Kensal Green Election Result

Looking over the election results in Kensal Green, they still seem pretty random. Even the counting staff on the night remarked how strange some of the split voting seemed. Along with many other wards, the results in Kensal Green showed more voters splitting their votes than voted for a straight ticket for any single party. The full Kensal Green result is here.

I am struck at how scattered our result was as Labour candidates, with Claudia 448 votes ahead of Bobby. I can't think of any reason for this except our place in the alphabet. The Liberal Democrats had a different pattern with Deborah Sutherland, last in the alphabet but the only one to actually live in the ward, topping their ticket 154 votes ahead of their bottom candidate Robin Pagnamenta.

However, the Tories had the strangest results. Nana Green was top with 760 votes, 244 votes ahead of Peter Osuhon, their bottom candidate. Nana's gap with Peter is equivalent to a third of her total vote. It may be that, like Deborah, she lives in the ward. again, it may be that she comes first alphabetically. I even think that her surname may have confused some voters into voting for her because they thought she was the Green candidate.

It is even odder as I have seen a Tory leaflet that mentioned Peter Osuhon, but made no reference to anyone else. Strange for the Tory party to sanction a leaflet without mentioning the other two, especially as the Tory Agent was Nana's mother! Perhaps the more the voters hear about you, the less they are likely to vote for you.

Again, there may have been something odd going on with Bertha Joseph. She is reported to still be a member of the Conservative Party despite standing against three Conservative candidates. If a Labour Party member stands against a Labour candidate, they aren't quite put in a hollow square to have all their buttons snipped off, but they do get expelled for five years. Perhaps there is some deep rift within the Conservative Party in Brent. Or perhaps not. I don't know, and I don't much care.