Labour's Kim McGuiness elected North East mayor, seeing off challenge from former Labour mayor Jamie Driscoll
Labour’s Kim McGuinness has comfortable won the contest to be the first North East mayor. She had 41% of the vote, beating Jamie Driscoll, who was on 28%. Driscoll was Labour’s North of Tyne mayor but was blocked by the party from standing to be its candidate for the new post because he was perceived as too leftwing, or insufficiently loyal to the
Labour leadership.
The new North East mayoralty is a larger version of the North of Tyne one, which is replaces.
Here are the results in full.
Kim McGuinness (Lab) 185,051 (41.27%)
+Jamie Driscoll (Ind) 126,652 (28.24%)
Guy Renner-Thompson (C) 52,446 (11.70%)
Paul Donaghy (Reform) 41,147 (9.18%)
Aidan King (LD) 25,485 (5.68%)
Andrew Gray (Green) 17,631 (3.93%)
Lab maj 58,399 (13.02%)
Electorate 1,459,195; Turnout 448,412 (30.73%)