
Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
If Glasgow are having a busy day with three by-elections, then Highland are on a busy year with a grand total of five. Newly elected Lib Dem MP for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire Angus MacDonald would have had to resign pretty sharpish to get Fort William and Ardnamurchan to fall on the same day as the two in September. As it took a little while to do so, this one has instead come a couple of months later. MacDonald had first been elected as a councillor in 2022, so didn’t have to wait long before his upwards move.
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 bounary 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 MacDonald’s Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire seat 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 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, 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.
Councillors and Key Stats
4 Councillors, in order elected:
🟠Lib Dem: Angus MacDonald
🟡SNP: Sarah Fanet
⚪Independent: Thomas MacLennan
🟢Green: Kate Willis
Change vs 2017: +1 Lib Dem, +1 Green, -1 SNP, -1 Conservative (Independent Thomas MacLennan replaces Andrew Baxter)
Turnout: 45.0%
Electorate: 9021
Valid: 4003 (98.7%)
Spoiled: 53 (1.3%)
Quota: 801
Candidates
🟡SNP: Sarah Fanet
🔵Conservative: Fiona Fawcett
🟠Lib Dem: Angus MacDonald
⚪Independent: Thomas MacLennan
🟢Green: Kate Willis
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
We’ve got the full Holyrood 5 for this one, plus a Libertarian. Notably no Reform UK candidate here: given they stood two in Cromarty Firth in September, I guess it averages out to the correct number of candidates across this year’s Highland by-elections. The ballot starts with a very familiar face, as Baxter returns under his third colour, this time as a Lib Dem.
For whatever reason, he’d actually gone back to his political roots and stood as a Conservative in 2022, albeit for the Cromarty Firth ward. In some ways Baxter’s moves somewhat mirror MacDonald’s, as the MP drew some attention for having donated to the Conservatives under Boris Johnson in 2019. Oddly enough, the only other face we’d recognise is the Conservatives’ 2022 candidate for this ward.
🟠Lib Dem: Andrew Baxter
🟢Green: Marit Behner-Coady
🔴Labour: Susan Carstairs
🔵Conservative: Fiona Fawcett
🟤Libertarian: Nathan Lumb
🟡SNP: Rebecca Machin
Analysis
In Highland, you always need to watch out for Independents, and consider the personal votes even for party candidates. Well, there are no Independents, but the Lib Dem has a history of a personal vote as an Independent. His new party should therefore have this in the bag. Other things to watch out for are what happens to the Conservative vote in the absence of Reform UK but the presence of Labour, and whether the Greens have been able to bed in and grow support since they lucked into a councillor in 2022.
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 therefore possible I won’t be able to report on these live.
Prediction
Lib Dem Win.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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