Political leaders in North Yorkshire and York have said the region’s first mayoral election was “too close to call” as the vote count starts this morning (Friday).
Ahead of the result of the vote being declared at Harrogate Convention Centre this afternoon, bookmakers had Labour’s David Skaith as favourite to win the mayoralty, with Ladbrokes offering odds of 2/5 on him and 15/8 on Conservative Keane Duncan.
At the same time another national bookmaker, William Hill, also had Mr Skaith as the most likely winner, with odds of 4/9 on him and 7/4 for Mr Duncan.
Both bookmakers were offering 25/1 on Liberal Democrat Felicity Cunliffe Lister and 33/1 on Green Party candidate Kevin Foster.
Neither bookmaker were displaying odds for the Independent candidates Paul Haslam and Keith Tordoff.
Voting took place at 668 polling stations across York and North Yorkshire yesterday.
Local politicians agreed a Labour victory in the traditionally Tory-dominated area which features some of the safest Conservative constituencies in the country, would represent a remarkable result.
Some leading Labour Party figures in the area said, with the fine weather possibly leading more of the 640,006 electorate turn out to vote, they were quite confident in their candidate would beat Mr Duncan, albeit by a fairly narrow margin.
Speaking privately, senior Tories said the result was “too close to call”, despite the Labour needing a significant shift towards the party from the most recent local government elections.
Two years ago in North Yorkshire the Conservative share of the vote fell from 53.3 per cent in 2017 to 41.2 per cent, while Labour secured 17.3 per cent, Liberal and Liberal Democrats 17.1 per cent, Independents 13.4 per cent and the Green Party 9.8 per cent.
In York, the 2023 elections saw Labour gain 42.4 per cent of the vote, the Liberal Democrats 31.1 per cent, Conservatives 13.8 per cent and the Green Party 11.1 per cent.
Vote count timings
The count will take place at four venues across the two constituent councils of North Yorkshire Council and City of York Council.
The main count venue – where the results will be declared – is Harrogate Convention Centre.
These are the likely timings for the count. It is estimated we may have a declaration at 3pm:
| Indicative Time | Activity |
| 9.15am | Count venue opens |
| 9.30am | Verification starts |
| Noon | Expected verification completion time (target) |
| ASAP after verification | Count starts |
| Mid-afternoon | Expected count completion time and declaration of results by returning officer |