Site icon Inside Croydon

Mayoral referendum: how Croydon voted, ward-by-ward

insidecroydon

The council last night released the figures by ward of how Croydon residents voted in October 7’s Mayoral referendum. We already knew that the thumping 80% majority across the whole borough, and defeats in all 28 wards, was very bad news indeed for Labour.

But dreadfully low turn-out – in one polling district,  just 19 people bothered to show up all day – ought to put all local politicians on alert at the levels of apathy and contempt the exercise showed


The council’s caveats which came along with the raw figures say, “Please note that the votes cast at polling stations for each ward are counted with postal votes from across the borough.

Croydon counting: even with a relatively low turn-out, the referendum count was a bit of a dawdle

“Comparatively the turnout amongst postal voters was higher than amongst polling station voters, so postal votes made up a greater proportion of the votes counted overall and by each ward team than at previous elections.

“The ward breakdown is therefore not a definitive record of the votes cast by electors in each ward, and can only be treated as an indication of how a ward has voted.”

Fair  ’nuff.

The council’s figures indicate that almost half of the votes counted had come from postal voters – which is nearly double the usual proportion of postal votes. This may reflect a shift towards postal voting inspired by concerns over attending polling stations since covid.

But the turn-out on the day was overall very, very poor.

In some of the hot-spots of DEMOC enthusiasm, there were reasonable numbers of voters: All Saints’ Church in Sanderstead had 40.76 per cent of voters pay its polling station a visit on the day.

The lowest turn-out was experienced at the Goldcrest Centre in New Addington North, where just 77 voters did their democratic duty – 5.7 per cent of the eligible electorate in that polling district.

The lowest number of voters using a polling station, though, was the 19 of 254 eligible voters who went along to a polling station at the Salvation Army Centre from district 7 of Waddon.

Read more: Croydon votes 4-to-1 in favour of having directly elected mayor
Read more: After defeat, pressure mounts on ‘lame duck’ council leader


Exit mobile version