8 random facts about the 2018 election

Turnout in Newham was down for the second election in a row, although the number of registered voters was the highest ever

1. A record mayoral share

Rokhsana Fiaz won the mayoral election with 73.43% of the valid votes cast. That beats Sir Robin’s best of 68.2% in 2010.

2. A big backward step for the Tories

The Conservative mayoral candidate got 8,627 votes (an 11.9% share). That’s way down on the 13,976 (18%) Stefan Mrozinski got in 2014. In fact it’s the worst Tory result since 2002, when Graham Postles got 11.55%.

By contrast, the Liberal Democrats enjoyed their best ever result, with Gareth Evans polling over 9% and saving their deposit for the first time.

3. Highest personal vote

Mariam Dawood, a first-time candidate in Manor Park ward, got the highest individual councillor vote, with 3,112.

4. Lowest vote

Hugh Robertson of the Communist League, achieved a fairly miserable 52 votes in Plaistow South. The only other candidate to fail to hit three figures was TUSC’s James Ivens in Royal Docks with 94.

5. Lowest winning score

The lowest vote achieved by a winning candidate was Tony McAlmont’s 1,292 in Royal Docks.

Two losing candidates, Gareth Evans (Liberal Democrat, Stratford and New Town) and Andrius Kavaliauskas (Conservative, also S&NT) got more votes than that. In fact, Gareth Evans’ 1,478 was better than five winning Labour candidates. Obviously, that counts for nothing in our stupid  first-past-the-post election system.  

6. Massive majorities

Labour held all 60 council seats with ease. Across all 20 wards the average majority (the gap between the 3rd placed Labour candidate and the 4th placed candidate) was a whopping 1,636 votes. Labour biggest win was in Little Ilford, with a majority of 2,434. The smallest was 788 in Royal Docks.

7. Average votes

The aggregate votes for the parties don’t really tell you anything interesting because only Labour and the Conservatives stood a full slate. But the averages (total vote divided by the number of candidates) are revealing.

The average Labour candidate was 5 times more popular than the next nearest party, which was (slightly surprisingly) the Liberal Democrats.

8. Mind the gap

There was some speculation on social media as the results were announced about the difference in votes between Labour candidates in the same ward and whether this was significant. On my Twitter timeline this focused on the Forest Gate North result, where Rachel Tripp topped the poll with 355 more votes than fellow incumbent Anamul Islam, who came third.

Looking across all 20 wards, the widest gap between first and third was in Canning Town North: Ann Easter polled 576 votes more than Delphine Touhoura. The smallest difference was 55 votes in Forest Gate South.

The average first-to-third gap was 308 votes. So while the Forest Gate North result was above average, it wasn’t by very much and the difference is probably accounted for by Cllr Tripp’s very visible local profile.

Tags: Election 2018, newham