Sadiq Khan has won the London mayoral race with 43.8 per cent of the vote to the Tory candidate Susan Hall on 32.7 per cent. Despite widespread speculation on Friday from Tory and Labour sources that the vote was closer than the pollster anticipated, Khan won comfortably. This makes him the first London mayor to win a third term. This all, despite new rules changing the contest to a first-past-the-post system and bringing in Voter ID.
Labour were increasingly confident they would win from early in the count. The ward results showed that Hall was underperforming her predecessor Shaun Bailey in many seats. In West Central (Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster), Khan secured 54,481 votes to Hall’s 43,405. To contrast this with 2021, Khan won 51,508 votes but his Tory opponent Shaun Bailey secured 53,713 votes.
In the words of one Tory aide: ‘If there was a ever time to win, this was it’
It suggests Hall underperformed the 2021 Tory performance in several key areas.
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