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 supermajority, to amend the Mayor's annual budget and to reject t ...

. It took place on the same day as the London mayoral election and the United Kingdom local elections. 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 parli ...

led by Len Duvall,

London Conservatives The London Conservatives are the regional party of the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party that operates in Greater London. Party strength The party's main competition is with the larger London Labour Party for office. The Conservat ...

led by

Gareth Bacon Gareth Andrew Bacon (born 7 April 1972) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington (UK Parliament constituency), Orpington since 2019 United Kingdom general electi ...

, London Greens led by

Siân Berry Siân Rebecca Berry (; born 9 July 1974) is a British politician who has served as the member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion since July 2024, succeeding Caroline Lucas. She was a co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales alongsid ...

, and the London Liberal Democrats led by Caroline Pidgeon. 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 60 ...

. The Liberal Democrats elected just 1 AM, their worst-ever result. Of the minor parties, the newly formed Women's Equality Party 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 The additional-member system (AMS) is a two-vote seat-linkage-based mixed electoral system used in the United Kingdom in which most legislator, representatives are elected in single-member districts (SMDs), and a fixed number of other "addition ...

. There are 14

constituencies An electoral (congressional, legislative, etc.) district, sometimes called a constituency, riding, or ward, is a geographical portion of a political unit, such as a country, state or province, city, or administrative region, created to provi ...

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, 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 environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...

, 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 Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), member ...

, and in the past the

British National Party The British National Party (BNP) is a Far-right politics, far-right, British fascism, fascist list of political parties in the United Kingdom, political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and is led by Adam ...

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

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...

. 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

Footnotes

References

External links

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

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

Assembly election London Assembly election London Assembly election