Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
It’s another busy day for by-elections, as alongside one in Highland, Glasgow follows on from Aberdeenshire with a triple-bill. A fourth is due a couple of weeks later as well. In the Drumchapel and Anniesland ward, Labour councillor Patricia Fergusson has resigned after being elected MP for Glasgow West. She’d only been elected as a councillor for the ward in 2022, but that means she’s served at three different levels.
Ferguson was MSP for Glasgow Maryhill for the entire duration of that seats existence, and when it was redrawn into Maryhill and Springburn for the 2011 election, she was one of relatively few Labour constituency MSPs to hold on that year, but lost in 2016. During her time at Holyrood, she served as one of the inaugural Deputy Presiding Officers, before being elevated to cabinet, first as Minister for Parliamentary Business and latterly for Tourism, Culture and Sport.
This is a very exciting by-election for me as I get to vote in this one; obviously I get to vote in any national elections, but it feels more special when it’s a by-election! This is the second time in the past few years I’ve been in that position, as I hopped across a ward boundary line the last time I moved.
Ward Details
Drumchapel and Anniesland is one of 23 wards in Glasgow, and elects 4 councillors at a full election. As you’d expect, it includes the large Drumchapel estate in the north western corner of the city and Anniesland. In between those two areas, it also covers Temple, High Knightswood and Blairdardie. There haven’t been any boundary changes here as yet, so comparing across elections is easy as pie.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is entirely within the Glasgow Anniesland constituency which the SNP gained from Labour by a mere 7 votes in the 2011 election. At the UK Parliament it’s within Ferguson’s Glasgow West constituency, which in its previous Glasgow North West form the SNP had held since their 2015 landslide.
Electoral History
As is common across Glasgow, there’s a clear pre-and-post-Referendum split in how the seats were distributed here. In both of the pre-referendum elections, Labour were still so dominant in Glasgow that they were able to win majorities despite the proportional-ish STV system, in part because they won a mighty three of the four councillors. That included then-leader of the council, Steven Purcell, who had been a councillor for Blairdardie previously; the other two had represented Anniesland and Summerhill.
The ward had a few years where all councillors were Labour after a 2009 by-election. That followed the resignation of SNP councillor Bill Kidd, who’d also been an MSP since the same date. A bit of, ahem, controversy also saw Purcell vacate his seat mid-term, with the party winning the resulting by-election that was held on the same day as the 2010 UK election. By coincidence, those were my first ever votes for those election types; I keep ending up back in this ward despite moving about a bit.
2012 saw the same 3-1 split, with the two non-Purcell 2007 Labour councillors re-elected alongside a newcomer. The winner of the 2009 by-election, Anne McTaggart was accidentally elected MSP in 2011 so didn’t re-stand (see here for how you can be “accidentally” elected as an MSP), and the winner of 2010 didn’t stand. McTaggart came back in 2017 though, after she’d been turfed out of Holyrood, but this time the ward split evenly between the SNP and Labour.
That balance wasn’t to last, as McTaggart mounted a surprise defection to the SNP, and then later on the newer of the two elected SNP councillors resigned from the party. Thus, although 2022 saw two continuing councillors who had been elected for Labour at the last vote, this time it was one apiece for them and the SNP, with newcomers for the other seats.
It’s easy to see how Labour won three seats in both pre-referendum elections: they won a touch over 60%. That’s what you need (albeit you need to split and transfer it right) to secure three seats, easy. The SNP similarly had no problem earning the remaining seat, and given only two elections have had another party break into double digits, no one else has ever been in the running here.
After the referendum, Labour fell below the SNP for the first and only time in 2017, the Conservative surge wasn’t strong enough to get them anywhere, and the Lib Dems didn’t even find a candidate. Labour retook the lead, by the skin of their teeth, in 2022 whilst the gap between the Conservatives in third and Greens in fourth narrowed.
Councillors and Key Stats
4 Councillors, in order elected:
🔴Labour: Paul Carey
🟡SNP: Anne McTaggart
🟡SNP: Fyeza Ikhlaq
🔴Labour: Patricia Ferguson
Change vs 2017: No change
Turnout: 35.2%
Electorate: 21148
Valid: 7226 (97.0%)
Spoiled: 222 (3.0%)
Quota: 1446
Candidates
🔴Labour: Paul Carey
🔴Labour: Patricia Ferguson
🟡SNP: Fyeza Ikhlaq
⚪Independent: Elspeth Kerr
🟡SNP: Anne McTaggart
🟤SSP: Joe Meehan
🟡SNP: Cylina Porch
🟠Lib Dem: Richard Stalley
🔵Conservative: Pauline Sutherland
🟢Green: Duncan Webford
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
All three of the Glasgow by-elections on this day have seven candidates, consisting of the Holyrood 5, Reform UK, and A N Other. In this case, that’s the same Independent as stood here in 2022, having been elected as an SNP councillor in 2017. Other returning candidates are the Conservative, who stood in neighbouring Garscadden and Scotstounhill in 2022, and the Lib Dem, who contested Langside.
🟡SNP: Adekemi Giwa
⚪Independent: Elspeth Kerr
🟢Green: Christopher Lavelle
🟣Reform: Allan Lyons
🔵Conservative: Steven Morrison
🔴Labour: Davena Rankin
🟠Lib Dem: Michael Shields
Analysis
The whole point of these preview pieces is for me to try and dive into the nuance that exists below first preferences, but sometimes I feel the need to really emphasise that’s what these are about. Yes, Labour only led the SNP on first preferences by a mere 0.3%, but that widened to 4.5% after transfers. That’s marginal, certainly, but what we’ve seen with Labour lately is improving on 2022 margins. Whilst at times that hasn’t been strong enough to make gains, they so far haven’t failed any holds. In other words, I’m very confident Labour will win.
I’m therefore a bit more interested in what’ll happen further down the rankings. The Conservatives have been doing very poorly lately, whilst the Greens have been on a slow and steady upward tick in Glasgow over the past decade or so, and did pretty well in the Westminster seat in July. Meanwhile, Reform UK aren’t very popular in Glasgow. So will the Greens pull into third place? Or will by-election conditions and a bruising summer do them in? Of the wards making up the Westminster seat, this is definitely the one least friendly to the Greens, but is it possibly the most friendly to Reform UK? It’ll be fascinating as a sign for 2026 to see how things fall here.
One little personal note for all of the by-elections on this date: I’ll be very busy at the end of this week, including a work commitment on the Friday which means I can’t take the day off as I normally would for such a busy by-election day. It’s possible I won’t be able to report on these live, which I will admit is especially frustrating when this one is for my own ward!
Prediction
Labour Win.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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