Polling by pizza

Whenever an election comes around, it seems everyone wants a slice of the action in predicting who will come out on top.

Pizza Express is one of the first to jump on the bandwagon ahead of next year’s London mayoral election, which will see Conservative Boris Johnson and Labour’s Ken Livingstone go head-to-head once again.

The restaurant chain has released special edition Boris and Ken pizzas, inviting diners to “vote with their mouths”.

The Boris is a variation of the Sloppy Giuseppe with spicy beef, onions, peppers and extra cheese to highlight Johnson’s “famously unkempt hair” while the Ken contains a strong tomato base “as a nod to his Red Ken persona”. Pizza Express will keep track of how many people order each of the pizzas and announce the winner at the London Restaurant Festival Awards later this month.

The contest may leave a better taste in the mouth than the 2008 mayoral elections, when incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone attacked YouGov’s polling. Livingstone complained to the MRS, insisting that the agency’s polls, which put Johnson in the lead, must be flawed. The matter was quietly dropped when Johnson did indeed win.