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British Prime Minister Tony Blair was convinced that he could not work with a maverick
like Livingstone, and persuaded the London Labour party to make certain he would not get the
official party nomination (King, 2002, 36). During the campaign, Blair supported and
campaigned for Dobson. For many Londoners this gave them the sense that “Tony Blair was
trying to tell them who should be their mayor” (King, 2002, 36). We expect that Livingstone
would receive support from Labour voters who felt alienated from Blair’s “New Labour”
government.
Multivariate Analysis of the 2000 Mayoral Election
Like the Minnesota Election, we normalize the Livingstone coefficients to zero, so the
table presents the probabilities for support him relative to the other candidates. We examine
Livingstone support against the top three candidates in the election and how they would use their
first ballot in the Mayoral election. The estimates of the model are in Table 7.
[Table 7 About Here]
The goal of the first round of the London Mayoral Primary is to receive a majority of the vote,
lacking this; the goal becomes to be one of the top two candidates. For Livingstone, achieving
either of these goals must come at the expense of Labour candidate Frank Dobson. Although
heavily Labour, London has a vocal Conservative element that virtually guaranteed Norris at
least second place on the first ballot. Furthermore, Livingstone’s former political affiliation and
ideology meant that he could not count on wining the election with siginifant Conservative Party
support. This is why Livingstone’s strategy was to dominate and destroy Dobson and that why
he took a maverick approach in doing this. The results of or analyses show that Livingstone
thoroughly defeated his principle rival in almost every area.
The Importance of Demographic Factors
Convention