Jo Wood, Professor of Visual Analytics at City St George’s and one of Diverse CDT’s Co-Investigators, has analysed the voting patterns across London in the recent council elections. He revealed a bias, based on where candidates are located on the ballot paper – with some parties showing consistently more name bias than others.
Voters could pick three candidates from the list, and most of the major parties, fielded three candidates. Jo’s data visualization reveals that, where people chose to split their vote, they tended to pick candidates nearer the top of the ballot paper. The visualization excluded parties that fielded fewer than three candidates.
Professor Wood has seen his recent analysis of the London council elections written up on the front page of The Guardian newspaper. Jo originally published his analysis on Bluesky on 11 May. The Guardian’s article from 13 May, Easy as ABC: voters in England tend to pick names nearer top of ballot, data suggests, includes interviews with two candidates, one of whom failed to secure a seat (and had the last name, Zhong), and the other who won (and had the last name, Adams).