The Ascent of (one) Man

Mr Mustard hopes that you like history as he is going to delve into GLA elections back to their first year, the year 2000.

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	41,583
Labour	Gordon	41,032
Lib Dems	Davies	22,295
Green	Dunn	14,768
London Socialist	Udwin	3,488
UKIP	Nielsen	2,115
Maharishi N.P.	Derksen	1,081
Total		126,362
Turnout	136,384	35%

The number of people who vote for the local candidate can be less than the number who turn out and vote for the mayor.

Look, Brian only won in the year 2000 by 551 votes (if only 551 people had not done this...). That was when hardly anyone knew who he was. Surely after 12 years of going his own way and making many decisions that have proven to be very unpopular enough people will vote against him to send him on his way?

Here are the results for 2004.

  

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	47,640
Labour	Anderson	36,121
Lib Dems	Simpson	23,603
Green	Dunn	11,921
UKIP	Nielsen	8,685
Respect	Wheatley	5,150
Total		133,120
Turnout	135,034	38.4%

There you see the effect of about 5,000 previous labour voters who switched to the conservatives, a majority of 11,521. Turnout up a little but not a significant turnout.

On to 2008

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	72,659
Labour	Gavron	52,966
Liberal Democrats	Russell	22,213
Green	Dunn	16,782
UKIP	Nielsen	3,678
Christian	Adebayo	3,536
English Dems	Stevens	2,146
Left List	Hoefing	2,074
Veritas	Dare	510
Total		176,564
Turnout	180,007	47.8%

There has been activity on Twitter suggesting that low turnout is favoured so that Coleman still gets re-elected but given that with a much increased turnout in 2008 a doubled majority perhaps a lower turnout would be preferable. Naturally, one needs the right people to turn out and the right ones to stop at home.

You can see from the above that voting for any candidate other than the Conservative or Labour one is unlikely to lead to your first choice vote winning. Much better to vote tactically in the Anyone But Coleman method to try and make sure we free ourselves of his tyrannical yoke. The five candidates this year are

Coleman - Conservative

Dismore - Labour

Richards - Lib Dem

Poppy - Green

Corby - UKIP

Only the first two have a serious prospect of winning and a recent ComRes poll had Dismore 1% ahead but that poll was based on a small number of electors.

We have had enough of Brian Coleman, please vote Dismore.

Please ask your neighbours and if they ask 2 friends each and so on ( remember the story about the sage who asked for grains of rice from the king with 1 one the first square of a chess board then 2 on the second and then 4 on the third and so on ) by the time20 consecutive requests have been asked by everybody then 1million people will have been asked which is mote than the size of the electorate.

We need this sort of exponential growth to get rid of Brian. If would be great if the effects of blogs and twitter could be measured and maybe they will be one day.

For now, this is Mr Mustard doing his bit to say please let's not suffer Brian and his little ways any longer.

Please hold your nose and Vote for Andrew Dismore (whatever your party allegiance. You can still vote for Ken or Boris and against Brian).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard