Background
In by-elections elsewhere in Britain that follow the death of a popular Independent, you often need to stick a finger in the wind to figure out what might happen without them. Not so in Scotland where we can easily re-calculate the transfers at the previous election, which in this case showed Labour with an advantage over the SNP. Given the general political climate at the moment, I figured that made this a very likely Labour win.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Susan Manion
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Gain from Independent
Change vs vacating: Labour Gain from Independent
Turnout: 20.7% (-19.7)
Electorate: 13371
Valid: 2748 (99.2%)
Spoiled: 22 (0.8%)
Quota: 1375
2 Continuing Councillors:
SNP: Lynda Kenna
Independent: Andrew McGuire (elected as Labour)
Candidates
SNP: Keith Barclay
Lib Dem: Douglas Butler
Independence for Scotland: John HannahLabour: Susan Manion
Reform UK: David McLennan
Green: Adam Rafferty
Conservative: Douglas Smith
First Preferences
Note: The vacating Independent, Stuart Borrowman, won 48.9% of the vote in 2022.
First Preference History
I wasn’t wrong on that front, but this ended up a surprising and frankly quite weird election in a number of ways. Although Labour did take a lead in first preferences, it was a lot smaller than I expected, with the SNP nipping at their heels. It’s still the best share for Labour yet in the ward compared to third best for the SNP, and even had they placed second transfers would have won it for them, but I’d have put them well into the 30’s if I was guessing.
That might be explained by what is the big story out of this by-election, which is an astronomically high share for Reform UK. Again if I was guessing beforehand I might have thought about 10% at best. Remember, this is only the second local election they’ve contested in Scotland, and the last one in 2021 they got a paltry 7 votes. At last month’s general election they got a solid 8.4% in the overlapping constituency.
This is far in excess of anything UKIP ever managed and is further reason for the other parties, especially the Conservatives, to feel a bit spooked by the prospect of a large Reform UK group at Holyrood in 2026. That said, I’ve got a colleague who lives in Blackridge who I obviously scoped out for any by-election intel beforehand, and she did say Reform UK had actually been actively campaigning. They may have had a locally active candidate and more available to put into this than elsewhere – only time will tell.
They are followed by another oddity, which was a big gain in votes for the Independence for Scotland Party. A pre-Alba attempt at an Independence hardliner and “anti-woke” (for want of a better term…) alternative to the SNP, they were rather upstaged by Alba’s launch and haven’t amounted to much, scoring below 1% at the prior election. But here they came fourth, with a better vote share than Alba have yet achieved anywhere (8.1% in Southside Central in 2022 their best).
That left the Conservatives as the biggest losers relative to 2022, the only returning party to actually lose vote share. That’s unsurprising when you see how well Reform UK did, but given how much of the vote was up for grabs without Borrowman on the ballot they might have been hoping for better than their worst share in the ward since their big 2016 revival. The Lib Dems by contrast, despite certainly running a paper candidacy, saw a significant increase in their vote share in relative terms, albeit very modest overall.
Lastly, the Greens are probably the other big losers in this vote. Their share did go up versus 2022, but only by a tiny fraction, and they should have expected a lot more given where transfers went from Borrowman in 2022, the fact they did relatively well at the Westminster election, and after last week’s Dunblane and Bridge of Allan success. A keen eye may point out both were only up 0.1% versus 2022, but in DBA that was with a new candidate where the past two by-elections had shown the sitting Green had a big popular vote, plus the reality of low turnout from Green backers at by-elections. Half the vote was up for grabs here and even allowing for a pure paper candidacy, it visibly jars with all other recent elections for them to have gone nowhere.
Final thoughts on this are that turnout was very, very poor even by the standards of a by-election, and it came in the unique circumstances of the very popular Borrowman having passed. There couldn’t be a better moment to get a mix of staying at home and doing a throwaway protest vote. That could explain some of the oddness here, and if so it doesn’t mean we’d see this replicated at a full election in 2027. Overall, more data points required!
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Labour’s very marginal first preference lead obviously needed transfers to confirm their victory, even if there was no doubt given the massively Pro-Union bent of what was available. The SNP did squeeze ahead of them for one round after the ISP dropped out, but otherwise it was smooth sailing to the finish line for Labour.
In two-candidate terms however, Labour only barely improved their lead over the SNP compared to 2022. Both parties actually lost share to non-transfers, likely due to the fact that more of the votes were coming from a wider field of candidates this time around, and we know voters are increasingly less likely to use preferences the further down the ranking they get.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Given the tight contest between Labour and the SNP for first place, it shouldn’t be a shock to see the map split between the two parties. Labour led in most of Armadale and Blackridge, whilst the SNP were tops in the south west of Armadale plus the Westfield and Torphichen merged districts. I actually came very close to having to add a Reform UK tint to my map layers as they had an in-person vote lead in the district covering north western Armadale, but once the postal distribution calculation had done its work they slipped into second.
In terms of best bits, Labour and the ISP shared eastern Armadale, whilst for the Conservatives it was the north of the town. The Lib Dems and Greens joined the SNP in excelling in Westfield and Torphichen, with Reform UK’s strongest area being Blackridge. One further aspect that may explain their relative success there is the close proximity to parts of North Lanarkshire’s Fortissat ward, which has it’s own by-election coming up soon, and is the one bit of the country with a British Unionist Party councillor.
Second Preferences
Transfer patterns here are, as you’d expect, somewhat different to established norms. Labour and the Lib Dems have what is a common mutual exchange, though overall Labour voters tended towards not transferring. Not something we’ve seen before given the former’s absence, but likewise I don’t think anyone would be stunned to see a mutual flow between Reform UK and the Conservatives.
Where things are a bit different from usual are that rather than a somewhat matched SNP to Green flow, this time it was between the SNP and ISP. The Greens were still most likely to plump for the SNP, though at a lower rate than in 2022, which I make out to be just over 50% when removing Borrowman from the equation.
We’ve got three weeks off by-elections until North Ayrshire’s Arran ward on the 12th of September. That one is set to be absolutely fascinating due to the complete absence of the SNP. Nominations will also close for Highland’s double bill (one of which is a double vacancy) on Monday, and preview pieces for those two wards will go live at some point next week.
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