Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
Oddly enough, the same day brings us two by-elections in wards that already had an extra poll in November last year. For this one, as ever spare a thought for the wonderfully hard working (and generally wonderful) elections team at Highland Council, who can never quite get a rest. No sooner had they wrapped up their last two by-elections than did SNP councillor for Fort William and Ardnamurchan ward, Sarah Fanet, announce her resignation. First elected in a 2021 by-election, French citizen Fanet is moving back to her nation of birth, which would indeed make continuing on Highland Council a toughie!
As we’ve already had a by-election here, much of the below content is lifted directly from the previous preview.
Ward Details
Fort William and Ardnamurchan is one of 21 wards in Highland, and elects 4 councillors at a full election. This covers the southern portion of the Lochaber area, with the most important settlement obviously being Fort William itself. It also covers smaller villages like Kinlochleven, Ballachulish, Strontian, Lochaline, Acharacle and Kilchoan. It does not however include neighbouring Caol, which means the eastern and western parts of this ward are electoral islands separated by Loch Eil. There haven’t been any boundary changes here since it was created in 2007.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is entirely within the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituencies. On previous boundaries, it had been within Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber. Despite the traditionally liberal bent of the Highlands, that seat was SNP from the word go in 1999. At the UK Parliament, it’s split between the Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire seat that the Lib Dems won last year on the one hand, which covers Fort William and is one of the successors to the old Ross, Skye and Lochaber seat that the SNP gained from the Lib Dems in 2015. The rest of the area is within the Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber constituency which remains SNP held, succeeding the prior Argyll and Bute seat.
Electoral History
Often I get to talk about how patterns are neat, or similar, or identical across the years. Not in Highland, where change has been pretty commonplace over the piece. At the introduction of STV in 2007, the seats went one each to the Lib Dems, SNP, Labour and an Independent, Donald Cameron. Said Independent didn’t re-stand in 2012, which saw the Lib Dems losing their seat and incumbent SNP and Labour councillors joined by two new Independents: Andrew Baxter (who had been the Conservative candidate in 2007) and Thomas MacLennan (who had failed to be re-elected in 2007, having been the councillor for Claggan and Glen Spean since 2003).
Baxter was the only councillor to re-stand in 2017, when the SNP picked up two seats here and a changing of the guard for Labour plus gains for the Conservatives meant it was the latter who picked up the remaining seat. Conservative councillor Ian Ramon sadly passed away, triggering a 2021 by-election won by the SNP. Bizarrely, only that SNP councillor re-stood in 2022, alongside the return of the Lib Dems and MacLennan, plus a Green councillor. The Lib Dems then won last year’s by-election embarrassingly easily, with former Independent councillor Andrew Baxter as their candidate.
The votes chart isn’t any less chaotic really; you can see in 2007 that the Lib Dems, Cameron and SNP were all near enough quota that they were pretty easily elected, but Labour were just shy of halfway there. They managed to squeak the final seat by about 1% over one of the numerous small-fry Independent candidates that year. 2012 similarly saw easy victories for Baxter, the SNP and Labour, but MacLennan actually placed behind another Independent on first preferences and only won by about 5 votes at the key stage.
The SNP’s upward trend continued into 2017, but it was Baxter who proved the most remarkably popular, winning enough votes that he could probably even have been elected twice over in his own right were that possible. The Lib Dems hit absolute rock bottom here as well, slipping below 5%. With no strong Independents on the 2021 by-election ballot, the SNP and Conservatives won their best shares yet, and a first-ever Green run put them ahead of the Lib Dems.
For whatever reason though, now-MP Angus MacDonald proved very popular locally and was able to turn that into a stonking Lib Dem recovery in 2022 to the extent that the only reason the Greens and MacLennan won their seats at all was because neither of the two big parties stood two candidates. Had both done so, they would have gotten both elected. Had only one of them done so, MacLennan would have been elected as the fourth and final councillor, extremely easily if the SNP got the double, and with a lead of just about 0.7% if it was a Lib Dem double. As if MacDonald hadn’t been strong in 2022, Baxter took the vote to eye-watering heights at everyone else’s cost.
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
đźź Lib Dem: Andrew Baxter
Change vs 2022 (notional): Lib Dem Hold
Change vs vacating: Lib Dem Hold
Turnout: 27.3% (-17.7)
Electorate: 8985
Valid: 2424 (99.0%)
Spoiled: 25 (1.0%)
Quota: 1213
3 Continuing Councillors:
🟡SNP: Sarah Fanet
⚪Independent: Thomas MacLennan
🟢Green: Kate Willis
Candidates
đźź Lib Dem: Andrew Baxter
🟢Green: Marit Behner-Coady
đź”´Labour: Susan Carstairs
🔵Conservative: Fiona Fawcett
🟤Libertarian: Nathan Lumb
🟡SNP: Rebecca Machin
First Preferences
Note: Independent Thomas MacLennan won 9.3% in 2022.
Transfers
As the Lib Dems won a majority of first preferences, no transfer rounds were necessary.
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
Rarely for the Highlands this is an entirely partisan affair, with all six of the current major Scottish parties having a run at it. Amongst the candidates are a few returning faces: Reform’s candidate stood in June’s Cromarty Firth by-election and the Lib Dems’ in September’s Caol and Mallaig. Labour’s Michael Perera meanwhile is a regular local sacrificial lamb to get a name on the ballot paper, having contested Aird and Loch Ness at the full election in 2022 and then four by-elections: Tain and Easter Ross (September 2023), Cromarty Firth (September 2024 and June 2025) and Caol and Mallaig.
🟢Green: Ollie Crookwood
🟣Reform UK: Allan MacDonald
🟡SNP: Norrie MacLean
🔵Conservative: Julia Peill
đź”´Labour: Michael Perera
đźź Lib Dem: Matthew Prosser
Analysis
There’s no Independent candidate to throw a spanner in the works, the Lib Dems will win. That’s it, that’s the analysis. Did you see the 2022 and 2024 results? It’s theirs. They might not win as strongly as last year as their candidate isn’t as weel-kent, but if they fumble this they might as well pack their whole Holyrood campaign in.
Prediction
Lib Dem Win.
2024 By-Election Results (Detailed Data)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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