Tuesday 15 June 2010

Depressing Guessing

Having been to my parish hustings, and followed the buzz on the internet and a bit of good old-fashioned word of mouth, I am starting to get an idea where the Jersey by-election is heading. And I want to be wrong!

I reckon that there will be quite a low turnout, except amongst committed Syvret supporters, who will make sure that they endorse their man. All the rest will split each other's meagre votes.

So my prediction is:-
Syvret to win with about 3,500 votes
le Gresley runner up with about 2,500
Southern 3rd with about 2,000
Ryan 4th with about 1,500
Whorall, everybody's favourite dark horse, with about 1,000
Baudains, capable but lacking charm, with about 900
le Cornu maybe 700
Risoli perhaps 500
and Maguire, clever and thoughtful, but selling himself badly, with just 200 odd.

I want Syvret out, but I don't believe it will happen.

Roll on Thursday morning! Let us see how much better than this reality turns out to be.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Syvret isn't going to win this. Switch Le Gresley and Syvret around and your prediction is a little more realistic.

Anonymous said...

The total electorate for the June 2010 by-election is 58,499. Totaling your estimates of the number of votes that may be obtained by each candidate comes to 12,800. If Syvret does win with the estimated 3600 this is not even 2% of the electorate. How can a “Poll Topper” with that few votes claim to have a mandate of popular consent?

Using your figures the “Poll Topper” will have been rejected by more voters than those that voted for the successful candidate. What a crazy electoral system that does not allow for preference.

The problem is that Jersey is not a functioning democracy with “the People” voting and by so doing legitimising the government. The Establishement always vote; they know how important it is. They do so in order to retain power, or at least to keep electing people who have no intention of changing anything and certainly not the electoral system that keeps returning them to office.