Oliver Cooper Landslide in Poll

Oliver Cooper has achieved a massive 72% in the #ThingsElliottSays CF Chairman poll. There was a high turnout of 426 votes. This is over double of the number who voted in last year’s entire CF elections. Paul Holmes achieved 23% and James Deighton achieved 3% of vote. Here is the lowdown.

Paul Holmes	102 (23%)
James Deighton	16 (3%)
Oliver Cooper	308 (72%)

Before we start seeing this as a complete annihilation I’d like to point out some of the unavoidable biases and unreliableness of this poll. #ThingsElliottSays has a pro Cooper bias because NUCA and the East Midlands members are almost entirely going to vote for him, although clearly that cannot amount to 426 votes. Also Oliver, whenever I’ve tweeted this poll at the candidates, retweeted the link to the blog to get his voters out as much as possible. This is not the case with Paul Holmes. Paul did retweet the poll when first created but has refused to since. This is likely due to his campaign manager who sent me this delightful comment.

So because Paul has not been allowed to get his voters out as much as Oliver he has a significant disadvantage.

But these are the underlying trends from what this information tells us. Oliver Cooper is winning in the East Midlands and most likely everywhere else outside London. James Deighton the newly appointed ‘King of the North’ has made little impact in what is his home region with only 16 votes. The mood on the ground outside London is also that Paul Holmes is a centraliser. His comments on CF regions and the fact he has barely ventured out from London helps cement this opinion. For obvious reasons most CFers (who don’t live in London) want the party to come to them not them to go to London.

Paul Holmes however does have a lot of support in London. He has probably picked up most of the Matt Robinson votes there. But he needs to win all of London in order to have a chance of becoming CF Chairman. Note that Oliver Cooper in the best attended London based hustings, organised by London Spin, won with 37% of the vote. Paul seemingly only won one of the London hustings because of a low voting turnout.

So, despite me giving the caveat that I am not Lyton Crosby, I predict a win for Oliver Cooper as chairman of CF. He will probably get around 55-65% of the vote. Paul Holmes has to get everyone in London to vote for him and hope that no one in the rest of the UK actually votes to have a chance of winning.