Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
A bit of a North East bonanza in by-elections comes to a close on a more sombre note. Aberdeenshire’s Peterhead South and Cruden ward will be going to the polls to replace Independent councillor George Hall who died earlier this year. Hall had been a councillor since 2022, when he was elected for the Conservatives. It’s unclear what happened after that but at some point in 2023 his affiliation changed to Independent.
Ward Details
Peterhead South and Cruden is one of 19 wards in Aberdeenshire, and elects 3 councillors at a full election. It covers the south of Peterhead’s town centre as well as the Meethill and Invernettie areas. Outside the town, it includes Boddam, Cruden Bay and Hatton. There haven’t been any boundary changes here since the ward was created in 2007.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, most of the ward is within the Banffshire and Buchan Coast constituency which has always been held by the SNP, although they faced very strong challenges from the Conservatives in 2021 and Reform UK this year. The portion around Hatton and Cruden Bay is in Aberdeenshire East, which has been SNP since it was created in 2011. At the UK Parliament it’s within the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency that was the SNP’s only gain in 2024. Prior to that it had been in the Banff and Buchan seat which although it had a long history of SNP representation, having been won by Alex Salmond in 1987, flipped to the Conservatives in 2017.
Electoral History
Councillors Elected
The SNP’s dominance in this part of Scotland was demonstrated in the early STV-era elections, when they easily won two of the three seats up for grabs. In 2007 the remaining seat was taken by a Lib Dem, Sam Coull, who ran in 2012 as an Independent but lost out to a different Independent, Tom Malone.
Following the post-IndyRef realignment, in 2017 the SNP lost one of their seats to the Conservatives, whilst Coull fared even worse in his second Independent run, losing out to yet another different Independent, Stephen Calder. Finally in 2022 the ward returned to a purely party political composition via the addition of a Lib Dem.
Vote Shares
Looking at the voting pattern over the period, the SNP started out with an overall majority of the vote, hence their easy double win in both 2007 and 2012. The Conservatives really didn’t do very well at this point, winning fewer than half the votes the Lib Dems did in 2007 and placing behind two of the three Independents in 2012.
The massive shift in the Conservatives’ favour across much of the SNP’s rural (and semi-rural) hinterland saw them squeak the barest lead in votes in 2017, and although the Lib Dems reappeared on the ballot, they received minimal support. The SNP pulled back into the lead in 2022, in the absence of any Independents, and could actually have won two seats had they stood two candidates. The Lib Dems, whose transfers slightly favoured the SNP over Conservatives, saw decent vote share improvement but it wouldn’t have been enough to win a seat had the SNP not under-nominated.
Councillors and Key Stats
3 Councillors, in order elected:
🟡SNP: Stephen Smith
🔵Conservative: George Hall
đźź Lib Dem: Colin Simpson
Change vs 2017: +1 Lib Dem, -1 Independent (Stephen Calder retired)
Turnout: 37.8%
Electorate: 9135
Valid: 3395 (98.3%)
Spoiled: 59 (1.7%)
Quota: 849
Candidates
🔵Conservative: George Hall
🔵Conservative: Neil Johnstone
đźź Lib Dem: Colin Simpson
🟡SNP: Stephen Smith
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election Details
Candidates
The ward returns to much busier ballots for this election, though the Greens and Labour remain completely absent in what is their worst area: last month the Holyrood constituency saw the lowest list vote share for either party anywhere in the country.
Only a couple of these are returning recent candidates. The Family Party’s nominee was third on their North East list, whilst Reform’s stood in the Central Buchan ward by-election in 2024. Perhaps the most notable candidate though is former Conservative MSP and MP Ross Thomson, who has since defected to Reform, and then left Reform. Not really sure what he’s doing here at this point, to be honest!
Family: Dave Bestwick
Reform UK: Andy Curwen
Conservative: Ross Gibb
SNP: Angus Matheson
Independent: John RossIndependent: Ross Thomson
Lib Dem: Tony Ware
Analysis
This one could be a mess. Looking back at 2022 results, the SNP would have won for a single seat, and they did just hold the main Holyrood constituency covering the area, so, those are marks in their favour. They only held it by their fingertips, true, and were beaten by Reform on the list vote, but unlike Holyrood there’s no Green or Labour candidate to bleed exhausted ballots to during the transfer process. By contrast, the right of the spectrum has a lot more candidates for votes to get lost between.
Reform will nonetheless very much fancy their chances here, given that near win in the constituency and lead in the list vote. It’s hard to say how that vote will have been distributed around the constituency mind you, and my instinct is that Fraserburgh will have been slightly better than Peterhead. Unlike Holyrood they will also be able to rely on a lot of the Conservative vote transferring to them. Although I’m viewing this as a tossup overall, I’d say Reform have the overall edge.
That said I also wouldn’t write the Conservatives off, especially at a by-election. It may just be a small portion of Aberdeenshire East in this ward, but that constituency was better for the Conservatives than Reform, and indeed the Conservatives came top of the list vote there. I think they are the least likely of these three parties to win, but a scenario where they squeak ahead of Reform could then see them benefitting enough from transfers to do so. It may depend on how much effort they put in, though given the much more important Westminster by-election down the road a couple of weeks before this one, that might not be much.
Prediction
SNP-Conservative-Reform Tossup.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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