London Turns Out to Reject AV: Although Not Absolutely

By · May 7, 2011 at 12:30 pm · 5 Comments · Latest News · Report an error ·

Fears that, with no accompanying local elections, as few as 15% of Londoners would turn out for the Alternative Vote referendum proved to be unfounded with 1.86 million people casting votes on Thursday.

That’s 35.4% turnout, the lowest in the UK, where mean turnout was 42%.

London’s results mirror the drubbing handed out to the YES campaign. Just over 60% of voting Londoners rejected AV, with the vast majority of local authority areas (27 out of 33) recording a majority for the NO camp.

But inner-city Labour strongholds provided the few winning areas for supporters of the change. In Camden, Islington, Haringey, Lambeth, Hackney and Southwark, over 50% of people voted YES.

These six local authorities were six out of only ten local authorities in the UK to record a YES verdict.

Image by Simon-K via the Londonist Flickr pool.

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  • Anonymous

    Well they are Labour strongholds who will follow their leader and jump when told to do so.

    But it didn’t make a scrap of difference to the result.

    No, I am not a Tory or LibDem!

    My own party said, vote Yes, but I voted for my country – so voted No.

    • Adrienne

      ampers, the Labour party had no official position on AV so it definitely
      wasn’t a case of being told which way to vote. I voted yes to AV
      because I believe it is wrong that an MP can be elected without the
      backing of the majority of their constituents, not because Ed Miliband
      supports AV.

      I live in Islington. I’m quite proud to have a Labour council, a Labour
      MP, a Labour Assembly member and that the borough voted yes to AV.

      I know people that voted no to AV that probably couldn’t explain how AV
      works – not because AV is complicated (it isn’t) but because they fell
      for rhetoric the Conservative propaganda machine. None of the reasons
      they stated for voting no were based in fact, just soundbites. The
      nation hasn’t given its verdict because its impossible to have an
      opinion on something that you don’t haven’t taken the time to
      understand.

  • http://twitter.com/bagelmouse Rachel H

    Given that Labour controls 17 London boroughs and only about a third of those voted YES, I hardly think Londoners were looking to Ed Miliband for guidance!

  • corky

    I hope this is the last of the AV switch the nation as given its verdict

  • Anonymous

    Most of those are also strong LibDem areas, which makes sense, and generally areas of self identifying ‘progressives’ of different colours. The vote probably has more to do with that than any great swing of Labour voters following the leader.

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