She’s been all over the news and telly and that but my favorite so far has been the Independent article and the Guardian editorial today. Wowzers!
Natalie Bennett will be giving her key note speech in Bristol on Friday – and I reckon it will be a corker!
For enthusiasts of numbers and elections here are today’s results with a little bit of breakdown.
First the raw votes (round one, two and three)
Bennett 1,300 1,487 1,757
Cranie 902 976 1,204
Phoenix 492 585 –
Bartolotti 389 – –
RON 28 35 62
Not transferable – 28 88
Two comments.
First, turnout was up from two years ago (from 20% -ish to 25.1%) but not up a vast amount. I do wonder whether August elections are such a good idea…
Second, why would 28 people RON *everyone* when they had a broad range of candidates to choose from? I’d say these are people opposed to having a leader at all – which constitutes just a little less than 1% of those who voted.
Those numbers as percentages;
Bennett 41.79% 47.80% 56.48%
Cranie 28.99% 31.37% 38.70%
Phoenix 15.81% 18.80%
Bartolotti 12.50%
RON 0.90% 1.13% 1.99%
Not transferable 0.90% 2.83%
So around 4.8% of members (1 in 20) wanted neither Bennett nor Cranie the two top dogs.
Natalie’s vote on the first round was very high for a four way race on STV and gave her a convincing win on first preferences which would have been almost impossible to catch up to. As her campaign manager I had hoped that we could get 50% or more on the first round but were pushed all the way to the third round. However, Natalie did win the ost transfers on each round too so the dye was well and truly cast in the first round.
Pippa’s vote was much higher than I’d expected, and given that if Wales members turnout was about the same as everywhere else (ie around 150 voting in total) her vote was not simply a Welsh vote but much wider. My personal view is that as the only candidate that basically said she was pro-business, in a context of all the other candidates taking on multi-national capital in one form or another, she attracted the “right” Green vote, even though she herself does not describe herself as rightwing.
I personally think a stronger candidate with a good campaign manager could get the right/business friendly vote up to at least 25%.
Pippas transfers
Bennett 48.07%
Cranie 19.02%
Phoenix 23.91%
RON 1.80%
Not transferable 7.20%
Natalie won almost half of Pippa’s transfers and Peter came in third, below Romayne on second preferences from those who voted Pippa 1.
I suspect, taken with the next table, we see a small group of voters who voted for all the women. It’s not possible to tell from these figures how large a group would only vote for a man.
Romayne’s transfers
Bennett 46.15%
Cranie 38.97%
RON 4.62%
Not transferable 10.26%
Again Natalie won most transfers almost half of them in fact, this time from the Green Left candidate – no doubt reflecting the fact that she was the most leftwing of the two front runners (as Derek Wall argues in the Guardian).
15% of Green Left voters felt only the Green Left was good enough to lead the party and the difference between the other candidates was irrelevant so either RONned or stopped voting.
Finally, well done to the Green Left’s Will Duckworth who won the deputy leader post in a very tight vote. I’m sure he’ll be an excellent asset to the party.