It looks like the May’s election for Mayor of London will be a close run thing. A new poll
today from YouGov has Ken Livingstone two points ahead of Boris Johnson – a big turnaround from the
eight point lead Boris had in June:
Ken shouldn’t be popping any champagne corks yet, of course. His lead is well within the poll’s margin of error, and there’s three and a half months to go before election day. But he’s certainly
looking more likely to topple Boris than he did seven months ago.
So why the change? YouGov’s Peter Kellner has a good article on the poll’s details here, but two key points jump out from the numbers:
1. Labour voters are getting behind Ken. In June, 21 per cent of Londoners who said they’d vote Labour in a general election supported Boris over Ken for mayor. Now, that’s almost halved to 11 per cent.
2. Boris’ ‘out of touch’ problem is growing. YouGov ask voters which qualities they think
each of the candidates have. Boris has a big lead when it comes to ‘charisma’, but he’s also seen to be far more ‘out of touch’. Just 13 per cent say he’s ‘in touch with the concerns of ordinary people’ – down from 20 per cent in June – while 40 per cent say Ken is.
The poll also gives us an idea of the major issues at play in this election. The top two are crime and transport, followed by the cost of living, creating jobs and affordable housing. Boris may
hope he can make crime an even more prominent issue, as that’s one area where the numbers tilt in his favour.
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