Another Election Night Live, another Spring Election over. If you missed our coverage, have no fear – we summed up the winners and did a voter breakdown for you!
A total of 2,145 students voted in the Spring Elections, with 13,807 individual votes being cast for Sabbatical Officers and 5,550 being cast for Student Officers. Meanwhile, in 2019, a total 4,323 students voted in the Spring Elections, with 27,132 individual votes being cast in total.
Although it’s definitely worth noting that student numbers vary year on year and can, consequently, have an impact on voting numbers, these statistics alone suggest that there has been estimated 49.6% decrease in the number of voters compared to last year’s Spring Election.
Furthermore, it was estimated by SUSU that in the 2019 Spring Elections, approximately 21% of the student population voted.
Given that the number of student voters has almost completely halved, one could estimate that approximately 11-13% of the student population voted in this year’s Spring Elections.
From this, one could argue that SUSU have seen a dramatic loss in student engagement in general during this year’s Spring Elections.
However, with the Academic Elections kicking off on Monday and the Summer Elections to come after Easter, it remains to be seen whether they will get some of that engagement back before the year is out.
Union President
Winner: Olivia Reed – 842 votes (50.21%)
Jacob Smith – 446 votes (26.6%)
Kendall Field-Pellow – 389 votes (23.3%)
Total votes: 1,723
VP Welfare and Community
Winner: Nicole Akuezumba – 845 votes (55.37%)
Kayleigh Littlemore – 490 votes (32.11%)
Total votes 1,526
VP Sports
Winner: Samuel Tweedle – 881 votes (58.11%)
Luke Jefferies – 635 votes (41.89%)
Kiera Spencer-Hayles – 381 votes (24.5%)
Total votes: 1,594
VP Activities
Winner: Corin Holloway – 777 votes (50.75%)
Fiona Sunderland – 754 votes (49.25%)
Hao You – 293 votes (18.22%)
Total votes: 1,608
VP Education and Democracy
In the Spring Elections nomination period, nobody stood for the role.
However, this sabbatical role as well as the vacant Facutly Officer roles will be re-opened for nominations from Monday 9th March in SUSU’s Academic Elections.
Students will have until Friday 13th March to nominate themselves for the role, with campaigning and voting all taking place the following week.
You can find out more about the role here.
All SUSU election votes are done via a system called Single Transferable Vote. You learn about how all that works here.
You can also find a more detailed vote breakdown (including Student Officer candidates) on the SUSU website.
