Sadiq Khan is holding the lead in the race to be London Mayor as the second day of counting begins, but challenger Shaun Bailey has so far overperformed expectations.
Khan was expected to win the mayoral election comfortably according to the polls, but with approximately half the vote that has not quite been the case so far.
With seven of London’s 14 London Assembly constituencies counted, the Labour incumbent has only outperformed Bailey in two of them, albeit by a large margin in those that he did win.
Lambeth & Southwark and North East were both huge Labour wins, whilst the remaining five areas counted on Friday resulted in wins for the Conservative candidate.
However, the overall picture is still largely positive for the former Tooting MP, as overall he holds a lead on first preference votes.
So far, 487,104 people have Khan listed as a first preference (39%) compared to 462,837 for Bailey (37%).
There are two further advantages Khan holds over his opponent.
The first is that three of the five Conservative London Assembly seats in 2016 were counted today, and Labour hold five of the seven remaining seats, including three seats (City & East, Enfield & Haringey and Greenwich & Lewisham) where the party held huge majorities.
So in order for Bailey to secure the London Mayor victory, he would still require a huge swing in the remaining results.
Moreover, if neither candidate gets 50% of the vote, as looks incredibly likely, then second preferences will come into play.
Again, this is an area where Khan’s lead is looking healthy.
Across the first seven seats to be announced, Bailey only secured more second preferences in one location – Bexley and Bromley – the biggest Conservative seat across the entire capital.
In total, Khan’s second preference lead is over 60,000 votes, and whilst not all second preferences will count, since any second preferences where the top two have selected each other will not be used, the vast majority are likely to remain in place.
A big reason why Khan may be so comfortable on second preferences is the resurgence of the Green Party, who finished third in the mayoral race in all seven areas counted and are comfortably third overall.
It was a great evening for Sian Berry, who looks set to retain her London Assembly seat as the Green Party’s first list candidate, and also secured the most second preferences in six of the seven counts, although with just 8% of first preferences she won’t trouble Bailey or Khan.
It was a string of bad results for the Liberal Democrats however, as Luisa Porritt has secured just 3.7% of the vote so far.
Niko Omilana is the only other candidate to hit 2%, the independent outperforming Laurence Fox, Brian Rose and Count Binface in the race for fifth place.
Featured image: “The London Conference 2018” by centreforlondon is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
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Says a lot for the electors that an idiot who went campaigning in Brentwood and Watford could have run Khan so close! Sadly, says a lot for Labour too !