Background
After a nice long break since the last Scottish by-elections at the start of December, we kicked off the year of a big vote with a low-stakes trial run. SNP councillor for Glenrothes West and Kinglassie ward and former Fife Depute Provost, Julie Ford, resigned after a decade in post. That gave us our second by-election in the town within a year, as neighbouring Glenrothes Central and Thornton had gone to the polls last April.
That result informed my expectations for this one. As set out in my preview, Glenrothes is something of an SNP town in general, and given current polling and how handily they’d won the other by-election, I reckoned they were the most likely winners here. Throw in how poorly Labour have been doing at by-elections since then and I also thought Reform would overtake them to place second.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
🟡SNP: Zoe Hisbent
Change vs 2022 (notional): SNP Hold
Change vs vacating: SNP Hold
Turnout: 22.1% (-16.8)
Electorate: 12043
Valid: 2637 (99.0%)
Spoiled: 26 (1.0%)
Quota: 1319
2 Continuing Councillors:
Labour: Altany Craik
SNP: Craig Walker
Candidates
🔵Conservative: Andrew Butchart
🟡SNP: Zoe Hisbent
đźź Lib Dem: Ed Scotcher
🟤Family: Danny Smith
🟣Reform UK: Romano Valente
đź”´Labour: Jacob Winton
First Preferences
Swing vs 2022
Note: and Independent won 2.6% in 2022.
First Preference History
I have to say it’s good to start and election year with my predictive powers on top form, as that’s exactly what happened. The SNP only experienced a very mild slump in their vote share, keeping them comfortably in the middle of their normal range in this ward – discounting the two 2015 by-elections given they were at the peak of Sturgeon-Mania. They were indeed followed not by Labour, but Reform, with the kind of strong result we should increasingly expect from wards of this general character.
For Labour themselves I have to reach for the word “devastating”. 18 months ago, they managed to clinch the Glenrothes seat at Westminster despite it being one of the SNP’s most favourable. For most of the rest of 2024 they would have expected to win a by-election here. To not just lose, but place a distant third, should have alarm bells ringing for the party. It’d be one thing if they’d given it a good shot but fell a bit short, it’s another thing entirely to lose half of their support. See that in a ward that, strongly SNP it may have been, was also above the 2022 average for Labour support is not a good omen for May.
Moving down to the sub-10%ers, the Conservatives perhaps got off a little lightly here given the scale of Reform vote. I might have expected them to drop below 5%, but they held on to a bit more than that. It’s still not a good result, but it could have been worse. On the other hand, the Lib Dems will be content to be the only returning party that increased their support, as even a small bump is positive in a weak area like this. Lastly, the Scottish Family Party continue to search for any niche or relevance when Reform UK have the appeal to reactionary social conservatives pretty well covered now.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
vs Labour
SNP vs Labour swing vs 2022
I’ve covered enough by-elections in my time to know that coming not far short of 50% and having a double-digit lead over your closest competitor means you go on to win regardless, and especially so when that competitor is Reform. When Labour dropped out at the final round, around three times as many of their votes went to the SNP as did Reform, cementing an easy win.Â
If for comparative purposes we re-calculate for an SNP vs Labour finale, it’s even worse for Labour than first preferences. The SNP went from 8% ahead in 2022 to 28% at this by-election, as precious few of the votes that went to Reform end up transferring back to Labour. This highlights a key problem for Labour going into May. They’ve been briefing recently they are trying to get Reform voters to tactically vote for them in constituencies to oust the SNP, but they can’t even get those voters to give them a second preference!Â
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Turning now to how each candidate’s votes were distributed, and there’s a pretty clear split between “Glenrothes West” versus “and Kinglassie”. The SNP took clear leads in the districts covering the town itself, most strongly in Caskieberran, whilst Reform were ahead in Kinglassie. The one seeming exception to this is the Finglassie area, but that’s because the box there was merged with Kinglassie’s for the count; I would assume the likelihood is that it follows the rest of Glenrothes in being SNP. The other three major parties (Family being too small to really bother with) all had their best result in the Newcastle area.
Second Preferences
Direct second preferences are quite fractured, in part because of the lack of a Green candidate for the SNP transfers to coalesce around. Instead, SNP voters were narrowly most likely to plump for the Lib Dems next, with a whole one more voter doing that than going for Labour. Reform and the Conservatives had a mutual flow, though the Conservative base was also nearly as favourable to the Lib Dems. Labour then most favoured the SNP but again this wasn’t a million miles ahead of the Lib Dems.
We’ve got an absolute corker of a by-election coming up next week in East Dunbartonshire’s Bearsden South. A former Conservative councillor (and council co-leader) was convicted and jailed on a couple of varieties of fraud, quite possibly the most outrageous circumstances for any by-election I’ve yet covered. The actual result will be somewhat less exciting than the circumstances mind you, as it’s got a clear-cut winner.
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