You lucky people, it's Psephology Day to-day. We begin with a comment Mr. Pokery left regarding the distribution of votes.

It seems counter-intuitive to me that despite there being so much opposition to the two iconic major party candidates, these two major party candidates both seem to be set to increase their shares of the vote and there does not seem to be a swing away from the big two in favour of all the minor candidates!

It is worth recalling the very unusual circumstances of June 2004. There was a stunningly unpopular Labour government, a Conservative party that was whistling to its core vote, and plenty of parties going after the votes of the disaffected. On top of this, Labour decided to combine the council and London votes with the European elections; that gave anti-European parties (at that time, just UIP) a boost, and created a mentality that people could spread their crosses around a little more than usual. They had two or three votes, why not?

In the 2004 London mayoral election, Con-Lab combined for 65.9% of the vote; Con-Lab-LD for 81.2%. In the top-up lists, Con-Lab had 53.5%, Con-Lab-LD took 70.4%. Even in the constituencies, 25% of votes went outside the big three. That's the lowest share of the vote for the serious parties since the introduction of the universal franchise.

Rightly or wrongly, attention in this year's election has centred around the candidates of Labour (Mr. Livingstone*) and the Conservatives (Mr. Johnson). Mr. Paddick (Liberal Democrats) has been invited to all the televised debates; Ms Berry (Green) has not been given any significant coverage, even though the Greens hold a pivotal position on the GLA.

It's no surprise to find that the major parties are regaining lost ground: we consider it more of a reversion to the mean than any trend to two-party politics. If it were, we would be adducing results from the 1950s, when the Liberal MPs were reduced to fitting in a decent taxi, and there was scarcely a local councillor. Now, the Lib Dems have more than a coachful of MPs, and councillors in the thousands.

X marks the spot

StopBoris.org has proposed a guide to stopping Candidate Johnson from becoming the next mayor of London. Their advice is, of course, accurate; the exact same tactics will work for those who want to Stop Candidate Livingstone.

It should also be noted that, in order for a mayor to be able to get their budget through, they must rely on the support of at least 9 of the 25 GLA members; a super-majority of 17 members is able to write their own financial plan. Currently, Mr. Livingstone relies on a coalition of Labour and Green members, while a Conservative mayor in the current assembly could count on his own party's GLAMs. Without the ability to write his own budget, the mayor's ability to dictate policy is severely circumscribed.

If one really wants to stop Candidate Livingstone, then it's also necessary to vote against Labour in the constituency, and for a party that will get over 5% in the list vote but isn't Labour. The Lib Dems, the Conservatives, the Greens, perhaps One London (Leader Damien Hockney) or the Unitedkingdom Idependence Party (but which? There's the rub!) We don't reckon that the other minor parties (BNP, LL, R-GG, TCC, ACC, ED, UPS, Ind) will pass the 5% qualification threshold, so a vote for them is wasted in terms of securing representation, and gives additional weight to those who did vote for the big boys.

(A similar argument applies for those who wish to throw a spoke into Candidate Johnson's wheel, but it requires the Conservatives to lose at least one of their constituencies without gaining a topup. That's unlikely.)

And, yes, for a Neither Livingstone Nor Johnson mayor, the sensible way forward would be 1) Candidate to save their deposit 2) Candidate Paddick.

News from the Swingometer

Time to wheel out our DAVIDBUTLER model; the Device for the Approximation of Voter Intent by Division, Bifurcation and Transfer Least-Error Regression has had just three measureable by-elections fed in during the last fortnight, so no tremendous change to the transfers, and such change as there is is mostly statistical noise.

On the central projection, Crewe and Nantwich (where a by-election was precipitated following the death of Mrs. Dunwoody last week), remains Labour by less than 1%. That is well within our margin of error, and we cannot call this seat for either C or Lab with confidence.

We're predicting Enfield and Haringey - Con Gain and Lambeth and Southwark - LD Gain. The Conservatives do not have an Overhang seat.

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