Of those indicating they were certain to vote 46% said they would back incumbent Boris Johnson with 44% backing Ken Livingstone. The Liberal Democrats, who last week postponed their Mayoral selection until next year, were the choice of just 4%.
The Mayor increased his lead over his predecessor when respondents were asked if they “had to choose” between the two, with Johnson being the choice of 46% versus 41% opting for Livingstone.
The poll comes just weeks after Livingstone was formally adopted as Labour’s 2012 hopeful and Johnson confirmed he would be seeking re-election and before either candidate has formally started campaigning for the election.
The likely closeness of the race is further demonstrated by responses to questions about how well and how competent the two frontrunners are. While 58% think Johnson is doing a good job, 56% think Livingstone did well during his two terms.
Although the pair are ranked closely on some questions, Livingstone is the clear winner on the question of whether the pair are “competent or incompetent” with the former-Mayor ranked competent by 52%, 7 points ahead of his successor.
Johnson also fared badly on the question of how he was handling the Tube service with 47% saying he was handling it “badly” versus 43% who thought he was doing well.
However the Mayor received strong backing for his approach to tackling crime in the capital, with 48% saying he was handling the issue “well”.
The full poll is available on the YouGov website.
Damian Hockney says
Polls in this contest are seriously unreliable. In the days leading up to the election in 2008, some polls claimed that the incumbent was on course to win. The main problem can be found in another polling question often asked: “Do you intend to vote?”. The ‘Yes’ response to this one is often overstated in almost all elections (how many are going to say No really?), in this election it is quite dramatic. Let us not forget that the turnout was still dire in 2008, in spite of the headless chickens on the media talking up an “incredible” turnout. Improved from truly appalling in 2004 to bad in 2008, maybe. Considerably fewer than 50% turned out. When you have turnouts below 50%, but 75% are telling you that they are going to turnout, the real answer to the result is in the nature and breakdown of the support of the missing 25%…and that is quite difficult to establish unless you go through all polling of previous Mayor elections and work it out.