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In a nice change from the previous 12 months, the ‘results’ that Londoners are breathlessly waiting for right now have nothing to do with Covid. Unless you’ve wilfully misunderstood the polling officer’s instructions, you won’t have stuck anything up your nose and wiggled it about for ten seconds before stuffing it into a plastic tube. Instead, you will have exercised your democratic right to cast your vote for London’s next mayor (plus new London Assembly members).
What am I even voting for?
Three things: London mayor, London Assembly constituency member and London Assembly Londonwide member. So you’ll be given three separate ballot papers.
- London mayor: There are 20 candidates for the mayoral race. The four that matter are Sadiq Khan (Labour), Shaun Bailey (Conservative), Sian Berry (Green) and Luisa Porritt (LibDem). There’s also the usual selection of deposit-forfeiting delusional randoms, including Count Binface and Niko Omilana off of ye olde YouTube.
- London Assembly constituency member: This is who you would like to represent the area you live in and campaign for local issues at the London Assembly.
- London Assembly Londonwide member: This is who you want to represent the whole of the city at the London Assembly.
When can I vote?
Polling stations opened this morning and will remain open until 10pm tonight (Thursday May 6). You’ll need your polling card, though.
When can I expect to hear results? I’m agog…
If you’re one of those people who likes nothing better than late-nighting with a couple of bottles of a big red and a swingometer (not me, obviously), you might be disappointed. Normally we could expect results to start filtering through in the early hours and into tomorrow. But what with Covid safety restrictions etc, we probably won’t get the results before Saturday.
Who’s going to be our next mayor, then?
Great question from the lady at the back! It’s a tough one to call. The last year has seen an intense focus on the rôle that government and the mayor play in the running of the delicate systems of our city, so there may be a fair few voters who would normally have voted the way they always do who might now think about changing their minds. On the other hand, Khan has been polling consistently better than his nearest rival Shaun Bailey, with always more than a ten-point lead over him.