The 2016 London Assembly election was an election held on 5 May 2016 to elect the members of the

London Assembly The London Assembly is a 25-member elected body, part of the Greater London Authority, that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor of London and has the power, with a two-thirds super-majority, to amend the Mayor's annual budget and to reject ...

. It took place on the same day as the London mayoral election and the

United Kingdom local elections There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom (commonly called 'general elections' when all seats are contested), elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local electi ...

. Four parties had AMs in the previous Assembly:

London Labour London Labour is the devolved, regional part of the Labour Party in Greater London. It is the largest political party in London, currently holding a majority of the executive mayoralties, a majority of local councils, council seats and parl ...

led by

Len Duvall Leonard Lloyd Duvall OBE (born 26 September 1961) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician serving as the Leader of the Labour Group in the London Assembly since 2004, and has been the Member of the London Assembly (AM) for Greenwich a ...

London Conservatives The London Conservatives are the regional party of the Conservative Party that operates in Greater London. Party strength The party's main competition is with the larger London Labour Party for office. They hold 21 of 73 London seats in the ...

led by

Gareth Bacon Gareth Andrew Bacon (born 7 April 1972) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, he was a member of the London Assembly from 2008 until he stood down ...

, London Greens led by

Siân Berry Siân Rebecca Berry (born 9 July 1974) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales alongside Jonathan Bartley from 2018 Green Party of England and Wales ...

, and the

London Liberal Democrats The London Liberal Democrats are the regional party of the Liberal Democrats that operates in Greater London. The organisation is associated with the English Liberal Democrats. Mayoral candidates In 2008, Baron Brian Paddick became the fir ...

led by

Caroline Pidgeon Caroline Valerie Pidgeon (born 29 September 1972) is a British politician serving as the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the London Assembly since 2018, and a Londonwide Member of the London Assembly (AM) since 2008. Early life and educat ...

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

received the largest number of votes ever cast for a party in a London Assembly election, becoming the first party to poll over 1 million votes. Although they gained Merton and Wandsworth from the Conservatives, their regional vote share declined by 0.8%, and they finished with 12 AMs, the same as in 2012. The Conservative Party won just 8 Assembly seats, its worst-ever performance in a London Assembly election. The Green Party retained its 2 Assembly members, although its 8.0% share of the regional vote represented its worst-ever result, and UKIP returned to the London Assembly for the first time since the election of

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

. The Liberal Democrats elected just 1 AM, their worst-ever result. Of the minor parties, the newly formed

Women's Equality Party The Women's Equality Party (WEP) is a feminist political party set up in the United Kingdom in 2015. The idea was conceived by Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig at the Women of the World Festival, when they concluded that there was a need for ...

was the most successful, attracting 91,772 votes (3.51%) on the regional list, which did not entitle them to any Assembly members as the threshold for representation is 5% of the regional vote. No other party polled above 2%.

Overview

The election system used is called the Additional Member System. There are 14

constituencies An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...

that elect one member each to the Assembly. These seats have been won only by the Labour Party or the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

. The remaining 11 seats are distributed by a second vote, by a modified D'Hondt method of

closed-list Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some in ...

voting, with a 5% minimum threshold. These seats have been won by other parties too, namely the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...

, the Liberal Democrats and

UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest pa ...

, and in the past the

British National Party The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and its leader is Adam Walker. A minor party, it has no elected representatives at any level of UK gover ...

. The overall result is an attempted compromise between constituency representation and London-wide

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

. Those who were eligible had to be registered to vote before 19 April 2016 in order to take part in this election.

Candidates

Constituency candidates

List candidates

Rejected ballots 29,733 (1.1%) Total votes 2,645,409 Note that party descriptions can be used as alternatives to the registered party name. Descriptions used in this election were: * Britain First – Putting British people first * Caroline Pidgeon's London Liberal Democrats * Green Party – "vote Green on orange" * Respect (George Galloway) * UK Independence Party (UKIP) * The House Party – Homes for Londoners

Opinion polls

Constituency

Regional list

Results

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Footnotes

References

External links

London Elects homepage
{{United Kingdom local elections, 2016 London Assembly election

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

Assembly election London Assembly election London Assembly election

Overview

Candidates

Constituency candidates

List candidates

Opinion polls

Constituency

Regional list

Results

Footnotes

See also

References

External links