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There has been an attempt to impersonate me and others on the previous thread.

I am not aware of any exit polls tonight.

Automated content moderation is now on - if you have not had a comment approved here before or if your details have changed then it will get held up in the spam trap.

This was all the work of one person who was trying to influence the betting markets.

Mike Smithson

Was the postal vote battle the real decider?

This table appears in the Evening Standard tonight and shows the number of postal votes issue in all but three of London’s boroughs.

The total is 559,892 and I’ve just been doing some quick calculations to compare the number with a selection of the number of votes cast four years ago. For comparison I took the total first preferences from 2004 for Norris and Livingstone and then expressed this data as a percentage.

In more than half the boroughs the proportion of postal votes issued compared with the Livingstone-Norris total in 2004 was over 50%. In one borough, Hackney it was only a few hundred short of 100% though that is probably due to the all postal vote election there in the last borough contests.

Next in line came Sutton with 75% then Tower Hamlets and Southwark both on 65%. Newham was 64% with Islington on 61%. The other boroughs above 50% were Bexley, Camden, Greenwich, Havering, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Richmond, Waltham Forest and Wandsworth.

Remember this is not the proportion of the electorate but from the total of Tory and Labour votes in the Mayoral race in 2004.

Voting continues until 10pm and it will be early evening tomorrow before we get the result.

Dealing with tonight’s traffic: The site will shortly go into election night slimmed down mode to limit the demands on the server. Only the two most recent posts will appear though you can click back to get earlier ones. Continuation threads will start at regular intervals. Please switch to the new thread as soon as that happens.

Mike Smithson

The Evening Standard’s final YouGov poll of the mayoral campaign has just been published and the figures are exactly as was reported here at 9.27 pm last night.

On first preferences it is BORIS 43%: KEN 36%: PADDICK 13%. After the redistribution of second preferences it splits BORIS 53%: KEN 47%

From the poll detail it appears that there has been a hardening up of support by party allegiance. Two days ago 87% of those who have told the firm that they are Tories said they were backing Boris - today’s numbers have that at 94%. It’s the same with Labour supporters where there had been an increase in support for Ken. He’s now getting 76% of those who have identified themselves to the firm as Labour backers.

The detailed data shows that Boris is retaining the support of 84% of those who have told the firm that they are Tories while Ken is now getting 63% of those who have identified themselves to the firm as Labour backers. The Lib Dem “identifiers” split almost three ways between the leading candidates.

The poll data also shows that Boris is picking up just about two three voters from the 55+ age group for every one two to Ken. This is broadly in line with most of the recent polls and is significant because more than any other segment of the population older people turn out to vote.

My apologies for getting this wrong in the first version of the article - I was reading the lines for Westminster voting intention and not today’s ballot.

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Mike Smithson

Is Boris about to become the next Mayor?

I have just received information from a source who has proved totally reliable in the past about the YouGov poll that will be published in the Evening Standard tomorrow.

This is the final survey of the campaign and according to the information I have been given Boris is leading Ken 44%-36% on first preferences. After second preferences that becomes 53% to 47%.

The same source has given me advance information about other polls in this campaign which have proved to be accurate. If that had not been the case I would not have published this.

If this is authentic, which I think it is, then it has Ken in a slightly better position compared with last Monday’s poll which had the first preference gap at 11%.

The latest betting is here

Mike Smithson

Can Labour contain the damage with an ultra-short campaign?

To all those outside London who have been saying that we have been over-doing the Boris-Ken contest can I say three words - Crewe and Nantwich. For after the London result on Friday the main UK domestic story will be the by election in the Cheshire seat.

This site follows the key action and nothing else will happen in the coming months that will provide such a good test of opinion ahead of the general election.

For given their high ratings in the polls and their likely successes tomorrow the scene should be set for something that we have not seen in UK politics since June 1982 - a Conservative gain in a Westminster by election.

The numbers look good for Cameron’s party - a solid second place last time some way ahead of the Lib Dems as well as a strongish base of councillors. Of course the Tories will desperately be trying to play down expectations but this really is one that they have to win - especially if it follows victory in the London Mayoral race.

In recent times by elections have tended to be dominated by local issues which has been the hallmark of the Lib Dem approach. If the Tories want to win they have to make it a referendum on Labour and Gordon Brown. You can see a campaign theme running along the lines of “Had Enough?”

The Lib Dems and Labour will be trying hard to pick holes in every aspect of the Tory approach to find something that gives them traction. Don’t write off Chris Rennard and the Lib Dem campaign team - they have the track record.

My guess is that the clash will generate much more media coverage than we have seen in by elections of late and that there will be a lot of betting.

Mike Smithson

Monday saw a massive 115,794 page down-loads

I’ve just got the traffic figures for the site for yesterday when there were 115,794 separate page downloads - only the second time we have broken through the 100k mark. The last time was that Saturday in October when Gordon called off the election.

Also April has already become the site’s busiest ever month even though there is still a day and a bit to go. Total page down-loads are 1,667,234 which exceeds the previous record of 1.54m last October.

A year ago our monthly traffic was about 600,000 page views and it took us until September to get beyond the 750k mark.

Thanks to my son Robert for creating the technical infrastructure that’s enable us to cope with the traffic. Thanks to you all for supporting the site.

No other UK political blog gets traffic like we do.

Mike Smithson