Sadiq Khan is set to comfortably beat his Tory rival at next year's mayoral election, according to a new poll released on Wednesday.
The Labour mayor leads his Tory rival Susan Hall by 50 per cent to 23 per cent as he seeks a history third term in City Hall in May 2024.
Lib Dem candidate Rob Blackie is on 10 per cent, the Green's Zoe Garbett on 7 per cent and Reform UK’s Howard Cox on 5 per cent, the new survey by Lord Ashcroft found.
Almost eight out of ten people who voted Labour at the last general election said they would support Mr Khan, with 69 per cent of Tory voters opting for Ms Hall.
But 14 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters said they would switch to Labour.
The Tory candidate suffers from few Londoners recognising her. Just 7 per cent of those surveyed could correctly identify a picture of Ms Hall, compared to 77 per cent for Mr Khan.
When asked who was to blame for the problems facing the capital, the most frequent answer was “the Conservative government” named by 29 per cent of those surveyed, including 41 per cent of those currently intending to vote for Mr Khan in 2024 .
Just over half (54%) of those who said they would vote for Ms Hall blamed the Mayor.
The survey of more than 3,400 Londoners found that there were four areas in which people believed the capital is getting worse. Everyday cost of living and the availability of reasonably priced housing were at the very top of the list with 83 per cent and 76 per cent of respondents complaining about the areas.
Increasing crime and public safety (64%) and traffic congestion (52%) were the other two major worries for Londoners.
"Though most in our focus groups were still happy in London there was a very widespread view that life in the capital had got worse overall in recent years," the report said
"A particular complaint from people in outer boroughs was that the problems of central London were increasingly present in what they had once felt to be their more peaceful and affordable area.
"For some, Ulez (the Ultra Low Emission Zone) was a symbol of this expansion of London’s less appealing features."
It found that in general, the more Londoners care about an issue, the lower they rate Mr Khan’s performance on it.
Voters give the Mayor good ratings for attracting international investment, investing in the arts and speaking out against the government. But he received the lowest scores for their biggest Mayoral priority: tackling crime.
Lord Ashcroft wrote in the Standard: "Though most would rather be here than anywhere else they can think of, many feel that life in the capital is going downhill. Hair-raising stories about crime have become commonplace in areas once considered safe and peaceful. 'I’ve been mugged five times in broad daylight, once at knifepoint,' an old lady told us in a Muswell Hill focus group. "The national scene is obviously to Khan’s advantage. Convincing people in London, of all places, that the answer to all their problems is to elect another Tory is going to be a tough sell – particularly after an administration that gave them Brexit and whose recent output has hardly been calibrated to appeal to metropolitan opinion.
"Things might be different if London were an unhappy outpost in a country of prosperity and calm, but in many ways Londoners think they have it better than much of the rest of Britain. There is no unique ‘London problem’ for which the capital’s residents are seeking the culprit."
The poll is the latest to reveal Mr Khan is likely to comfortably beat his Conservative rival.
A YouGov survey for Queen Mary University of London’s Mile End Institute earlier this month also put Mr Khan far ahead of Ms Hall with six months to go before the election.
- Lord Ashcroft Polls interviewed 3,418 adults in London between October 23 and November 8, 2023 and 2,518 adults throughout Britain. Results were weighted to the 2019 general election and to be representative of all adults in London and Great Britain.
