Some random facts about the election

18 May

The Newham count at Excel

Some random facts about the election:

Candidates and votes

  • 360 candidates were chasing 66 seats across 24 wards
  • 218,819 votes cast (each voter had 2 or 3 votes, depending on how many councillors were being elected for their ward)
  • Turnout across the borough was reported as 34.9%

Turnout

Only three out of the 24 wards had turnout greater than 40%.

  • Boleyn – 43.04%
  • Forest Gate North – 41.48%
  • Plashet – 40.17%

And three wards failed to hit 30%

  • Royal Victoria – 26.71%
  • Royal Albert – 28.67%
  • Stratford – 29.72%

Votes to get elected

  • Labour received 63,234 votes (28.9%) and won 26 seats. That’s one seat for every 2,432 votes.
  • The Newham Independents got 59,727 votes (27.3%) and 24 seats. Which is one seat for every 2,489 votes.
  • The Greens had to work harder for their 16 seats. Their 54,238 votes (24.79%) works out at 3,390 votes per seat won.

Biggest and smallest personal vote for a winning candidate 

  • Mehmood Mirza (NIP, Boleyn ward) – 1,856
  • John Morris (Labour, Canning Town South) – 457

Biggest and smallest vote for a losing candidate

  • Musawar Alam (Labour, Little Ilford) – 1,497
  • Angharad Hillier (TUSC, Beckton) – 32

Altogether, 13 candidates failed to break 100 votes.

Biggest winners

Nate Higgins and Joe Hudson-Small (Green, Stratford Olympic Park) finished over 1,000 votes ahead of their Labour rivals.

Smallest margin of victory

Poojitha Kontaki (Green, Royal Albert) held off Anthony McAlmont (Labour) by just two votes.

There were a number of other slim winning margins:

  • John Morris (Labour, CTS) – 3 votes
  • Adjoa Kwarteng (Labour, West Ham) – 5 votes
  • Zulfiqar Ali (Labour, Plaistow North) – 7 votes
  • Ren Tilbury (Green, Maryland) – 12 votes

A proportional council?

Although the council is a better representation of the votes cast than in previous elections, it is still far from perfect.

As noted above, Labour won 28.9% of the votes, but that translated in 39.4% of the seats on council. Likewise, the Newham Independents’ 27.3% share gained then 36.4% of seats. The Greens came out more or less on par, with their 24.8% of votes resulting in 24.2% of the seats.

The real losers were the Conservatives, who got 8.6% of the vote and no seats. Reform UK, despite only running 37 candidates, got 5.38% of votes. They also won no seats.

Had seats been awarded proportionally, and assuming a 5% threshold common in such systems, the council would have been composed of 20 Labour, 19 NIPs, 17 Greens, 6 Local Conservatives and 4 Reform UK.

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