Current YUSU President, Kallum Taylor, is predicted to reclaim his role for a second term at the YUSU Elections Results this evening, according to Vision’s exit poll. He looks set to be joined by Cassandra Brown as York Sport President, George Offer as Welfare Officer, Daniel Whitmore as Academic Officer and Chris West as Student Activities Officer.
From Vision’s exit poll results, candidates Kallum Taylor and Cassandra Brown appear to have gained a clean sweep of votes, whereas the battle between George Offer and Jordan Lloyd for Welfare remains too close to call. Daniel Whitmore appears to have narrowly striven ahead of fellow Academic Officer candidate and rival Nick Hall, and Chris West appears to have only just beaten off strong competition from rival Anna McGivern in his attempt to reclaim his current role as Student Activities Officer.
The poll has taken a random sample of 100 students that had voted for YUSU President, and asked them for their first choice candidate for each Sabbatical position. Last year’s official YUSU exit poll turned out to be completely accurate, predicting Taylor to win Presidency with a slightly higher share of votes than his main rivals Zahra Latif and Nacho Fernando.
Vision will be extensively covering the YUSU Elections results from 8pm this evening, so be sure to check out the live coverage on our website.
[easychart type=”pie” title=”President” groupnames=”Kallum Taylor,Thomas Banks,Matthew Stephenson” group1values=”78″ group2values=”13″ group3values=”9″ chartfadecolor=”FFFFFF”]
[easychart type=”pie” title=”Academic Officer” groupnames=”Nick Hall,Emma Brownbill,Matthew Kilcoyne,Daniel Whitmore,Jason Brandwood,Did not vote” group1values=”23″ group2values=”7″ group3values=”10″ group4values=”36″ group5values=”12″ group6values=”12″ chartfadecolor=”FFFFFF”]
[easychart type=”pie” title=”Student Activities Officer” groupnames=”Chris West,Gabrielle James,Anna McGivern,Sam Malone,Sebastian Odell,Did not vote” group1values=”37″ group2values=”9″ group3values=”28″ group4values=”8″ group5values=”5″ group6values=”13″ chartfadecolor=”FFFFFF”]
[easychart type=”pie” title=”Welfare Officer” groupnames=”George Offer,Jordan Lloyd,Do not vote” group1values=”38″ group2values=”33″ group3values=”29″ chartfadecolor=”FFFFFF”]
[easychart type=”pie” title=”York Sport President” groupnames=”James Ashrafi-Tari,George Richards,Cassandra Brown,Did not vote” group1values=”10″ group2values=”23″ group3values=”55″ group4values=”12″ chartfadecolor=”FFFFFF”]
Assuming you used a true random sample representative of the student body, then the poll is only accurate within a margin of 9.7% – which makes every single race bar the presidency too close to call. You’ve also only asked for first preferences, which tells us nothing about the final result in a preferential contest; there is no guarantee that the candidate who finishes in first place at the end of the first round of counting will be elected.
You should have asked your respondents to recreate their full ballot papers (and ideally should have questioned at least 350 people), then use those papers to simulate the election count yourselves (something that really isn’t hard to do at all). As it stands, this exit poll is pretty much worthless – all it tells us is that Kallum Taylor should win on the first round with a two-thirds majority and Cassandra Brown is a likely win for Sports. The other races are all much, much too close to call and any of the leading candidates could easily win.