Towards the end of last year, we wrote about a YouGov poll for the Evening Standard, which showed that out of all the potential Labour candidates, Eddie Izzard looked like the favourite – among both all voters polled and also for Labour supporters polled – to win in 2016. YouGov have done a follow-up poll for the Evening Standard, and things are looking a little different to how they did 8 months ago.
Firstly, we now know (as outlined in the Collins Review) that a Labour primary will include, alongside party members, people who register to be a party supporter and pay to vote.
Secondly, Izzard has ruled himself out of the running, and is officially out of the mix. In doing so, Tanya Abraham from YouGov has said, he’s “opened up the field” for other candidates.What’s more, Doreen Lawrence is now mooted as a potential candidate, changing the nature of the race further. Let’s take a look at how.
All Support
Among the 1115 people polled, things aren’t looking so good for any of the potential Labour candidates: an equal number (30% respectively) don’t know who they would vote for or they wouldn’t vote for any the people on the list.
But for those who would choose one of the candidates, with Izzard gone, Tessa Jowell is the most popular (with 11% of the vote), only two percentage points of Diane Abbott. Meanwhile David Lammy (6%), Doreen Lawrence (6%) and Sadiq Khan (5%) all roughly have the same amount of support with Lord Adonis (3%) coming in bottom.
Labour supporters
The picture is a little different for among Labour supporters. Although, it is worth noting that of the people polled, only 362 were Labour supporters and given the complex nature of the “primary” Labour has planned, this is a very small sample. Nevertheless, the results are interesting. Although most still ‘don’t know’ who they’d vote for, Abbott has come out on top from all of the potential candidates (with 17%). An equal percentage (14% respectively) would vote for Jowell or wouldn’t vote for any of them. And, in comparison to all of those polled, more Labour supporters are likely to support Khan (8%) than Lawrence (6%), Lammy (9%) still inches ahead of the two and Adonis gets the least amount of support (5%).
But, there’s still a long way to go until 2016 and as the past 8 months have shown, a lot can change in a relatively small space of time…
More from LabourList
‘Frank’s poverty mission lives on at his charity – but he’d scrap two-child cap’
‘I disagreed with Frank Field, but he was no Tory and I loved him all the same’
Frank Field and David Marquand: Tributes flow in to ‘social justice crusader’ and ‘giant of social democracy’