The rumour was true.

One of the interesting bits of information in there, though, is that Brian Paddick is apparently getting the most second preferences. The second preferences of people voting for Ken or Boris first almost certainly won’t be counted anyway (but Brian is a good use for them as last-ditch insurance against the other main candidate), but if anyone else is putting Brian second it’s almost inconceivable that that isn’t just a wasted vote.

To get the best use of your two votes, if your first choice isn’t Ken/Boris, you need to put whoever you want for Mayor first and then Ken second to stop Boris (or vice versa if you’re insane ).

More voting advice is, as you probably know by now, here.

Via Dave Hill, I see there is a rumour that today’s final YouGov Mayoral poll will show Boris’s lead back up to 11% over Ken.

This would certainly be a worry as they have shown Boris’s lead reduce down to about 6% over the past few weeks.

It is, however, just one opinion poll from a company which has consistently shown Boris’s lead to be far bigger than any other poll. Some political bettors* claim YouGov are more accurate than other polling firms, but all the other firms’ polls suggest the race is neck-and-neck between Ken and Boris so there’s something strange about YouGov, that’s for sure. It can’t help that they only carry out their polling online, excluding people without internet access, yet they claim this hasn’t affected their polls’ accuracy in the past.

Ultimately we’ll see which company/ies was/were right on Friday when the results are announced. If the contest does go to the wire, YouGov’s reputation will be seriously damaged; if Boris wins by a long way (*shudder*), I suppose they just might win a few more contracts!

Whichever poll you look at, one thing is certain: getting as many people as possible to turn out to vote on Thursday is crucial in improving our chances of keeping Boris out.

If you’re able to do so, why not volunteer to help one of your local parties encourage people to vote on Thursday? They’ll be offering lifts to people to get to their polling stations and otherwise reminding them to vote, in whatever area of London you live in, so you could give them a hand. If anyone from a political party would like to provide contact details for volunteers I will happily post them here. Please comment or e-mail us to pass on this information.

Here’s one such invitation, to start us off, as posted yesterday on the Wall of the Stop Boris group on Facebook:

You can sign up to help [Ken’s] campaign team on the big day by going to this link and filling out your details. You’ll get all the relevant advice and you’ll be with a team of other people. It’s going to be so close, every little helps.

http://www.kenlivingstone.com/page/s/1stmay

Sure enough, the Evening Standard web site is now carrying the results of this week’s YouGov poll.

Boris Johnson has maintained his lead over Ken Livingstone in the race to be Mayor - despite increasing doubts over his seriousness for the job, a poll reveals today.

The Evening Standard/YouGov poll found that the Tory candidate is still on course to oust his Labour rival from City Hall.

Mr Johnson leads Mr Livingstone by 44 per cent to 37 per cent on first preference votes, with Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick third on 12 per cent.

But the gap between Mr Johnson and the Mayor for the final "run-off", when second preferences are taken into account, has narrowed to its closest in the race.

The Tory MP’s lead over Mr Livingstone in the "run-off " is 53 per cent to 47 per cent, a gap of six per cent. Last week, YouGov found the gap was eight per cent (54-46), a fortnight ago it was 12 per cent (56-44) and four weeks ago it was 14 points (57-43).

Liberal Democrat voters appear to be turning away from Mr Johnson, giving him his lowest level of their support since our polls began at the start of the mayoral campaign.

Only 29 per cent of Lib-Dem supporting Londoners say they are likely to give the Tory contender their first preferences, with 29 per cent also set to give them to Mr Livingstone.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of voters are worried that Mr Johnson is "not serious enough" to make an effective mayor. Those who question the Tory candidate’s seriousness has risen from 34 per cent two weeks ago, to 40 per cent last week, to 43 per cent this week.

YouGov says that this appears to be the main reason why his lead in the runoff continues to narrow.

So we’re chipping away at his lead, but are we chipping hard enough and fast enough to knock him off course by the election, which is now just ten days away?

If YouGov’s analysis (last line above) is correct, we need to keep emphasising to anyone thinking of voting for him that he really is an incompetent man who couldn’t run for a bus, let alone run a city with an £11bn budget. Sharing the campaign song/video around may help with this, but it may not be enough: challenge anyone you think might vote Boris and remind them how unreliable he really is and how it’ll be their money and their city’s reputation he throws away if he doesn’t manage his Mayoralty properly, which of course he isn’t capable of doing.

Keep up the pressure, Boris-stoppers – this battle is going to the wire.

Well, here’s a surprise:

Coming soon to the Vatican web site, a poll on which religion local residents think is best; and to a bears’ social networking web site, a poll on which natural environment is users’ preferred location for emptying their bowels.

