London mayoral race in social media

I thought it would be good to see how the social web commentariat is expressing itself towards the London mayoral race between incumbent Boris Johnson and previous mayor, Ken Livingstone. When we last looked at this Johnson was consistently getting more buzz than his Labour rival. Ken was only able to push above Boris after he made some "controversial" comments in an interview with the New Statesman. 

Looking at the number of mentions for each man across Twitter, blogs and forums we can see that Ken is now consistently jostling for position with Boris. High profile campaigns both for and against each candidate and the looming election date has slightly eroded the incumbency lead that Boris had held several months ago: 

In February both candidates had a net positive sentiment towards them in social media, with Boris having more detractors and fans, with feeling towards Ken more neutral. Just a month away from the election sentiment towards Boris has dipped, with him now receiving more negative than positive comments: 

Ken's results have markedly improved. He is now looking at a net positive result of 8%, against Boris' -2%. This suggests that the social media commentariat isn't swayed by the high profile negative media that the Labour candidate has been receiving recently.

Does it mean Ken will win? No, but it does give a useful insight into what the social web thinks about the two men in the bruising personality clash.