Daisy Watson has been elected President of the SU for 2024/25.
The 2nd year student gained 1,640 votes, enough to beat runner up Ronke Ajisola by a slim margin of just 125 votes.
Her election marks the end of 2 weeks of intensive campaigning, ending in 6,979 votes being cast, 4,308 for the presidential election alone, at a turnout of 21%.
Her victory was announced in front of a crowd who had packed out the SU’s Foundry for a special results night event.
She late spoke to Forge Radio about her victory, admitting she was “actually speechless”, and describing her long standing relationship with the SU:
“A big reason why I applied to Sheffield was the strength of the Students’ Union, then I found out about SU Officers and now I’m here. I’m really happy and excited to make some change.”
Watson made clear that this wasn’t just rhetoric, she believes that “a lot of change needs to be made at the SU and I want to help make it.”
She continued: “Student welfare needs a massive overhaul – and there are so many other things I care about; accountability, transparency, sustainability and wellbeing – but it’s under attack at the moment and it’s so important. Students are not doing well basically, and I want to help them.”
She then moved onto thanking those who supported and voted for her:
“Thank you to every single person who agreed to vote for me and to everyone who, when sitting in my room or living room, said they thought I could do this because I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it without them. Thank you!”
The election ran on a preferential voting system, where voters could rank their candidates in order of preference — if their 1st choice candidate secured the least votes, they would be eliminated and the vote would be passed to the student’s 2nd pick.
It took nine rounds of voting to whittle the ten candidates down to just three.
Jonno Cowen came last in the final round meaning he was eliminated, with his 2nd preference votes pushing Watson over the line and winning her the election.
See the rest of the election results here.
