On the final day of voting in the Cambridge SU election, Varsity’s poll suggests that the current SU president Zak Coleman is likely to be elected for a second term in office over the current Undergraduate AEP Officer, Zaynab Ahmed. Our data also suggest that students will vote in favour of a Reading Week/Midterm Break.

30.5% said that they would be supporting Coleman, compared to just under a fifth (19.9%) who favoured Ahmed. However, a quarter of students were still undecided when our poll closed last night (25.4%), and a further 14.7% indicated that they would vote to Re-Open Nominations.

Respondents voted with more certainty in the referendum; according to our poll, a majority of students (55.1%) are voting in favour of the introduction of a Mid-Term Break/Reading Week in Michaelmas and Lent Terms, with two fifths (39%) voting against. Just 2.2% of respondents said they would vote ‘abstain’.

If Varsity’s poll is correct and Coleman is re-elected, he will be the first president to serve a second term under the reformed Cambridge SU, which was established after Cambridge’s undergraduate and postgraduate student unions merged in 2020.

If our forecast that the Yes Campaign will win the reading week referendum is also correct, Coleman’s second term will see a continuation of his efforts to introduce a Midterm Break. The referendum does not in any way guarantee the introduction of a Reading Week but, if the ‘Yes’ campaign is successful, it will be used as evidence of student support for the proposal by the SU.

Varsity’s poll received 272 number of responses, with students from all but three colleges (Hughes Hall, Darwin and Clare Hall) participating.