Thought for a few seconds (ChatGPT 5.5 thinking mode)
Yes. That is a credible alternative explanation, and it may actually complement the incumbency hypothesis rather than replace it.
In a three-member ward, Green supporters had up to three votes but only two Green candidates to vote for. They then had three broad options:
- vote Green-Green and stop;
- vote Green-Green plus Labour;
- vote Green-Green plus another minor-party/independent candidate.
Because only two Greens stood, a disciplined Green voter could not cast a full three-candidate Green slate. So if many Green voters used only two votes, Labour’s third-place candidate could win with a much lower vote total than the Green candidates.
The Forest Hill numbers fit that possibility:
| Candidate group |
Votes |
| Green 1 |
2,762 |
| Green 2 |
2,740 |
| Labour 1, Peter Bernards |
2,001 |
| Labour 2, Fergal Sharpe |
1,819 |
| Labour 3, Jacq Paschoud |
1,729 |
The two Green candidates’ totals are almost identical, only 22 votes apart. That suggests a large bloc of voters probably voted for both Greens as a pair. But the Labour candidates are much lower, which suggests that many of those Green voters either:
did not use a third vote, or used it for a non-Labour candidate, or spread it unevenly among Labour candidates.
This would explain why Labour still got one seat despite the Greens being clearly ahead. In a three-seat ward, if the Green bloc only has two Green candidates to support, it can dominate the top two places but leave the third seat open to the strongest remaining candidate.
So the refined hypothesis would be:
Forest Hill likely had a strong Green slate vote for the two Green candidates, but because the Greens only stood two candidates, many Green voters either stopped after two votes or scattered their third votes. That allowed the strongest Labour candidate, Peter Bernards, probably helped by incumbency and name recognition, to take the third seat.
What the published candidate totals cannot tell us is whether individual Green voters actually left their third vote blank. To prove that, we would need ballot-level data showing how many voters used one, two or three votes and which combinations they chose. The candidate totals alone make the hypothesis plausible, but not conclusive.
