Harman wins by playing the system better

[matgb]

I said:

I hope for Johnson, but think Harman has a strong chance, and she made a blatent play for Cruddas's second prefs near the end,

And after the results are called, we see that:

Electoral college results

Candidate	1st round	2nd round	3rd round	4th round	5th round
Hilary Benn	16.40%	18.22%	22.33%
Hazel Blears	11.77%
Jon Cruddas	19.39%	20.39%	23.89%	30.06%
Peter Hain	15.32%	16.42%
Harriet Harman	18.93%	21.23%	25.88%	33.58%	50.43%	ELECTED
Alan Johnson	18.16%	23.74%	27.90%	36.35%	49.56%

Her blatant grab for his support worked like a charm. Cruddas won the first round, but barely picked up any second preferences, Johnson was picking up more until close to the end, when Harman then jumped ahead with Jon's votes. Interesting times it seems. Lots of people on the Labour blogs bitching about the voting system, one even said it was "stalinist". To me it remains the best way of determining a result acceptable to all, allows for multiple candidates rather than requiring a stitch up before the actual vote and is invaluable in a close contest, as this undoubtedly was. It also shows that Harman knew to play for second and third preferences a lot more than others, apparently internal canvassing wasn't asking for preferences at wll--and the media constantly referring to it as a "complicated" system was really annoying me throughout.

But most important aspect: Blears last place on barely 11% of the vote. Labour members renew my faith in humanity a little with that one, word has it there was a massive cheer when her elimination was announced.

Loads of politics posts in a row. Time for some frivolity methinks...

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* dances about singing *

Blears came last! Blears came last!

And, more importantly, this was exactly what you predicted, was it not, my love? I think the smugmode icon is called for on your behalf ;)

[matgb]

Well, the order they were knocked out was exactly matching my preferences all the way through until the final result, I had a slight preference for Johnson but it was very close, an dI had Cruddas down third. Wonder how much the QT debate did affect it? A lot of voters will probably have only seen that.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I suspect quite a bit. Harman DID perform very well.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Eurgh, same icon used by different people in adjacent comments => brain explody.

[matgb]

I stole it from her in the fist place, and she told me to use it. So I did. It gets worse elsewhere, the "Angels have the phone box" icon is very popular at the moment.

And I've seen entire threads with the same icon used by four or five different people. Which does make it very hard to follow at times; weird how icons become a visual key to a person so quickly.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

I always used to be surprised at how easy it was to identify who was saying what when all I had to go on was a username. Then I was amazed at how easily an icon would mentally override the username.

I suppose it makes sense; text is a more recent invention than vision.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

At least we're not saying the exact same thing at the same time today.