Three Asian candidates have won seats in the Assembly Election in London. The election was held on the same day as the UK council and Mayoral election i.e. 5th May 2016. Navin Shah AM and Dr Onkar Sahota have been re-elected. Unmesh Desai who has been a councillor in East Ham has also been elected as a London Assembly Member.
The election system to be used in the Assembly election is called the Additional Member System. There are 14 constituencies that elect one member each to the Assembly. These seats have been won only by the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The remaining 11 seats are distributed by a second vote, by a modified D'Hondt method of closed-list voting.
These seats have been won by other parties too, namely the British National Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP. The overall result is an attempted compromise between constituency representation and London-wide proportional representation.
Labour received the largest ever number of votes for a party in a London Assembly election, becoming the first party to poll over 1 million votes. The Conservative Party won just 8 Assembly seats, its worst ever performance in a London Assembly election.
Quick look
London Assembly seats (25 in total)
- 12 seats Labour Party
- 8 seats Conservative Party
- 2 seats Green Party
- 2 seats UK Independence Party
- 1 seats Liberal Democrats
London Assembly Constituency Members who are Asian:
- Brent and Harrow: Navin Shah, Labour Party
- City and East: Unmesh Desai, Labour Party
- Ealing and Hillingdon: Onkar Singh Sahota, Labour Party
Full council election report with winning Asian candidates to be published in forthcoming issues of Asian Voice.