Hopefully actually coming soon, a new and somewhat more scientific (YouGov) poll for the Standard: they’ve published one every Monday for some time now, so I’m expecting one to appear this afternoon too. We’ll keep you posted.

The latest YouGov poll for the Evening Standard shows that Boris’s lead has been cut in half since their previous weekly poll. He now leads Ken Livingstone by 6%, where last week he led by 13%.

Additionally, more people now think Boris isn’t serious enough to be Mayor than think he is - a position which has reversed since last week.

While it may be boastful to think StopBoris.org has played a role in making people start to move away from the blond buffoon, you never know, we might have done. So keep up the good work, Boris-stoppers - we can do this if we keep on spreading the message in these last two-and-a-bit weeks of campaigning!

The closer the election gets, the more shockingly biased Associated Newspapers’ propaganda pamphlets – printed with ink that won’t rub off onto your bum-cheeks – become.

Dave Hill’s been behaving like a thoroughly professional journalist throughout this campaign, giving each candidate a fair hearing, carefully weighing up their policies’ pros and cons and reporting things as he finds them throughout. He certainly hasn’t come to his blog with any particular axe to grind, unlike, say, a certain blogger sitting very near my computer at this moment, who’s only too happy to grind an axe (or preferably to bury it in Boris’s head) at any opportunity.

But even non-partisan Dave lost his rag with the latest Evening Standard bias yesterday; I say ‘lost his rag’, but that is perhaps overstating things somewhat, given that the title of his article is merely "Tut, Tut, Evening Standard". (Mind you, I’ve just noticed that his permalink, i.e. the link I just put in, gives away that that wasn’t the title of his first draft!) But it’s clear that the Daily Mail group of newspapers, for so long desperate to be rid of Ken Livingstone, are hell-bent on getting their crony Boris [who, don’t forget, saved Andrew Gilligan’s career when he was sacked from the BBC by offering him a job at the Spectator] into City Hall, no matter what the cost to their journalistic reputation.

So, how would they cover last night’s Newsnight debate, which by common consent no-one did stunningly well in but Boris definitely lost, in their evening freesheet, London Lite?

The answer is that they:

• freeze-framed through the debate to find a still where Boris looked serious, Paddick looked reasonable and Ken looked a bit silly;
• mentioned, for the headline and opening, that (unlike a certain other candidate) Boris has pledged only to serve two terms as Mayor (which is irrelevant anyway when he couldn’t possibly get re-elected after four years of incompetence and gaffes);
• spent two-thirds of the article bigging up the pledges Boris has announced, which are a checklist of the things the Evening Standard has been moaning about in relation to Lee Jasper etc.;
• mentioned one single topic from last night’s debate, namely Ken’s promise to resign if he breaks his word by putting up the Congestion Charge for sub-band G cars if re-elected;
• somehow managed to segue this into a reference to a poll finding that Ken is the candidate considered least honest by the Londoners questioned;
• er…
• that’s it.

Seriously. No mention of Boris’s bus-based blathering, when Jeremy Paxman had to ask him the same question 12 times and still didn’t get an answer. Nothing. No coverage of the debate at all. This is a propaganda effort the Chinese government would be proud of.

They claim to be "London’s Quality Newspaper", but on the evidence I’ve been seeing, even despite its lightweight content and short articles, the only one of the big four to come close to deserving that title is thelondonpaper, which is at least even-handed in its treatment of the candidates in this election. Better to have one or two fair paragraphs about each candidate than 20 grossly distorted ones, after all.

Mind you, even thelondonpaper is short on coverage of last night’s debate. It goes some way to making up for this with an intriguing nugget of information about Boris’s fundraising:

It has emerged Johnson met up with old pals from the Bullingdon Club—an exclusive Oxford University set which includes Tory leader David Cameron—to appeal for funds for his campaign.

The Bullingdon Club, lest we forget, is renowned for its members’ disgraceful behaviour in Oxford. David Cameron and Boris Johnson were in the club together, and essentially what they did was:

• Book a posh restaurant, using an assumed name (their reputation preceded them);
• Turn up to dine – and get completely and utterly drunk;
• Smash up the place, causing as much damage as possible;
• Ask your rich parents to foot the repair bill to appease the distraught restaurateur;
• Repeat at will.

Another famous Bullingdon alumnus is Darius Guppy, by the way: a lovely bunch, all in all.

So now it sounds like Boris has been catching up with his fellow Bullingdon thugs to try to get cash out of them. Makes sense: after his woeful performance on Newsnight last night, his campaign is looking pretty damaged, so I’m sure they won’t mind throwing money at it to try to restore it. What’s good enough for a restaurant…

Apparently some people might not think that the Stop Boris blog would have provided an accurate and impartial take on last night’s Newsnight debate, for some reason. Honestly, next you’ll be saying the Evening Standard can’t be trusted to provide balanced coverage of the election campaign.

