London mayoral election: How to watch the results come in before the winner announced
Londoners craving to discover whether Sadiq Khan or Susan Hall will be the next mayor can follow the results as they come in.
The Evening Standard, main broadcasters, including the BBC and Sky, and other media outlets are set to be reporting the key results as they are announced.
London Elects, which organises the mayoral and other polls, also has a YouTube live feed which will show the results.
It can be found here.
London Elects will also list the results on this webpage.
Elections are taking place in the capital for the mayor, constituency London Assembly members, and London-wide Assembly members using the proportional representation Modified D’Hondt System, with the results due to be announced in this order.
In the 2021 mayoral election, the votes were counted electronically using machines which fed into a “progress bar” on the London Elects website allowing Londoners to see the drama of the contest unfold.
Mr Khan’s supporters got a fright as the early results suggested that the final result against Tory challenger Shaun Bailey could be very close.
In the end, the Labour candidate gained 1,206,034 votes, or 55.2 per cent, and the Conservative contender 977,601, or 44.8 per cent, after second preference votes were added to first choice votes.
Votes are being counted manually this year, with the first-past-the-post voting system being used for the first time in the mayoral election.
How quickly they carry out their counts may depend on the size of their respective electorate.
Areas with fewer voters could announce their result first and if they follow the same pattern as in 2021, Ms Hall may appear to be closer to Mr Khan than might be the case in the final result, or possibly even ahead.
The 14 areas with estimates of their electorates are: Barnet & Camden (413,809), Bexley & Bromley (421,426), Brent & Harrow (429,174), City & East (629,027), Croydon & Sutton (441,224), Ealing & Hillingdon (453,904), Enfield & Haringey (399,677), Greenwich & Lewisham (399,703), Havering & Redbridge (402,497), Lambeth & Southwark (445,278), Merton & Wandsworth (384,678), North East (524,889), South West (459,625) and West Central (359,208).
The parties, their candidates and agents, will be told the results shortly before they are announced.
They are urged not to leak details of the figures before the official announcement.
But some may be tempted to comment on them on Twitter/X or other social media.
The official result may only be announced late on Saturday night after the tallying of all the votes in City Hall.
But before then political pundits and pollsters will be number crunching to work out when they can call a winner in the battle for the mayoralty.
