Background
For a few weeks there, the good people of Arran were the only people anywhere in Scotland not to have any councillors. Whereas the STV system means everyone else has multiple councillors, so usually a vacancy doesn’t leave a ward empty entirely, since 2022 Arran has been in the unique circumstance of having just a single representative. As such, when Conservative Councillor Timothy Billings resigned, it was a true vacancy.
This was an absolute corker of a by-election as it turned out. Arran was always going to be a fiery campaign given the serious issues with the local ferry which have left locals feeling rightly furious. It then got even more interesting when the SNP failed to stand a candidate at all, something that has only happened in what I would term “true islands” by-elections I’ve covered, i.e. those in the actual Islands council areas.
In my preview, I’d marked this out as a tossup, with candidates split equally between potential winners and absolute no-hopers. The potential winners were the three that definitely lived on the island; the Greens, due to the absence of the SNP and coming next closest to beating the Conservatives in 2022; Labour, due to winning the Westminster seat in July; and the Independent, due to never writing off Independents in island areas.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Charles Currie
Change vs 2022: Labour Gain from Conservative
Change vs vacating: Labour Gain from Conservative
Turnout: 41.3% (-18.9)
Electorate: 4034
Valid: 4094 (98.7%)
Spoiled: 21 (1.3%)
Quota: 824
Candidates
Labour: Charles Currie
Independent: James McMaster
Conservative: Mackenzie Smith
Lib Dem: Matt Taylor
Reform UK: Carole Thomson
Green: Neil Wilkinson
First Preferences
Note: The SNP won 25.7%, Independent Tom Young 12.5% and Independent Ellen McMaster 9.4% at the 2022 election.
First Preference History
That was a solid call, as all three of those candidates performed well, and everyone else barely registered. Labour managed to pull of a very impressive win, nearly there on first preferences alone, with not much between the Independent and the Greens in second and third place. Conservative support meanwhile absolutely evaporated, Reform UK found very little support, and the Lib Dems couldn’t even manage a whole percentage point.
I would however remind people not to read too much into this result, particularly the big swings between Labour and the Conservatives. Certainly, I’d have expected gains for Labour and losses for the Conservatives based on the current climate, but the scale of this comes entirely down to who was local at each election.
The outgoing Conservative councillor was a very visible local presence, whereas the 2022 Labour candidate was a very young paper candidate who didn’t live on the island and was doing his party a favour. This time around, it was Labour with the weel-kent islander candidate, and the Conservatives standing the youthful (I think!) mainlander just for the sake of having a candidate. That role reversal will account for the vast majority of the reversal in vote share.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
With such a stonking lead it was merely a legally necessary formality to do some transfer rounds to confirm the inevitable Labour victory. As is typical when the name has “Independent” next to it, McMaster did pick up a decent number of transfers from the Pro-Union parties, even though as I understand it from the folk promoting him, he was very clearly on the other side of that divide. Regardless, Labour had an unassailable lead, and McMaster didn’t even need to be eliminated for them to cross the 50% mark.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Given how thinly spread Arran’s population is outside of Brodick and Lamlash, quite a few of the polling districts here are merged. There’s still a decent amount that can be gleaned from this however, showing Labour as especially popular in Brodick with a clear majority of the vote. McMaster was meanwhile most popular in the merger of the most rural chunks in north and south, which most notably includes Lochranza, as were Reform UK.
The Greens excelled in Lamlash, as did the Conservatives. As only 12 people voted for the Lib Dems and only 7 of those were in person we really can’t read anything into their distribution, but what little they had mostly came from the merged Blackwaterfoot/Shiskine and Whiting Bay boxes.
Second Preferences
Without the SNP on the ballot, I can’t deploy my typical “usual patterns here” line. Instead, Labour were the most preferred next choice for both Independent and Green voters, with the return favouring the Independent. Conservatives had a very split distribution but the plurality went to the Independent, whereas Reform UK had the most emphatic set of transfers which went to the Conservatives. Again, absolutely hee-haw we can meaningfully draw from a mere dozen Lib Dem votes, which saw a tie of a quarter apiece (i.e. three votes) to Labour and the Independent.
We have a veritable bonanza up on the next by-election day which will be the 26th of September, with two double bills. In Highland, the first of these itself is a double, with two vacancies in the Cromarty Firth ward alongside a standard one seat vote in Inverness Central. At the same time, voters in the Perth and Kinross wards of Strathallan and Perth City North will be going to the polls.
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