Unless the there’s a polling disaster bigger than GE2015 Sadiq Khan looks set to win the London Mayoralty

Unless the there’s a polling disaster bigger than GE2015 Sadiq Khan looks set to win the London Mayoralty

The LAB man is widening his lead in London

By far the biggest betting market on Thursday’s election is on the London Mayoralty where Zac Goldsmith is seeking to hold on to the post for the Tories from the LAB contender, Sadiq Khan.

A big question for those having a punt is whether the aggressive Tory campaign against Khan personally and low turnout levels might just give it to Goldsmith.

The very latest polling, from Opinium for the Standard, is out and the message is that Khan is extending his lead. Opinium’s fieldwork ended on Sunday so is pretty up to date.

    The 14% Khan lead after the allocation of second preferences looks convincing and it would be a bigger blow to the the polling industry than GE2015 if this went wrong. Other recent polls have had Khan 20% ahead.

But I’m still not totally convinced. Turnout is going to be everything and we can expect that to be higher in outer, more blue-friendly, London than in the capital’s LAB heartlands.

One thing that is surprising in the polling is how few second preference vote Zac appears to be picking up. Given he made his name as an environmental campaigner you’d expect that quite a significant proportion of Green first choices would go his way. That doesn’t seem to be happening.

Mike Smithson



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