London Mayor 2021: Poll shows Sadiq Khan maintaining huge lead with two days of City Hall race left

Sadiq Khan remains on course for a landslide win in Thursday’s London Mayor election according to a new opinion poll, which gives him a 19 point first preference lead over Conservative rival Shaun Bailey and indicates that he would stroll to a final 26-point margin of victory after second preference votes were added.

The survey, by Opinium, finds that Khan is the first choice for Mayor of 48 per cent of Londoners compared with just 29 per cent who prefer Bailey. Liberal Democrat Luisa Porritt is in third place on eight per cent, followed by the Green Party’s Sian Berry on seven per cent.

After second preference votes were added to the first preference totals, Khan’s lead would stretch further to give a final winning margin of 63 per cent to 37 per cent, according to the poll. This would be the second-biggest win in the history of mayoral elections in the capital. The biggest so far was Khan’s 31-point triumph over Zac Goldsmith in 2016.

Opinium’s poll is only the second of the 12 conducted since March 2020 – by four different companies – to give Khan a first preference lead of less than 20 percentage points and also maintains Bailey’s consistent failure to register more than a 30 per cent first preference poll share – his rating has only once reach that mark, and that was in November.

The one consolation in the poll for Bailey is that Opinium’s previous two polls, in March and April, indicated slightly larger final round wins for Khan – by 32 points and 28 points respectively.

Bailey would have expected to make up some ground in the final weeks of campaigning due to his receiving equal broadcast media coverage to Khan. However, the new poll provides no sign of the enormous turnaround he would need to become Mayor.

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