The account posted here last night is not exactly contradicted elsewhere on the internet though, and not just by anti-Boris types.

It’s particularly interesting to have a read through some of the comments on Iain Dale’s miserable coverage. (Presumably part of the reason for his grumpiness is that his party’s candidate for Mayor had just been exposed as a useless idiot!)

Some of the highlights from the comments are:

Sadly and very surprisingly though, Boris was crap - I mean just really REALLY bad. He had verbal dioreha, was blabbing on and saying nothing cohessive, speaking way too fast, unable/unwilling to answer the question on the cost of new routemasters (bad briefing), which was reminiscent of Paxman’s eviscertation of Micheal Howard!

If he had used his wit it owuld have been better.

I thought he was going to walk it!

Shabolic performance by Boris and I agree with Iain’s analysis of old “What’s his name?” (the Liberal Democrat candidate. Ken was relaxed but none of them was able tog et a word in edge ways. Someone tell Boris to stop interrupting!!!!!

If, like me, you have grave misgivings about leaving London in the hands of an arrogant Trotskyite berk then you would do the sensible thing and vote for the candidate most likely to oust the git. That would be Bojo. The trouble is - he’s shit. On tonight’s evidence this city would be in the hands of a bumbling, rambling, clueless(if likeable) nitwit.
Stop waffling on about bloody bendy buses, please! What’s he on about now, Routemasters? WTF???
Very depressing. Poor old London. It deserves much, much better.

Johnson reminded me of a graduate in his first ever job interview and he hadn’t done a stroke of preparation. Lamentable

The Tories dug their own grave by appointing BoJo. I almost wish they had s erious candidate, as I dislike Leavingsoon as much as anyone.

Boris Johnson came over as a lightweight joke. Why on earth did the Tories choose him? He bumbled his way through the whole event.

Boris was by far and away the worst. And Paxman actually showed how unmanageable the clown actually is. […]

Boris would be a disaster for London. Slippery, wet, dangerously vague, bullshitter.

Boris was just an embarassment. As a Tory, I don’t know who to vote for now. Why didn’t he prepare?

Andrew Sparrow on the Guardian’s Politics Blog has further coverage, and links to further coverage still. Dave Hill, as seen on BBC London this evening, has a brief response to Newsnight too, while Dave Cole goes into more depth.

Alternatively, rather than relying on everyone else’s coverage, you could just watch it for yourself. Here are two useful links, depending on how much time you have to spare:

• Two minutes: Paxman despairs at Boris’s bendy bus blathering
• 32 minutes: the whole thing (in RealPlayer format)

Enjoy – and let us know what you think. Will the polls continue to slip (slightly) away from Boris if he keeps up these performances?

P.S. Liberal Conspiracy have a similar, shorter but better lip-sync’ed video of the Boris bus blathering on their home page at the moment. Apologies to them for the fact that the StopBoris.org spam filter meant I didn’t see their e-mail telling me this until three hours after they sent it!

PoliticalBetting.com has some interesting coverage of the details of today’s YouGov poll for the Evening Standard, which again shows an extraordinary lead for Boris. They have him on 49%, to Ken’s 36% and Brian’s 10%.

Particularly interesting are the figures around the one singled out by YouGov’s Peter Kellner in response to criticism – or at least questioning – of his methods. Kellner says:

To my mind, the key fact in this campaign so far is that around one-in-five people who “generally speaking” think of themselves as Labour say they would vote for Boris Johnson. If Livingstone can get most of this group to return to the fold (plus do better on second preferences), he might still win; if he can’t, he loses.

The figures showing how people seeing themselves as generally supporting a particular political party intend to vote are indeed interesting.

What we can see from them are how Boris is doing so well: he’s somehow managed to lure over people who usually support other parties to vote for him instead.

Of course, most Conservatives (86%) intend to vote for him. The 14% who don’t are of course the only ones who have realised what a dangerous idea for their party making Boris their most powerful representative in the country is, and we can only hope that between now and 1 May some more of the 86% majority will see the light too!

Perhaps more surprising is that a fairly large 22% of people who normally support Labour intend to vote for Boris. Quite why anyone of a left-wing persuasion would want to support a nasty, selfish right-winger who’s spent the past 20 years pandering to upper-middle-class Daily Telegraph readers’ prejudices through his often offensive regular column is beyond me. Indeed, the idea that anyone who normally supports Labour could possibly think that Boris Johnson will have the first clue about how to address their social justice priorities would be laughable, were the danger of our great capital sleepwalking into four long years of an incompetent Boris Mayoralty not so threatening.

The final column of these figures is especially interesting, and must be bitterly disappointing to Brian Paddick. When asked who they would be voting for, the 114 people who identified themselves as Liberal Democrat supporters answered in the following proportions: Ken 24%, Brian 31%, Boris 40%. One third more Liberal Democrats intend to vote for Boris than for Brian.

