question! What were the Electoral Commission thinking? There are schoolchildren who could have come up with a more appropriate referendum wording.

Analysis: local elections

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:03:00 +0100

Outside London it was a uniformly good night for Labour. Professors Rallings and Thrasher estimated a gain of 700 Councillors for Labour and a loss of 250 to 350 Councillors each for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Professor Travers predicted 700 to 800 gains for Labour, 500 to 600 losses for the Conservatives and 100 to 200 losses for the Liberal Democrats.

Of the seats that were up for grabs the results for the three main parties were—

Labour 2158 (+823)
Conservatives 1005 (-405)
Liberal Democrats 431 (-336)

Plaid Cymru lost forty-one seats and control of Gwynedd Council. The SNP didn’t do as well as many had predicted, but did make fifty-seven gains and now have control of two Councils; talk about the SNP governing Glasgow Council turned out to be hype, as Labour gained it from no overall control.

UKIP increased its vote share, but their number of Councillors is frozen at nine. The English Democrats lost both of their seats. The Greens made eleven gains, which gave them forty Councillors. Respect went from zero Councillors to five, all in Bradford. The BNP were wiped out, losing all six of the seats they were defending. The Liberals (not the Liberal Democrats, mind you) lost six Councillors and now have only four; I wonder whether some voters mistook them for Nick Clegg’s Party.

Dr Richard Taylor’s I’m an Independent and I’m Concerned About Health, the Community, Kidderminster Hospital and Things Party had a resurgence, its three gains mean it now has five Councillors. Congratulations to James Butcher, President of Sussex TorySoc, who now has seats on Lancing and Sompting Parish Councils after topping both of the polls in which he ran.

Of those which were contested there are now 75 Labour-controlled Councils (+32), 42 Conservative-controlled Councils (-12), 6 Liberal Democrat-controlled Councils (-1) and 51 Councils with no overall control (-18).

In this picture there’s lots of white: these Councils weren’t contested. The grey represents those Councils with no overall control (particularly prevalent in Scotland due to their use of the single transferable vote).

Please check out the BBC Vote 2012 pages for more details.

(Graphic from the BBC)

Articles of interest

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:23:44 +0100

Four days until polling day. Exciting!

I thought I’d share a few things I’ve read over the last few days.

This take on improving meritocracy from The Economist.

This rant about gendered advertising.

The unfortunate cancellation of Pride House London on Clapham Common.

Pink News covering Michael Gove’s investigation into Catholic schools encouraging their pupils to sign anti-equal marriage petitions.

And a round up of the Mayoral election polls from UK Polling Report, and a list of the Labour figures who have reservations about Ken Livingstone from The Telegraph.

Strengthen London government

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:52:00 +0100

Strengthen London government … is the topic of yet another article, this time from The Economist.

Apologies for the potential scarcity of posts in the coming fortnight or so: dissertation time. Six days until the Mayoral and GLA elections.

Lords reform

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:51:00 +0100

The Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill published its findings today. My highlight was the bit on electoral systems. They favour an STV-style system in the style of New South Wales. I’m not a fan of proportional representation, but at least their proposed system allows voters to express a preference for candidates rather than parties if they so wish. Given that the Committee are constrained by the Coalition Agreement, which did say the new Lords would be elected proportionately, I like their reasoning.

"Another country"

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:36:00 +0100

Here is yet another excellent article - from The Spectator - outlining the differences between London and the rest of the UK. Its tone is more pejorative towards London than most things on this topic I have shared here, but I still feel many of its points are spot on.

Gay Tories

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:22:00 +0100

Here is an article from The Guardian by Evan Davis, musing about why there are so many gays in the Conservative Party.

"London is a different country"

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:56:00 +0100

Here is a link to another Evening Standard article, excellently addressing London separatism: “London is a different country — it needs bigger thinking”.

Some nitwit (somewhat ad hominem of me, perhaps) in the comments proclaims that ‘London is English’ - a notion which is nonsensical and dying in my opinion.

Speaking of which, I nearly made a post yesterday entitled ‘London versus Scotland: round two’ - round one being a Hugo Rifkind article (viewable for those with a subscription to The Times) - in this post I would have included The Economist’s front cover (below) with one of a number of amateur ripostes (also below). The latter is a little illegible, unfortunately, but upon further inspection I realise that it is not in fact having a go at London, but rather taking note of the fact that London will (or perhaps has) come to the resentful realisation that it subsidises the rest of England.

Prof Tony Travers discussing the Mayoral election

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:57:36 +0100

Courtesy of the LSE Government Department’s HotSeat series, here is a video of Professor Tony Travers discussing the 2012 London Mayoral election.

With 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympic Games I...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:02:39 +0100

With 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympic Games I thought I’d post these - the London 2012 Olympics’ pictograms.

thebigpixture: London through the lens and the eyes of an avid...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:15:57 +0100

thebigpixture:

London through the lens and the eyes of an avid 21-year-old - imitating one of his favourite photographers … :::click-click:::

fuckyeahlondon: Tower Bridge London 2010 by nicolemissing.

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:14:36 +0100

fuckyeahlondon:

Tower Bridge London 2010 by nicolemissing.

Principal Agglomerations of the World

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:42:29 +0100

City Population’s List of the Principal Agglomerations of the World is one of my favourite reference resources - and, in my view, the definitive place to go for cities’ populations.

Cabinet for London

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 14:59:00 +0100

My boyfriend and I went to the Evening Standard’s Mayoral Debate on Wednesday. You can watch the whole thing here.

One of the candidates, Brian Paddick I think, criticised Boris for having delegated some of Mayoralty’s policing responsibilities to a Deputy Mayor. (We in London won’t have a Police Commissioner election; the Mayor gets these duties.) As long as a Deputy Mayor for Policing is accountable to the Greater London Authority I’m not too fussed. In fact, I agree with Martin Hoscik who asserts that a well executed and suitably accountable MOPC should be the first step to delivering a Cabinet for London.

Notional results for Lambeth

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:10:00 +0100

Because there is no ward-level data for general elections, it is difficult to calculate notional results for the Boundary Commission’s proposed constituencies. Thankfully, in 2010 Londoners went to the polls for both the local and general elections.

There is obviously no guarantee that people vote the same way for their MP and Councillors. Nonetheless I thought I’d pretend that there is and calculate some notional results for Lambeth’s six proposed constituencies.

Battersea & Vauxhall
Labour 36%
Conservative 32%
Liberal Democrat 22%

Bermondsey & Waterloo
Liberal Democrat 40%
Labour 29%
Conservative 18%

Brixton
Labour 46%
Liberal Democrat 24%
Conservative 16%

Clapham Common
Conservative 42%
Labour 26%
Liberal Democrat 22%

Mitcham
Labour 51%
Conservative 24%
Liberal Democrat 19%

Streatham & Tooting
Labour 42%
Conservative 25%
Liberal Democrat 25%

It will be nice to have for Lambeth to have a Tory seat again, even if five-eighths of it is in Wandsworth. I’m dissatisfied with a couple of instances of orphan wards, where Lambeth residents will be represented by an MP whose interests are overwhelmingly in another Borough. I’m not happy about Streatham South becoming part of Mitcham (the BNP came fourth in Mitcham & Morden in 2010), and I’m also unhappy about Bishop’s (the ward with the London Eye, Waterloo and County Hall) being subsumed into the constituency of the reprehensible Simon Hughes.

New series

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:50:43 +0100

New series of Have I Got News for You started yesterday.

Or, if you don’t mind waiting an extra couple of days for an extra ten minutes of funnies, Have I Got More News for You.