Sadiq Khan has secured victory as London mayor, with Labour winning in more constituencies than the Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith.
Khan had 44 per cent of first preference votes, with Goldsmith trailing on 35 per cent. Green candidate Sian Berry looks likely to come in third place with six per cent of the vote.
London wide turnout looks set to reach as high as 45.6 per cent, up 7.6 per cent on 2012.
Goldsmith got off to a good start as the Conservatives secured an early win in Bexley and Bromley, but went on to win just five more constituencies to Khan’s eight.
The Tory candidate also won in Barnet and Camden, Croydon and Sutton, Havering and Redbridge, South West and West Central.
However, Khan took the rest (and some by quite a large margin): Brent and Harrow, City and East, Ealing and Hillingdon, Enfield and Harringey, Lambeth and Southwark, Merton and Wandsworth, North East, and Greenwich and Lewisham.
All constituency votes have been 100 per cent verified.
Polling released yesterday by YouGov indicated Khan would win after second preferences were counted, taking City Hall for Labour after eight years under Tory Boris Johnson.
Goldsmith and Khan went into a run-off as second preference votes were counted. The London mayoral election uses a supplementary vote. That means Londoners are given two votes – a first preference and a second preference.
As no candidate won over 50 per cent, all candidates but the top two are eliminated, and anyone who voted for them has their second choice redistributed to the top two.
Meanwhile, Hackney MP Dianne Abbott has said that the Conservatives don’t deserve to win London after “the most appallingly anti-Muslim campaign”.
Last night Andrew Boff, the former Conservative group leader on the London Assembly, said that Goldsmith’s campaign had “blown up bridges” in the Muslim community. He doesn’t expect Goldsmith to win, saying he’s happy “he no longer has to defend the mayor”.