It amused me to read the Standard’s assessment of Ken’s chances, as it promised to report even-handedly on the election campaign when it comes. It seemed to me in 2008 that the relentless mud-slinging of the old-style Standard must have been a factor in Ken’s defeat. Boris (I recall) was praised for fighting a clean campaign; but he didn’t need to badmouth Ken as the Standard was doing it for him every day.

If indeed, under its new owner, the Standard *is* going to be even-handed next time, perhaps that will improve Ken’s chances. I hope so.

Interesting, but not staggering.

Lest we forget: in May 2010 Labour won London 36.6/34.5% and 38 seats to 28+7. it’s a matter of getting the vote out next time.

It isn’t just about getting the core vote out and running vigourous campaigns, though both will help.

It is also about overcoming the perception that Ken was an inner london candidate who did nothing for outer london. In reality Boris, having promised a lot for outer london, came in and cancelled lots of projects in outer london.

But the perception remains because we don’t have a london newspaper to highlight what happens across london.

Also – we have to keep in mind that a lot of Lib Dem 2nd votes went to the Tories are are hardly less likely to do so now.

Don’t want to sound negative, but here’s some devil’s advocacy-

What you’ve basically said is that Ken lost by a greater margin than Labour did in the general election.
One could form the conclusion that Ken is less popular in these areas than the Labour party is generally.
One could question the wisdom of our candidate selection…

But enough of that. Unity. Onwards and upwards.

Bit less of this perhaps?

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/09/livingstone-al-qaradawi-is-a-leading-progressive-voice-in-muslim-world/

Lloyd @ 11:39 am:

Not necessarily. It could equally, and more reasonably, be interpreted that London had swung away and then has been coming back to Labour over recent years. If we extend the comparison to 2006, we see Labour in 2010 added 90 seats and regained 10 Boroughs.

The more one looks at it, the more Johnson’s result seems a momentary glitch. It’ll need more than a concerted media-love-in and the Evening Standard lies-and-misrepresentation campaign to deliver the same in 2012.

- In Ealing North, Boris beat Ken by 41% to 39%. In 2010, Steve Pound crushed his Tory opponent 50% to 30%.

Steve Pound is a wit and a charmer. Ken is neither. He can only do mean-spirited, cruel humour in his horrible nasal whine.

- In Hammersmith, Boris beat Ken 41% to 40%. In 2010, Andy Slaughter saw off a well funded Tory campaign by 44% to 36%.

Sadly, there are still a few racists round Hammersmith way. But Ken won’t get their votes.

- In Westminster North, Boris beat Ken by 46% to 38%. But in 2010 Karen Buck beat one of David Cameron’s personal friends by 44% to 39%.

Karen Buck is really nice and that personal touch still counts for something in politics, even today. Joanna Cash didn’t have that pure niceness. Ken hasn’t got it either.

The Standard may have gone all soft and slebby in the hands of an oligarch but Andrew Gilligan is alive and well and Gilligan’s truths will out.

Ken is one of yesterday’s men. He still has Simon Fletcher running his affairs, so that old Socialist Action thing hasn’t gone away. Rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, enough Londoners think he may be (in his own phrase) a “chiselling little crook” to make it unlikely he’ll ever get back.

Lloyd

you are right that that is one lesson we could take from the figures.

But perhaps that’s why we have to weigh up wider trends when looking at this.

Labour’s revival in 2009 and 2010 can be seen here – http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/voting-intention/yougov (non-yougov charts show similar trends but with slightly different figures)

You’ll see that Labour had bottomed out at about 25% in mid 2008 – when Ken suffered his defeat. At the same time the Tories maxed-out at a typical 46%.

You’ll also see Labour then steadilly recovered to around 30% by mid 2010 – when Labour did well in the general election in London. Meanwhile the Tories fell to around 38% by then.

Labour is now averaging about 37% in those polls – while the tories are in a honeymoon period on about 43% (note the immediate bounce suggests it is a honeymoon influence rather than a more gradual trend)

So in 2 years time – Ken may find himself with a favourable wind behind Labour.

Of course the Lib Dems could back Boris – and that would probably undermine Ken a lot.

