Social media guru – and Wanstead resident – Nic Newman tweets: The average UK voter has 2.33x more voting power than I do in Leyton & Wanstead – says Voter Power .. http://bit.ly/cViBKN. Time to move…
The figure is calculated by Voterpower.org to demonstrate that in safe seats like Leyton and Wanstead, it’s much harder for voters to have an effect on the result than it is in marginal constituencies. Their case is explained here.
BBC London has an election cab, and on its first day it visited Wanstead. The team behind it tweeted:
Meanwhile, according to a Wanstead Guardian article by the inestimable Claire Hack, the polls could be for an upset. According to a straw poll of people in Wanstead, the election will be as follows:
Labour: 0 votes
BNP: 1 vote
UKIP: 1 vote
Conservative: Possibly 1 vote
Liberal Democrat: Possibly 1 vote
Undecided: 1
Abstain: 1
This would obviously be a disaster for Labour, representing a decline from a 48.5% share of the vote in 2005, but of course that was when the constituency had slightly different boundaries, so perhaps that’s what has made the difference.
In what will probably become a fixture of Wanstead High Street in coming weeks, both Labour and Conservative prospective parliamentary candidates spent their Saturday mornings with trestle tables and volunteers within feet of each other handing out leaflets. Below are the leaflets they were distributing. 
Wansteadium is launching its collection of general election leaflets. As with other local news websites around the country, we will attempt to upload images of all general election leaflets distributed between now and the expected polling day of 6 May. You can see other leaflets from around the country on the website The Straight Choice, a non-party live election leaflet monitoring project.
First up, Labour’s John Cryer, delivered in Snaresbrook ward on 23 March.
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(Please feel free to let us know of any others you have delivered if you live in the constituency of Leyton and Wanstead, either via comments or to wansteadium-at-googlemail.com.)
