Roar! brings you a breakdown of voting representation after the initial opening of student polls.
Turnout stands at just over 5% after the first day of students taking to the polls in the KCLSU student officer elections. Voting opened at 10am on Monday 3rd March, and as of midnight 1,057 (4.2%) of King’s’ 25,000 students have cast their vote.
A breakdown of the vote reveals that 31.8% of the votes so far have been cast by Arts and Humanities students, 20.7% by Biomedicine or Medical students and 1.6% by Dental and Psychiatry students. The figures also point to a campaigning bias focused on the Strand, with 68.8% of votes being cast by students whose main study site is there. Only 18.8% of votes came from students based at Guy’s, while so far a mere 2 students from Denmark Hill campus have voted.
In a statement, VP for Representation and Communication, Anthony Shaw, urged candidates to focus on the “massive black holes” at campuses other than the Strand. Yet overall he took a positive outlook by stating that the figures were well above where they were at the same time last year. Turnout last year was rumoured to be around 7%, but with two days of hard campaigning still to go, Shaw remained confident KCLSU were on track to “break the dismal turnout from last year”, and to restore some faith in student politics. Polls remain open until 6pm Thursday.
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