Jowell builds on lead for London Mayor, according to LabourList readers

Yesterday we released the results of one question from our survey – on the debates. It’s what everyone is talking about today. But here’s a little break from the analysis of who did best: the rest of our survey results, and they include who readers think should be Labour’s mayoral candidate…

To kick things off though, we asked LabourList readers how recently they’ve actively campaign for the Labour party. This is a really interesting snapshot into the kind of readers we pull in (not all of whom are Labour supporters) and is interesting given that Miliband wants activists to try and have 4 million conversations before May.

The largest number of people – 34% – said they had campaigned in the last week, which considering how close we are to a general election can only be a good sign for the party. However, at 19% and 17% respectively the second and third largest numbers of people said they had never campaigned for Labour or that last time they campaigned was longer than a year ago.

Still – that means around two-thirds of LabourList readers have campaigned for the Labour Party in the past year, with over half of readers having been out on the doorstep during 2015.

And our rolling question this week, as a nice distraction from the general election, is all about the London Mayoral contest. Who do LabourList readers think Labour’s candidate for London Mayor should be?

Way in front is Tessa Jowell with 36% – she has been leading the pack each time we’ve asked this question in recent months. But this time round she’s built on her lead, 4 points up since we last asked this question. This reflects the trend documented by the Evening Standard poll, which showed Jowell on 40% yesterday.

Christian Wolmar, the only person in the running who isn’t a politician, is in second place – as he was last time. This month, however, he’s had a slight dip in support going from 19% to 17%.

Just behind Wolmar are Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott who are on 13% and 11% respectively. It’s a close race between these two for the third and fourth spot – particularly as Khan as dropped by 1 point and Abbott has had a rise in support by the same amount since last month.

In fifth is David Lammy with 6% followed closely by Doreen Lawrence who’s on 5%. Although she hasn’t formally announced that she won’t be running, it’s widely thought this will be the case so it will be interesting to see where her support goes. Finally Gareth Thomas got 1% of the vote. This is probably because Thomas only hinted that he might be running a couple of weeks ago and isn’t as well-known as the other MPs.

But since not everyone has announced if they’ll run and there’s a general election to think about, not everyone is so sure. 7% said they didn’t know who would be the best candidate and 3% who opted for ‘other’ wouldn’t like any of the potential choices. You never know, they might get their way; they say a week is a long time in politics, it’s roughly 4 months until Labour’s candidate is chosen, another MP could throw their name into the hat before then…

1,200 people voted in our survey this week. Thanks to everyone who took part.