The East Midlands Combined Authority covers Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, including both county councils and Nottingham and Derby City Council. This is the first mayoral race for the council. Labour looks on course to win the East Midlands Mayoral race with Claire Ward set to become the first East Midlands Mayor, defeating Tory MP and Nottinghamshire Council leader Ben Bradley.
Bradley is holding onto just over half (56%) of those who voted Conservative in 2019, with 24% of those voters intending to vote for the Reform candidate.
Three-quarters of Labour’s 2019 voters are lining up behind Claire Ward. But 12% say they will vote for the Green candidate. 14% of her supporters voted Conservative in 2019.
Claire Ward leads Ben Bradley across every age group, except over-65 year-olds, where Bradley is ahead by 44% to 31%.
Reducing crime and anti-social behaviour, regenerating the high street and protecting the environment are the top three priorities that voters in the East Midlands want their next mayor to focus on. These priorities were reflected in the focus groups where tackling crime and anti-social behaviour in town centres emerged as the top priority.
Walking around the town centre, unless you want to buy a vape or a knockoff phone cover, there’s not much to do
Colin, Project Manager, Mansfield
Our city centre, and a lot of them in the Midlands, are absolutely atrocious. It’s full of spice addicts. When I go to use the bank, it’s a minefield, I absolutely dread it. As a young female I wouldn’t want to work in that environment. It’s a hellhole
Suzanne, Healthcare Manager, Mansfield
A few cities are absolutely thriving, London, Leeds, Manchester. But then the rest seem to have fallen back into decay. There’s no investment
Barbara, Pub Landlord, Mansfield
I certainly think that there should be investment [into the environment] and certainly looking into it, otherwise how are we ever going to improve?
Joshua, Business Analyst, Mansfield
In the clips from the Mayoral debates shown in the focus group, participants picked up on the fact that both main candidates had mentioned public transport. One joked, rather cynically, that public transport “is clearly top of the list on polling, seeing as they both mentioned it.”
Low awareness of the mayoral election, but hopes for what the mayor could achieve
Most of the people we spoke to in Mansfield had not even heard that the Mayoral elections were happening - and our polling suggests that this election is likely to have the lowest turnout of the four races we studied. However, participants were supportive of the idea of having a mayor in the East Midlands to bang the drum for an area they feel is often overlooked. Some questioned whether the Mayor would have enough control to improve things in the East Midlands, but many looked to Andy Burham in Manchester as a model of how the mayor could stand up for the local area. As in some of the other areas tested, participants in the East Midlands felt the Mayor would work best when they weren’t too political and worked with the council and others to attract investment.
We are very much no man's land in the middle and it is, I can't remember who said it, it's investment. It's big business. We need big, big companies, big factories, big business to come to bring the people to turn everything around. There's got to be some sort of pull to the area to make it improve
Emma, Health Visitor, Mansfield
We need to bring investment for jobs, factories and industry. New industries are going down south. There’s an untapped engineering background here in the Midlands
Stuart, Retired Engineer, Mansfield
If they’re anything like Andy Burnham, they’ll be influential. Burnham’s done a hell of a lot of good work in Manchester
Stuart, Retired Engineer, Mansfield
Ben Bradley’s local profile not enough to meet Ward’s Labour lead
As Mansfield’s MP for 7 years, Ben Bradley was (as might be expected) known to participants in the Mansfield focus group, some of whom found him more relatable than his party leader Rishi Sunak. But the polling shows he trails the Labour candidate by 13 points in the broader East Midlands area. Some participants questioned whether Ben Bradley might be hedging his bets given he could lose his seat at the general election.
I think Ben Bradley comes across a little bit more, I dunno, not working class by any stretch imagination, but a bit more like your average Mansfield bloke and Rishi Sunak is quite clearly not remotely in touch with most percentages of the UK because of his background and so I think there's a potential for Ben Bradley to be a more relatable conservative
Suzanne, Healthcare Manager, Mansfield
Ben certainly comes across as more in touch with the realities and the challenges of that everybody faces on a day-to-day basis. Rishi always makes me cringe when he's out amongst the public and the things he rolls his sleeves up as if that makes him more relatable
Colin, Project Manager, Mansfield