What a highly presumptive statement. Brian Paddick really out of the race already?

He must feel he’s in trouble! Chameleon Ken has had a long run, and enough is enough. London needs a fresh face, and a cleaner administration. Brian Paddick is a serious candidate, and worthy of any truly ‘progressive’ voter’s first preference. He’ll certainly get mine. And Livingstone won’t get my second, if I give one.

I read somewhere, I think, that essentially Brian Paddick is going to do a lot better than people think due to second preference votes. This kind of announcement is counter-productive to Ken’s cause for me as it just splits the vote away from him more amongst “lefties” that perhaps don’t like the idea of two horse races being fashioned out of fantasy in an electoral system that doesn’t really support two horse races.

In a shock move, Tony Robinson and Polly Toynbee are telling people to vote Labour. That’ll rock the London mayoral contest to its core.

Hasn’t Qaradawi signed it too?

Brian Paddick really out of the race already?

Yep.

I don’t get a vote in London, so I haven’t been paying much attention (is anyone else still in apart from Brian?), but assuming (as implied by comments above) that they use an STV system, surely the obvious thing is to vote for your preferred candidate with Ken as fallback. If it was genuinely Ken v. Boris at this stage, Ken obviously, but what Compass should be saying is Get Out There And Vote. Don’t stay at home and assume Boris is going to lose just because he plays the fool!

Janvrin @ 4 – actually, it is a bit of a shock move. By being attached to the moderate sections of Labour, Ken negates some of the loony lefty epithets that people try to attach to him. Equally, the range of people on the list, from Julian Le Grand (very close to Brown/New Labour/right of Labour), through John Cruddas (soft left faction leader?), a public sector union sec gen in the form of Dave Prentis and ending up with Diane Abbot and Tony Benn means that just about the entire Labour family is supporting Ken.

I’m guessing that all of Sian Berry’s votes will go to Ken on transfer. Equally, the split in Respect means that there may be more votes there for Ken. The UKIP members on the GLA left to join Veritas, which promptly collapsed, leaving them to form the One London party, which seems to have done pretty little since then. I’d suggest that second preferences would go to Boris. I see why people would vote for Brian Paddick; however, I don’t see him coming in the top two, so transfers to him are irrelevant.

I would take a guess at Boris having most first preferences and Ken winning on transfers.

xD.

Well of course every Labourite is getting behind Ken, why would the party even at individual level want to lose control of the biggest bragging rights?

>>It will either be Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson.

Yep, I didn’t bother reading on after this sentence. What meaningful evidence is there for this lazy assertion?

A poll of 240 people I imagine.

Comedy gold. A group of Labour members and supporters are assembled by a Labour think tank to call on people to support the Labour candidate, and do so using a Lib Dem campaigning slogan that only works or applies in a First Past The Post election, when this isn’t using FPTP and is factually innaccurate anyway.

Posit: If last two are Ken and Boris, Brian’s transfers split, Boris loses, Ken wins
If last two are Ken and Brian, Brian picks up Boris’s transfers, Brian wins
If last two are Brian and Boris, then something very strange has happened.

Ergo, Boris can’t win, but if you’re worried he might, vote Brian first, Ken 2nd as Ken will undoubtedly be in top 2. If you want to defeat Ken, the only way to do it is vote Brian 1st, Boris 2nd. Voting Boris 2nd doesn’t hurt Tories or anti-Ken voters at all but if Boris beats Brian into 2nd in the first ballot Ken has won.

As soon as the anti-Ken press get hold of that idea, the race opens up in a very interesting way.

Labour supporters back Labour candidate != news
Labour supporters show zero knowledge of an electoral system their party cobbled together? Well done there team.

Its on the Supplementary Vote, which is a variant of the Alternative Vote, the main differences being
- that voters get to vote 1st and 2nd preferences, not to number 1,2,3,4
- that the second preferences are distributed to the top two candidates (ie, there is no exhaustive process of eliminating the less popular candidates in order), counting the 2nd preferences of all those outside the top 2.

Here is the 2004 result
http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/elections/mayoral.jsp
- however, all second preferences were counted and tallied (I am not sure why; these include the second prefs of the leading two candidates, who are still in, which makes the result harder to read).

So it will come down to Boris versus Ken (unless somebody else can knock one of them into third on the first round, which would be a very big achievement) indeed.

So Ken is going to need second preferences from LibDems, Greens and others to win the election, which requires a broad and plural progressive campaign to show that there is a progressive majority for London.

