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Yasmin Ali's avatar

The West Midlands contest has always been different to that in other areas, largely because Street has won twice without winning the city at the core of the city-region. His profile in Birmingham is low compared to that of other metro mayors in their core cities. Some people refer to Street uas the Mayor of Solihull. I think that the best thing he has going for his in May is Muslim disillusionment with Labour. The South Asian Muslim community has always had high turnout, even in local elections, and have been a significant part of Labour’s electoral coalition. If they don’t turnout, or don’t vote Labour, it makes the party’s task that much more difficult.

The Tories have certainly been flooding social media with ads highlighting (and over-simplifying) the complicated difficulties faced by BCC, but if the engagement with those ads is anything to go by, they aren’t gaining much traction. The anti-Tory comments and derisive emojis outnumber supportive ones, and the pro-Tory comments come from, presumably, activists, as a few names comment repeated or engage in arguments with opponents.

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Iain Bowen's avatar

Given the campaigns so far (I live in Birmingham ) have been barely visible I suspect turnout here will be about 27% and a lot of those will be people who vote by post.

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