This election looks like “going to the wire” between the brothers Miliband
responders, targeted toward Labour party members and members of trade
unions – 2 of the 3 electoral colleges involved in selecting the next leader of the
Labour Party. We will present our findings among the colleges over the
following pages, but first a brief reminder of the election timetable and electoral
system;
Leadership Election Timetable
Monday 24th May: Opening of PLP (Labour MP) nominations
Wednesday 9 June: Close of PLP nominations.
Thursday 10 June: Deadline of acceptance of nomination by nominated
candidates. “Supporting nominations” open. Member of the European
Parliament and affiliated organisation may cast a supporting nomination for each
of the positions of Leader and Deputy Leader. These supporting nominations
indicate the strength of support for the candidates across all stakeholder groups
of the party
Monday 16th August – Wednesday 22nd September: Balloting takes place.
Wednesday 8th September: Freeze date for new members to join.
Saturday 25th September: Announcement of ballot result.
One Third – MPs and MEPs;
One Third – Individual party members;
One Third – Affiliated organisations (Unions and affiliated organisatios)
The vote, provided there are more than two candidates, will be a transferable
eliminating ballot. Voters will mark the candidates 1,2, 3 etc. Each round will be
published as 100%, with votes not cast or transferred being eliminated from the
calculations
Thus far in the campaign (at 4pm May 27th 2010), 157 of 258 (we assume David
Miliband is intending to support himself) Labour MPs to our knowledge have
declared their support for a candidate.
There are around 100 MPs who have not yet declared their support for a candidate. If the remaining MPs support candidates in the proportion the declared MPs have, final nominations figures would be as follows;
Given the top 2 nominated candidates seem keen to collect as many supporters
above the 33 minimum as possible (we estimate the Miliband brothers have
already locked up 107 MPs and continue to add) it looks unlikely to us that
McDonnell and Abbott will be able to get to the magic 33 number.
If there is any “lending” of supporters to enable as big a ballot as possible, we
would imagine that Andy Burnham would be the logical subject, as he would be
only 7 nominations short of inclusion based on the above estimate.
Support for those likely on the ballot?
We’ve removed McDonnell and Abbott in the chart below.
We do not know MP’s second/third preferences and so have not reallocated the excluded MP’s supporters.
Diane Abbott is more popular than Ed Balls or Andy Burnham among both
Labour voters and Labour members. David Miliband is more popular than Ed
Miliband among Labour voters, but Ed is more popular where it counts – among
Labour members.
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