On the other hand, it seems to me that Boris Johnson is much less likely to win second preferences (except from the right) than a much more moderate Tory, who might have tried to pitch for LibDem votes and some Greens.

Voters who vote, say, 1. LibDem, 2. Green would not see their vote count in the event of a Ken/Boris run-off, and the tactical argument about second preferences is an important one to explain.

To be honest, I was going to vote for Brian Paddick first initially, but his comments around the Archbishop controversy just stinked of ignorance. Now I’m not so sure. Either way, I won’t be voting for Boris.

* MatGB’s tactical arguments for different second choice dynamics rather miss the point. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine prospect of there being a different 1-2 runoff (or if you think there is, you could do very well with Mr Ladbrokes for a very small stake).Neither main party would be able to engineer the tactical elimination of the other (practically), and would not benefit from doing so anyway, and no other organised group of voters could try this. (But just to inhabit this parallel universe for a second, It would be a humiliation for the Conservative leadership if Ken lost while the Tories were third: Apart from the Martin Bright wing of anti-Ken sentiment, there are very few in the anti-Ken camp who would see removing him for the LibDems as mission accomplished).

* I was happy to sign the letter when asked. It seems to me that its principal argument is about Ken being a progressive choice, and well worth backing to win. And since there is a (small) ‘anybody but Ken’ group forming on the left, it is about the logic of that being in practice to go as far as saying ‘yes, Boris over Ken’ or being neutral between Boris and Ken (which might assist Boris in practice).

* Nor it is it inconceivable that Boris could win in a Boris/Ken run-off (though the system is harder for him than first-past-the-post if he has a narrower appeal than Ken to non-Tory/Labour voters). It would depend on the margin of first preferences, and on the way transfers break. In a low and differential turnout election, where Boris can moblise the suburbs and Ken can’t get the Labour vote out, the Tories would have a chance. (But a different Tory might have had more chance).

So then make a press release that says “Stop being idiots you minority Lefty idiots, campaiging against Ken is only going to serve to help Boris, regardless of if you want a Green, Labour or Lib Dem candidate to win” rather than a statement that is rather presumptuous in its tone over who the top two will be.

I’ll echo Publicansdecoy again, where is the evidence that this is a two horse race?

I’m sure my leftie credentials will take a battering, but I wouldn’t vote for Ken.

Ever.

I’m not a Londoner, but surely our capital – not to mention one of the world’s most important financial centres – can do better than the shower on offer?

2004 Mayoral Election 1st preference votes:

Livingstone – 685,541
Norris – 542,423
Hughes – 284,645

London MPs: 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats, 1 is Respect.

Aaron I agree with you- I just throw my hands up in despair at the choice of candidates we have. We have Livingstone, Johnson the joker and Paddick. Irrespective of who I vote for, it’d be nice next time to have some candidates that we could feel proud of- I don’t sense that anyone is particularly enthused by this lot. Everyone is voting against the other candidates not for their own.

I absolutely agree that London deserves better than what’s on offer.

>>”Let us be clear. Ken Livingstone is not perfect. Show us a politician who is”

What a defeatist statement. I don’t expect politicians to be ‘perfect’, but it is too much to expect a certain minimum? A genuine and above all consistent commitment to certain key progressive ideas? Sadlty, I think most if not all of the candidates (Ken included) fall short.

@ Sunder: “There doesn’t seem to be any genuine prospect of there being a different 1-2 runoff (or if you think there is, you could do very well with Mr Ladbrokes for a very small stake)”

If I was a little less worried about paying the rent next month, the money would already be down. I genuinely think this contest is a lot more open than it ever has been. A lot of people like Boris personally, but think he’s a bumbling buffoon, I don’t think he has any chance of beating Norris’s score. Paddick has genuine respect across the city and could really shake things up. Sure, Bright’s lot might not support him, but anti-Ken interests in other areas? People that normally don’t bother voting?

The Supplementary Vote is the correct name for it, I prefer “Hennesy’s Bloody Stupid System” myself, unlike AV, id doesn’t eliminate tactical decisions hald as much, but instead makes them even more important, which is why it’s Bloody Stupid.

Persuade a third of those that voted for Norris to put Paddick 1st, Boris 2nd, and persuade a bunch of Labour-but-not-Ken types plus floating voters to vote Paddick first (give him a chance) then Ken second (better than Boris) then it’s a whole new ball game.

If I were still living in London, I’d be actively campaigning for Brian, but as I’m now in Yorkshire I’m finding it fascinating to watch.