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May 05, 2008
Chewing over Mayoral second preferences
So we now have the technical data for the 2nd preferences in the mayoral ballot. The most interesting things to note are:
(i) Only 0.17% of 2nd choice votes were spoilt / rejected for reasons other than being left blank.
(ii) Over 4 in 5 people who voted (81.57%) chose to cast a 2nd preference vote.
However, there are still questions to be worked out about exactly how many people's second choice votes were valid and successfully transferred. According to the London Elects site:
Boris gained 257,792 2nd choice votes, but only 124,977 of them transferred to him in the second round - just under half.
Ken gained 303,198 2nd choice votes, but only 135,089 of them transferred to him in the second round - only 44.5%.
As the London Elects site states: "on papers where the 1st and 2nd choice votes are for the top two candidates, the 2nd choice votes are not counted." There are two plausible and complementary explanations for why these 260066 people (10.5% of all who voted) didn't have their 2nd choice vote count:
(i) the "we like them bothers" - people who either voted Boris 1 Ken 2, or Ken 1 Boris 2.
(ii) the "party faithful" - those that 'double-voted' and marked their second choice the same as their first choice (so Boris Boris, or Ken Ken) in the misguided hope that that would somehow benefit their candidate more.
Posted by malcolmclark on May 05, 2008
Comments
Wouldn't it be less confusing if people voted 1,2 rather than putting a X in two separate columns? i.e. AV
Posted by: Andrew Kitching at May 5, 2008 11:10 AM
The software that analysed the ballot papers did not accept "Ken, Ken" or "Boris, Boris" as valid. Unfortunately there was not a specific reason code for marking these, so the first choice was marked as valid, and the second as rejected with reason code "Uncertain". At least that is how it was done in the Barnet and Camden counting area. I think these would have gone into the "Rejected votes (2nd choice)" total (not more than 4214 by my calculation if you subtract out the blank second choices). So these 300924 people (as I make it -- 260066 are the people whose second choice did count) must have voted "Ken, Boris" (132,815) or "Boris, Ken" (168,109). Perhaps they like to be on the winning side, and this way one of their votes was bound to be cast for the eventual winner (assuming you believe the opinion polls). Or they thought that the second choice was some sort of anti-vote. Or they just like them both.
Posted by: Charles Wicksteed at May 11, 2008 06:09 PM
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