Green voters backed Sadiq over Zac by 5:1 in London Mayoral race
Green voters backed Sadiq Khan over Zac Goldsmith in the London mayoral race by nearly 5:1, new figures have revealed.
The data released by London Elects shows that, contrary to reports that Green voters might flock to ‘environmentalist’ Zac Goldsmith, they overwhelmingly backed Labour when giving their second preference for London Mayor – the vote that was counted after Sian Berry was eliminated from the Supplementary Vote ballot.
Sadiq Khan got 71,027 Green 2nd preference votes to Goldsmith’s 14,496 – meaning the latter secured just 20.4% of Labour’s second preference support.
In fact, the Women’s Equality Party’s Sophie Walker got more second preference votes among Greens than the Conservatives – despite the fact that casting a vote for a smaller party is ineffective under the SV system. Walker got 16,601 Green second preferences, while the Lib Dem’s Caroline Pigeon also got more backing than Goldsmith among Berry voters – 18,697 – meaning Goldsmith came in fourth among Greens’ second prefs.
Among Sadiq Khan voters – those that backed him for 1st preference – 298,932 picked the Greens for their second preference, while 111,971 of Goldsmith voters did the same. That puts levels of secondary Green support among Labour voters at nearly 3:1 over Goldsmith backers.
The findings may come as a surprise given that the London Federation of Green Parties voted not to endorse a candidate for second preference in the Mayoral race – unlike most previous elections – as neither candidate would meet the Greens.
The findings may also come as a surprise given that Goldsmith has frequently presented himself as an environmentalist, with some in the Greens viewing him as a potential ally.
But the levels of support for Khan could be an indication of Green voters’ hostility to what was widely criticised as a racially-tinged ‘dog whistle’ campaign by Zac Goldsmith, focusing on issues of ‘extremism’ against a Muslim candidate – and the fact that Green voters are still overwhelmingly on the left of the political spectrum.
The only question is…who are the 1,604 Britain First voters who 2nd preferenced Sian Berry? Or the 3,826 die-hards who both first and second preferenced the Greens? Or the 5892 UKIP voters who also backed Sian? (We could go on) Politics is a strange place, sometimes…
In fact you can so much fun with the data. We are within the top three transfer choices of all the other candidates except BNP, Britain First and UKIP. BNP and Britain First are only in the top three of each other and UKIP, UKIP gets high numbers of 2nd preferences only from BNP, Britain First and the Tories.
The other two parties that are popular 2nd choices across a wide spectrum are the Tories and Labour (both 8 out of 11). I do wonder if that is partly because people didn’t want to waste their vote. No other party (other than them two and us) got more than three. The Lib Dems were only in the top 3 with us, Labour and the Tories – none of the other smaller parties’ supporters like them.
You could go even better, who are the 898 Berry supporters that gave their second vote to the British Nazi Party? Or the 584 BNP supporters (more than 5% of their vote!) that gave their second choice to Sian?!?
It’s a bit like in Northern Ireland, where there were always a few transfers going to/from Sinn Fein from/to DUP/TUP/PUP etc. The voters have truly spoken, the bastards…
I’m amazed any of them backed Zac Goldsmith. I’m told the only reason he got the job at The Ecologist was because his uncle owned it.
I’d like to know about the contrarians who put George Galloway first and Zac Goldsmith second! Or the UKIP, BF and BNP voters who put Khan second. !!!
Its good Greens didnt endorse Sadiq Khan.