{"id":2418,"date":"2025-07-23T19:51:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T18:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2418"},"modified":"2025-07-23T21:26:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T20:26:49","slug":"lord-smith-wins-cambridge-chancellorship-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2418","title":{"rendered":"Lord Smith Wins Cambridge Chancellorship Election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/21percent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-23-at-16.43.35-1024x338.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/21percent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-23-at-16.43.35-1024x338.png 1024w, https:\/\/21percent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-23-at-16.43.35-300x99.png 300w, https:\/\/21percent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-23-at-16.43.35-768x254.png 768w, https:\/\/21percent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-23-at-16.43.35.png 1434w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The results of the Single Transferable Vote election for the election of the Chancellor of Cambridge University are shown above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Congratulations to Lord Smith of Finsbury who won the election. We wish him well in his new post. The announcement of the result by the University of Cambridge is<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cam.ac.uk\/news\/new-chancellor-elected-at-the-university-of-cambridge?ucam-ref=home-hero\" title=\" here.\"> here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Some observations on the results:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Only 25,054 voted. All Cambridge graduates were eligible to vote, but only a small fraction of the electorate actually bothered to vote.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In fact, about ~2000 voted in person, so the number of those voting online (~23,000) was also much less than those who registered to vote online (~34,000).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The alumni outnumbered the members of Regent House (or the staff) and so were the dominant bloc in the election.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Lord Browne did somewhat worse than expected. Many had tipped him as the favourite, but he was beaten by Lord Smith, Dr Mohamed El-Erian and Ms Sandi Toksvig. He was less transfer-friendly than his main competitors. It would seem that the considerable baggage that accompanied Lord Browne eventually took its toll.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">If the election had been run under first past the post, there would have been a different winner &#8212; Dr Mohamed El-Erian. It was the transfer of first Prof Evans&#8217; and then Lord Browne&#8217;s vote, which went substantially to Lord Smith, that proved decisive and controlled the fate of the election.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The main surprise to us was the very strong showing by Ms Sandi Toksvig, who barely campaigned at all. If she had campaigned as strongly as the others, then she might very easily have won. We were only able to identify one campaign video by Ms Toksvig. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Ms Gina Miller&#8217;s vote transferred substantially to Ms Toksvig, suggesting that the argument for a female Chancellor resonated strongly with some sections of the electorate.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It was a very creditable performance by Prof Wyn Evans, running on issues of bullying and precarity, to beat a household name with much campaigning experience, Ms Gina Miller.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The results of the Single Transferable Vote election for the election of the Chancellor of Cambridge University are shown above. Congratulations to Lord Smith of Finsbury who won the election. We wish him well in his new post. The announcement of the result by the University of Cambridge is here. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2418"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2427,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions\/2427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}