Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
As the pace of by-elections in Scotland thankfully slows to a trickle, we still have the unfortunate realities of mortality bringing us a few. In this case we’re back off for a visit to the Kingdom of Fife, where SNP councillor for Glenrothes Central and Thornton Ross Vettraino passed away earlier this year. Vettraino had been a councillor for this ward since 2007, though that wasn’t the beginning of his service in local government. He had previously been a senior employee under the old North East Fife District, but retired when that district was abolished in the mid-90’s.
Ward Details
Glenrothes Central and Thornton is one of 22 wards in Fife, and elects 3 councillors at a full election. The clue is indeed largely in the name, as it stretches from Glenrothes town centre out through the southeast of the town including Woodside, Pitteuchar and Stenton out to the neighbouring village of Thornton. This will be familiar to many a commuter as the site of the somewhat awkwardly named “Glenrothes with Thornton” railway station. In addition, off to the east of the town, this ward also includes Coaltown of Balgonie. Boundary changes in 2017 saw it lose Milton of Balgonie, which was awkwardly situated on the other side of the River Leven, whilst gaining Stenton. This will have mild effects on vote share comparisons.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is entirely within the Mid Fife and Glenrothes constituency that the SNP won under its previous incarnation of Central Fife in 2007. This had previously been Labour, won in 1999 by Henry McCleish, who for want of an extra four weeks over Humza Yousaf still holds the title of Scotland’s shortest-serving First Minister. At the UK Parliament it’s within the oppositely-titled Glenrothes and Mid Fife, having previously been in what was simply called Glenrothes. This was one of many seats that Labour won from the SNP last July, who had obviously first picked it up in their 2015 landslide.
Electoral History
The party spread of seats in this ward has been the same at every election bar 2012, when the prevailing two SNP, one Labour pattern went the opposite direction. That didn’t come at a specific SNP councillor’s cost in 2012 as Vettraino’s counterpart David Cunningham, who had previously been the FPTP councillor for Thornton, retired.
It was all change for Labour in 2017 though as their original 2007 councillor stood unsuccessfully as an Independent whilst the other was a classic victim of the alphabet effect, “Sloan” falling further down the ballot paper than “Noble”. With no seats changing hands in 2022, it was only an internal shift in the SNP as new councillor Daniel Wilson replaced outgoing Vikki Wilton.
Once we look at the spread of votes over the period it’s pretty easy to see why this ward elected the councillors it did. The SNP have been consistently above 40%, coming close to 50% a couple of times, which easily secured them two seats except for the one time Labour pulled ahead with nearly 47%. No other candidates were ever in serious contention, with the Conservative’s best starting point just shy of 15% being too far behind regardless of the small pool of available transfers. Nobody else has even beaten 5% of the vote since 2007, when both the Lib Dems and an Independent managed it; the dot for Independents in 2017 is exactly that, Independents, plural.
Councillors and Key Stats
3 Councillors, in order elected:
🟡SNP: Ross Vettraino
đź”´Labour: Derek Noble
🟡SNP: Daniel Wilson
Change vs 2017: No change
Turnout: 39.4%
Electorate: 12021
Valid: 4652 (98.1%)
Spoiled: 90 (1.9%)
Quota: 1164
Candidates
âš«Alba: Jim Bryce
🔵Conservative: Heather Gulline
đźź Lib Dem: Jane Kerr
đź”´Labour: Derek Noble
🟢Green: Morven Ovenstone-Jones
🟣Family: Steve Saunders
🟡SNP: Ross Vettraino
🟡SNP: Daniel Wilson
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
A relatively quiet ballot for this one, as we just have Scotland’s four Westminster parties and Reform UK, the Greens being absent after having a presence at the past two full elections. All of these candidates are fresh faces as far as I can make out, bar one: the Reform candidate was also their Westminster candidate for the local constituency last year.
đź”´Labour: Maciej Dokurno
🟡SNP: Lynda Holton
🔵Conservative: Fiona Leslie
đźź Lib Dem: Ed Scotcher
🟣Reform UK: Ian Smith
Analysis
As discussed earlier, the SNP have had a pretty long run of very strong results in this particular ward. That continued into 2022 when they had their best, and Labour their worst shares so far. Indeed they were strong enough to win the single-seat recalculation without needing to go to the elimination of the third-placed Conservative. When you do however, they come up a chunky 11.7% ahead of Labour. A few months ago, a 6% swing would have been an eminently closable gap for Labour.
Now, it feels a lot more like a yawning chasm. They simply have not been able to make those levels of gains lately and in fact the most recent by-elections in Glasgow saw Labour losing rather than gaining ground on the SNP. Politics has been nothing if not wild over the past few years so I’m hedging my bets slightly and not going so far as to say the SNP have it in the bag, but they are by far the most likely winners. I would also be interested to see how Reform do here specifically: at near enough 10%, their Westminster performance here was substantially above the 7% they achieved nationwide.
Prediction
Likely SNP.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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