Results for LeadMCR 2026 are in. After two weeks of campaigning and four days of voting, the student body has picked the eight new Executive Officers for the Students’ Union.
These officers represent the student body within the SU, advocating for your needs, determining policy and working to improve the student experience.
10,904 voters participated this year, an increase of 876 from the previous round of elections, where 10,028 students voted.
The highest turnout was for Union Affairs Officer with 7634 votes cast. The lowest turnout was for Postgraduate Research Officer with 809 votes cast for that role. It should be noted that the PGR Officer can only be voted for by postgraduate students; traditionally, turnout is therefore much lower.
The lowest turnout by role for which all students could vote was Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health Officer (6,112). However, this role only had one standing candidate, and was followed by Faculty of Science and Engineering Officer (6,365)
LeadMCR operates on a ranked-choice voting system. When students cast their vote, they can rank candidates in order of preference.
When the votes are tallied, if there is not a majority, the candidate with the lowest votes will be “eliminated”, and their votes will be transferred to their voters’ second choice.
This continues until all candidates are eliminated, or one candidate achieves a majority of the vote.
With that, here are the results. We have included the vote totals from the final round of voting, the winner and the runner-up.
Union Affairs Officer:
Winner: Anna Ward (3,739)
Runner-up: Frances Connolly (3,005)
City and Community Officer:
Winner: Hasan Patel (3,839)
Runner-up: Nagad Kayad (3,172)
Wellbeing and Liberation Officer:
Winner: Grace Hollingsworth (2,719)
Runner-up: Maha Shaikh (2,679)
Activities and Culture Officer:
Winner: Aaina Mohapatra (3,413)
Runner-up: Ananya Joyji Alummottil (2,781)
Postgraduate Research Officer:
Winner: Beck Heslop (350)
Runner-up: Luman Zhou (297)
Faculty of Humanities Officer:
Winner: Alec Severs (3,998)
Runner-up: Pulkit Gupta (2,081)
Faculty of Science and Engineering Officer:
Winner: Jack Newton (2,605)
Runner-up: Mochi Choi (2,347)
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health:
Winner: Ann Lee (5,405)
Runner-up: RoN (717)
With LeadMCR over, and eight newly-elected officers ready to get started later in the year, we will be bringing you plenty of coverage of who they are and what they want to do, as well as more detailed analysis of the results tomorrow.
