Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
The other half of a Glasgow double bill unfortunately doesn’t double up on the mild comedy. Instead it’s come about as Labour councillor James Scanlon sadly passed away at the tail end of last year. Scanlon had been serving as a councillor since 2003, initially for the old single-member Toryglen ward.Â
Ward Details
Southside Central is one of 23 wards in Glasgow, and elects 4 councillors at a full election. True to the name, this covers both the most central part of Glasgow’s southside (small-s) and the central hub of the Southside (big-S) along Victoria Road to Queen’s Park. This takes in areas including the Gorbals, Hutchiesontown, Oatlands, Govanhill, and Crosshill. This was a 2017 trimming down, losing the Polmadie and Toryglen areas.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is entirely within the Glasgow Southside constituency that former SNP Leader and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has held since 2011. She’d gained the prior Glasgow Govan constituency from Labour in 2007, though that only covered a sliver of this ward west of Govanhill. The bulk was in Glasgow Shettleston, believe it or not, with the Polmadie/Toryglen chunk in Glasgow Rutherglen!
At the UK Parliament it’s split between the Glasgow East constituency, which contains most of the ward, and Glasgow South, which has the little chunk west of Victoria Road. It had previously been almost entirely within the now-abolished Glasgow Central, barring Crosshill which was in the old Glasgow South. Regardless, these were all seats the SNP gained from Labour in 2015 and then lost to them in 2024.
Electoral History
Speaking purely visually, there’s a lovely symmetry to results here. At the first outing in 2007, the ward split two to Labour and one apiece to the SNP and Greens. I’m reliably told the latter had only really been trying for Hillhead and Pollokshields that year, and their crop of 5 was a real surprise. 2012 would see half of those councillors re-elected, with Scanlon’s party colleague one of the many the party deselected as dead weight pre-election that then left Labour, replaced by Soryia Siddique. The Greens, standing a new candidate, lost their seat here to the SNP’s Mhairi Hunter, giving them a double.
That double held in 2017, when the SNP’s original councillor stood down and was replaced by Alexander Belic. With the Greens surging across large parts of Glasgow in 2022 the ward flipped back to its 2007 pattern, and Hunter ended up the victim of the alphabet effect which saw Belic re-elected as the sole SNP representative.
In many respects this is a classic “inner Glasgow” ward: Labour start out strong but not completely dominant before the referendum, with a solid but not remarkable Green share. Post-referendum, the SNP pull into the lead, with the Greens and Conservatives also advancing. Notably, the Greens actually won a higher share in 2017 than they had in 2007, but the splits didn’t work in their favour. In 2022, the gap between the SNP and Labour narrowed, driven in part by what was until a by-election last year the best-yet Alba share of 8.1%. The candidate joined the SNP shortly after the election.
Councillors and Key Stats
4 Councillors, in order elected:
🟡SNP: Alexander Belic
🟢Green: Elaine Gallagher
đź”´Labour: Soryia Siddique
đź”´Labour: James Scanlon
Change vs 2017: +1 Green, -1 SNP
Turnout: 39.0%
Electorate: 20537
Valid: 7717 (96.3%)
Spoiled: 296 (3.7%)
Quota: 1544
Candidates
🟡SNP: Alexander Belic
âš«Alba: Kamran Butt
🟤SSP: Paul Donnelly
⚪Independent: Jamie Dyer
🟢Green: Elaine Gallagher
đźź Lib Dem: Sam Glasgow-Jackson
🟡SNP: Mhairi Hunter
🔵Conservative: Tariq Pervez
đź”´Labour: James Scanlon
đź”´Labour: Soryia Siddique
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
The ballot here largely mirrors that of the other Glasgow by-election, with the Holyrood 5, Reform and UKIP. The one difference is the left wing micro-party slot is filled by the Scottish Socialists rather than TUSC. Most of the candidates here are fresh faces, though former councillor Hunter is back to try and regain her seat, and the Lib Dem stood in December’s Partick East and Kelvindale by-election. Given those two parts of Glasgow are nowhere near one another, that’s a reminder of how limited the Lib Dem activist base is here, and why I continue to be sceptical when my model chucks up a Glasgow Lib Dem MSP.
đźź Lib Dem: Nicholas Budgen
🟡SNP: Mhairi Hunter
🟤SSP: Olivia Murphy
🔵Conservative: Kyle Park
🟤UKIP: Travis Power
🟣Family: Danny Raja
đź”´Labour: Samina Rashid
🟢Green: Laura Vroomen
Analysis
Going by recent-ish averages, Labour’s ability to make a gain on this kind of swing are on a knife edge. I know I keep saying things like this, but given what happened last July, it’s remarkable I’m now approaching by-elections in Labour heartlands and saying anything other than “Labour have this in the bag.” They made sufficient gains in a couple of the by-elections in Glasgow, but in addition to their general backwards trend at the moment, of all the wards in the city, this might be the one most likely to be unhappy with some of the Labour positioning in response to Reform UK.
All of that in mind, I’m going Lean SNP here. As I occasionally feel the need to remind everyone, bear in mind a “lean” is exactly that: it is not a strong prediction. If Labour do win this, it will not be at all surprising!Â
As with most Glasgow wards, the Greens are also worth watching here. In the four by-elections last year they managed to make gains in peripheral, non-target areas, whilst losing support in their core wards. If that pattern repeats, that’ll sound alarm bells for the local party. If they buck that trend, they may be able to claim a bit of a winter student-absent blip.
Prediction
Lean SNP.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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