Again, I’m rather at a loss to explain this. From what I’ve seen of Brian’s pronouncements, he hasn’t done anything to alienate the more right-leaning side of his party: opposing the £25 CO₂ charge using rhetoric about it penalising ‘family cars’, for instance, should have easily kept them on board, I would have thought. So is it the moderate Lib Dems, or the left-leaning Lib Dems who are abandoning their own candidate and turning to Boris? Brian seems competent and articulate; why desert him for a bumbling buffoon who would make London a laughing stock?

What seems clear from these figures, assuming they are broadly accurate, is that Boris is the only main candidate who is currently managing to keep nearly all his party’s supporters on side. Both Ken, and to an even more alarming extent Brian, are seeing some of their own parties’ supporters crashing other parties, particularly Boris’s.

So if you know anyone who you think you can rely on to vote Labour or Liberal Democrat, and therefore haven’t bothered mentioning StopBoris.org to them, or checking they’ve registered to vote, there’s no time like the present to get them on board.

If Boris is elected Mayor on 1 May, the people who’ve crashed his party will find themselves waking up the morning after with a terrible hangover, wondering why they ever left their own party behind as they look on in horror at the four-year-long fallout of the night before. We need to get people to reach that realisation as soon as possible now, so that they return safely to their own parties before the election!

Nearly forgot to mention: another YouGov poll (PDF) was published today.

There’s little change from last week: Boris is down to 47%, Ken’s still on 37% and Brian’s slipped down to 10%.

Ken’s team have apparently started questioning YouGov’s polling methodology, which seems a bit pointless, although I did also see him dismissing the poll as irrelevant and pleading as usual for the media to focus on the issues, so mixed signals from him about these figures.

Even if the figures are a bit biased, it’s hard to imagine a poll being out by as much as the entire Lib Dem vote, so we can assume Boris is in the lead. And as such, Boris-stoppers, we still have much work to do - not least in spreading the news of this poll result to ensure people realise they need to turn out and vote against this incompetent man.

This evening, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen for a few weeks, and he asked me what I’d been up to, so inevitably the subject of stopping Boris came up. He agreed that Boris clearly shouldn’t be Mayor, then added:

“I don’t think he’ll win though, it’s not likely…”

I broke the news of the most recent polling figures - 49% to Boris, 37% to Ken, 12% to Brian - and his jaw dropped. “No…!” he exclaimed, in disbelief. “Oh no, that’s awful. That’s really spoilt my evening now.”

Of course, I apologised, but my encounter brought home the fact that there is a lot of complacency out there among people who don’t want Boris to be Mayor and just assume that he can’t possibly win this. It’s good complacency in a way, of course: they’re complacent about how sensible they assume the rest of London’s voting residents are. But sadly the opinion polls suggest otherwise.

So, although it may spoil their evenings, days or even weeks, please do take any opportunity to point out to your friends that Boris can win this election. He’s the odds-on favourite with the bookies, and leaps and bounds ahead in the opinion polls. It’s up to those of us who are aware of the threat he poses to make aware those who aren’t.

Pass on our apologies to your friends for any of their evenings ruined on this campaign’s behalf though, won’t you?

The Independent carries news of a strange survey of business leaders today.

I’m not convinced it’s supposed to be a particularly statistically significant survey, since they only asked 100 City bosses - think of it more as a survey to make questions for Play Your Cards Right out of - but the figures are interesting.

Of course, well remunerated City bosses do tend to support whoever’s wearing the blue rosette, so 62 of those questioned plumping for Boris (against 24 for Ken and 15 for Brian) is not too surprising.

But when you look down at some of the subsequent figures, their more detailed feelings about Boris don’t suggest that their voting intentions are borne out of any deep-held support for Boris.

The number of business people who think the Tory candidate is seen as “too much of a buffoon” has risen from 53 to 65 per cent since January, while the proportion who believe he does not come across as serious enough has also increased, from 57 to 63 per cent. The number of business people who think he has a clearly defined set of policies has dropped from 33 to 30 per cent over the same period.

So, come on business leaders (I know you’re all big readers of the Stop Boris blog), think again about how you’re going to vote: for a non-serious buffoon with no clear policies, or for someone else? Who would you invite onto your executive board?

This is the new Stop Boris blog. What better impetus to start a blog than the news that the latest opinion poll suggests that Boris will easily win the election to become Mayor of London on 1 May. Not so funny now, is he?

Anyway, strangely there doesn’t appear to exist a WordPress theme which looks like the Stop Boris web site, so I’m having to invest rather too much time in attempting to convert the default theme.

Normal business will get underway as soon as that’s sorted out…