Join Us For Byline Times Elections Live
The Byline Times team will be dissecting the most consequential local elections in memory, as the results come in from the London and West Midlands Mayoral elections
Byline Times will be hosting a live podcast this afternoon at 4pm UK time to discuss what is set to be the most consequential set of local elections of recent years.
Our editor Hardeep Matharu, Executive Editor Peter Jukes, Chief Reporter Josiah Mortimer and myself will be dissecting the results as votes are counted for the West Midlands and London mayoral elections. You can set a reminder for the broadcast here:
Overall the results we have seen so far have given a clear picture of the country turning decisively against the Conservative party, despite the party hanging onto the Tees Valley mayoralty and being expected to hang onto the West Midlands mayoralty later today.
However, there has been a bout of nervousness among Labour people in the past 24 hours about the possibility of a shock defeat for Sadiq Khan, with one source close to the Mayor telling us on Friday that they were “really worried” about a potential upset.
That the result in the capital should be in any doubt whatsoever is truly remarkable given the scale of the swing across the rest of the country against the Conservatives.
However, those around the London Mayor fear that three big factors could potentially still lead to a victory for his Conservative opponent Susan Hall today.
Gerrymandering
The first is that the Government has deliberately changed the voting system to First Past the Post in order to make it easier for their candidate to win.
In previous elections voters were able to back their first preference candidate, while using their second preference tactically. In practice this meant that lots of Green Party and Lib Dem voters were able to lend their votes to the Labour candidate. Without that security blanket in place, those around Khan fear he could end up losing. The change has also made the contest harder to poll, given the difficulty pollsters have in accurately measuring how people remember voting previously.
Voter ID
The other big change has been the introduction of Voter ID. As Byline has reported this week, the change has already caused real problems with voters turned away for having the wrong type of ID, using their maiden names, or even having grown facial hair. Previous research suggests that Labour voters are more likely to be without the correct ID. And in a close race, as both the Labour and Conservative campaigns now think this is, this could make all the difference.
Vote Leave-Style Lies
The other factor worrying Khan’s team is the campaign of lies and scaremongering waged by the Conservatives in London. As Byline Times has reported, voters across the capital were issued with fake driving charge notices which falsely warned voters that Khan had committed to introducing pay-per-mile in the city. When combined with ongoing anger in the suburbs about the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to the edges of Greater London last year, City Hall now fear that a wave of angry motorists could help dislodge the mayor.
With early turnout figures suggesting that the vote is up a bit in some outer London Conservative-voting boroughs and down a bit in some inner London Labour boroughs, it is possible that this could end up making the result much closer than the opinion polls have suggested.
Nerves in City Hall did dissipate somewhat last night once the full turnout figures were released however, with the Khan campaign now privately expecting that the result will be merely much closer than expected, rather than an actual defeat.
However, with the count only just starting this morning we may not know which way this will ultimately go until potentially late this evening, or even tomorrow, given the votes will be counted by hand.
Either way, the potential closeness of the result in London, and the shameless way in which the Conservatives have fought this campaign, is likely to tell us a lot about what to expect at the upcoming general election.
For an in depth discussion of all this, and much more, please do join us this afternoon at 4pm UK time as we analyse the results live.