Wither Manchester ?

The Tories changed it, Labour changed it back.
There's been some reporting of policies but the result has been under no doubt for some time so not much drama.
The counting of half a million votes takes a long time, especially given two rounds.

The Labour female candidate won after second preferences were counted. Time will tell if she’s any good.

the voting:

news.sky.com/story/comfortable-victory-but-uncomfortable-numbers-for-labour-in-greater-manchester-13569010

I got leaflets and canvassers from Labour, no one else. The reason the votes took longer to count was because they saved money by not doing an overnight count and waiting until the next day.

I’m not looking forward to Bev Craig as mayor - and I speak as an ex Labour voter. She was a disaster in her last role and nearly made Manchester bankrupt, she doesn’t agree with women having rights and has decided not to follow the Supreme Court judgement and in a previous role she was involved in covering up the Rotherham abuse scandal. On a more minor note she also seems rather controlling and petty (at a charity event she complained that the Greens had been invited - well, duh, it’s a charity of course they were).

@concertinacornflake
odd that the voting system keeps changing for this election
odd that there has been almost no media interest even locally
odd that they took 15 hours to count votes on a tiny turnout
odd that I didn’t get a single leaflet from any party
most of all odd that (yey!) the reform vote clearly collapsed after months of media narrative that reform were beating Labour in Manchester. And media don’t seem to have noticed.

🎉

Yay for Bev!

What do you think is odd?

Burnham got 60% last time, probably due to the fact the return of FPTP made those who would naturally vote green 1, labour 2 switch to Burnham to be on the safe side.

This is not a new thing - some voters have always factored national foreign policy into voting behaviour at every level. This is the nature of party politics.

All parties take positions on foreign matters, and all voters can base their vote on that if they choose to.

Well done Bev Craig 💯 😁

I don’t disagree but we were actually involved in the Iraq war. What is going on in Gaza is nothing to do with us, at least not officially

Sky is reporting that Labour got 45% in the first round way ahead of Reform who were distant 2nd
I assume they add both 1st and 2nd preferences together at this point but it’s all very odd. Especially the fact that they used this system for the first two GM elections (though Burnham won outright so the second round didn’t count) but NOT the last one

Gaza is a voting issue at all elections now, as Iraq was back in Blair's day.

Reform will be disappointed with the result, it's a big drop compared to the locals.

The result is pretty decent for Labour.
Since 2024 (when Burnham won) two major things have changed:

1. Green polling has risen significantly, mostly from Labour
2. Burnham is no longer the candidate (obviously)

At the start of the Makerfield by election, Reform had high hopes of potentially winning the Manchester mayoralty, given their local election results. They will put a brave face on a disappointing result for them.

It was a rhetorical question in reply to the previous poster who was suggesting Reform had done really badly when there's no evidence that's the case.

I had 5 leaflets from the Greens and nothing from any other party.

To be fair, there was so little news or fanfare about it, I nearly forgot to vote, so a lot of people may have been intending to but just didn’t remember in time!

We got one candidate flyer through the door, from the Green Party candidate, who seemed to think that Gaza has something to do with the mayor of Greater Manchester

Because nobody got over 50%. An absolute majority is needed so now they are counting 2nd preferences

in the past Andy Burnham got over 60% so the Labour vote is clearly down

I’ve never heard of ballots having a second preference and because the two front runners are so close they’re now co7nting the second preference votes from people who didn’t vote reform or labour.

why do they not say who got the most votes wins? They can’t surely have an exact same number of votes.

Same. Depressingly low turnout. I’m surprised at the low turnout but with the lack of any leaflets or doorknockers perhaps I shouldn’t be

Based on what evidence? All parties except Reform and Labour have now been eliminated. It was supposed to be a shoo-in for Labour so what happened to them? Why is there a second count?

They’re in the top two!

No surprises that Reform UK didn't do well regarding supporting their candidate.

Yes 2017 was when this role first started, they didn't have one before that point. From what I've read it was 28% in 2017 and about 25% this time.
So poor that many couldn't be bothered.

Lowest turnout since 2017.