The truth is Mr Johnson was extremely lucky to win last time. The final result was Boris 53%, Ken 47% – a reasonable margin you might think. But it took place at a time when the national YouGov poll for May 2008 showed Con 47% as against Labour 23%. Even if this contained some boost from Boris’s victory, the previous month was Con 44%, Lab 26%. (I’m using YouGov because they called the Mayoral election final result spot-on).

Unless we assume Boris can somehow build up a really enormous personal vote and the Conservatives manage an enormous mid-term lead against all predictions, he may well find himself begging for guest slots on HIGNFY by Summer 2012.

The London mayoral elections may carry a larger personal and regional component than a lot of other contests, but the national trend still matters. The last time was at the Tory high water mark in the polls and the margin wasn’t that great. Whoever the candidates are, especially remembering that the London anti-Labour swing was lower than expected this May, the Conservatives will be lucky to retain the Mayoralty.

By the way has anyone found out the truth behind that weird (indeed positively Rasmussian) ComRes poll with its biased question order?

http://www.comres.co.uk/Londonpoliticssept10.aspx
that you highlighted here:

That you highlighted here:

https://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/09/20/london-media-rig-poll-to-boost-boris/

There must have been some serious mess-up with the way the poll was conducted – particularly as two of the commissioners are broadcasters, with impartiality obligations. I can only guess that they decided to throw questions at the respondents at random, and it just looks like preparing the ground for “Vote Boris”.

It’s an online poll as was their latest Sunday Mirror/IoS one, which ComRes haven’t been doing up to now much; so it may be new people or inexperience in a new medium.

Also ComRes clearly don’t have their own voter panel, and, if I understand correctly, get 30% from someone else’s and the rest from whatever the internet equivalent is of picking on people in the street. The latter group must be skewed by which websites they target people on. And of course those replying can lie about themselves or where they live, even more than people in the street. Also response rate must be much lower and because it’s a completely new sample each time, you can’t build up background information the way you can with your own panel.

Roger

The Boris campaign poll (and lets not pretend it was anything else) can partly get away with it because it wasn’t claiming to be a full voting intention poll. It didn’t weight the results at all according to population make up. And it didn’t ask in isolation.

So in reality that was just one of a series of questions in a survey. Not a poll. But of course that is intentional so that the campigners (be the broadcasters or not) can report it wrongly as a proper poll.

Ken should win it, but in a cosmopolitan city like London he’s going to have to target his own party as well as the other two.

Inciting racial hatred, trying to stop immigrants from sending money to their families, burqa bashing . . . unless Ken takes a principled stand against his comrades in BNPlite he’ll struggle.

C’mon, guys. Ken was a great mayor, but he’s had his time. 99% of Londoners don’t think that Ken could win against Boris when he failed to beat him last time.

blanco – what weighting mechanism did you use for your poll that found that 99% figure?

I doubt if Ken’s record of support for both Qaradawi and Irish republicans will go down a bomb (pun intended) with Londoners if the security alert for Irish and Islamist threats continue in their current elevations.

Flowerpower

I don’t think either of those idiotic cliches and slurs make much different to how the public see Ken, any more than bonker borris turns off voters by having marched some girl to an abortion clinic when he knocked her up or hiring a thug to beat up a rival.

Turning such issues into cartoony impressions like that just doesn’t make much of a dent these days.

Margin4error @ 15

I think it is you who is trading in cartoony impressions and merely resorting to cheap verbal abuse instead of dealing with the substance.

Within the past fortnight (20th Sept) Ken Livingstone has given an interview to Muslim News in which he reaffirms his backing for Qaradawi.

he is one of the leading progressive voices in the Muslim world……. and we should support him”.

Let’s leave aside the anti-semitism etc and just take a look at some of Qaradawi’s teachings and see if we share Ken’s view that they are “progressive”:

circumcision is better for a woman’s health and it enhances her conjugal relation with her husband…………

if a husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife and he cannot address these through reasoning with her or sleeping apart from her, then it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands………

What should be the punishment for homosexuality? “Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication [i.e. lashing], or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.”

If you don’t think Ken should have to pay a political price for supporting a guy like this, then you are, to say the least…..inconsistent.