
Background
2025’s by-elections kicked off with an absolute corker: an almost immediate return to a ward that had seen a by-election not even three full months earlier. For residents of Edinburgh’s Colinton and Fairmilehead ward, any disgruntlement they may have had at SNP councillor Marco Biagi resigning days after a November by-election was completely lost when the by-election victor, Lib Dem Louise Spence, also quit a week into the job.
As it turned out, her house had gone on the market the day after the election so she could move abroad. This isn’t something that comes about overnight and so she must have been planning this during the by-election, in which she campaigned partly on the basis of living in the ward. That’s completely outrageous behaviour, even if for political observers it was admittedly howlingly funny to see unfold. Although the Lib Dems were very unhappy with her as well, she was their pick for candidate, so it’s hard for them to avoid blame entirely.
Previewing the second run at this ward, I had wondered just how much voters would turn against the Lib Dems in the circumstances. Given Labour and the Conservatives have their own difficulties at the moment, and this ward was absolutely not going to elect an SNP, Green or Reform councillor even on a two-seater vote, I had reckoned it was a tossup between the three mainstream Pro-Union parties. Effectively, it was going to be a case of which of the three voters least disliked rather than most liked. Even so, I did think that the Conservatives might be the party with the hardest task.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
2 Councillors Elected:Conservative: Neil Cuthbert
Labour: Conor Savage
Change vs 2024 by-election (notional): Conservative Gain from Lib Dem, Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Conservative and Labour Gain from Lib Dem and SNP
Turnout: 31.9% (-5.5 / -27.4)
Electorate: 19669
Valid: 6223 (99.1%)
Spoiled: 58 (0.9%)
Quota: 2075
1 Continuing Councillor:Conservative: Jason Rust
Candidates
Independent: Bonnie Prince Bob
Independent: Mev Brown
SNP: Mairianna Clyde
Conservative: Neil Cuthbert
Independent: Nick Hornig
Independent: David Henry
Reform UK: Grand Lidster
Family: Richard Lucas
Green: Daniel Milligan
Independent: Mark Ney-Party
Lib Dem: Peter Nicolson
Labour: Conor Savage
Independent: Marc Wilkinson
First Preferences
Note: Libertarians won 0.1% here in the November by-election. Changes vs that by-election / vs 2022.
First Preference History
Well, having declared it a tossup, I certainly wasn’t wrong overall: I did however underestimate how much the Conservatives would benefit. After a pretty poor result in November which would have meant they wouldn’t even have won the second seat had that been the double, they bounced back into the lead. They are still well below their pre-2022 strength, but it was enough to put them unchallengeably close to the quota. Labour meanwhile remained in second place but with further loss in share. That made them the only other returning party bar the Lib Dems to lose support relative to both November and 2022, losing nearly half their vote compared to the full election.
The Lib Dem vote completely collapsed, losing more than half of their share compared to November. A slight silver lining they might cling to is they still made a slight gain versus 2022, enough to knock the SNP out had this been a full election, but it’s quite the fall from grace. This is where my expectations were exceeded: I’d thought maybe something like 10-12% losses, split roughly evenly between Labour and Conservatives. That would have created a roughly three way tie in first preferences, leaving it down to SNP and Green votes to swing it, and they’d be unlikely to go Conservative. Losing 20% though, and most of it directly to the Conservatives, is pretty crushing.
Turning to parties never in contention, all of the SNP, Greens, Reform and Family made progress compared to November. For the SNP and Family Party this was a weaker share than 2022 so isn’t too much to crow about, whereas for the Greens it’s the best share they’ve yet managed in this ward. Reform also made decent progress in what I’m nonetheless still absolutely right to have described as not the kind of Conservative-heavy ward that’d go their way.
Finally, our motley collection of Independents. Marc Wilkinson continued to be the only one of these that appears at all serious, nearly doubling his vote share compared to November, and winning more than twice as many votes as the other five Independents combined. Of the other three returning Independents, Henry and Brown shed support, whilst “Bonnie Prince Bob” gained a tiny bit. The two new Independents placed dead last, with “Mark Ney-Party” getting almost nae votes, polling fewer even than the Libertarians had in November; neither made it into double digits.
Transfers
Three-Candidate Preferred
Given the Conservatives started just a tiny fraction short of quota, their success in claiming the first seat was guaranteed. They just needed to await eliminations from the vanity run Independents, though it was the serious Independent whose transfers sealed the deal. It therefore came down largely to SNP and Green transfers, as expected, to determine between Labour and the Lib Dems. Both parties favoured Labour, leaving the Lib Dems locked out in what, even with a non-partisan hat on, seems like a frankly well deserved defeat given the absolute nonsense that triggered this vote.
Note that as with the preview version of the three-candidate preferred chart, the first-placed party here reached quota, and this therefore doesn’t show the exact breakdown of a three-way scrap. Instead, it shows what was separating the successful second and losing third placed candidate. In addition to the obvious swap between the Conservatives and Lib Dems,Β Labour also lose support by this measure relative to November, so it’s more the complete Lib Dem collapse that secured them the seat here than their own strength.
Two-Candidate Preferred
We can also use the available data to run the by-election as a single winner instead; you might think of this as the result had Marco Biagi not resigned as well creating the double (one where the Lib Dems weren’t the cause would have very likely seen them win). This further suggests that much of the Lib Dem vote returned to the Conservatives rather than Labour, as Labour would have won in November but fall quite far short this time around.
We can further compare this with the 2022 head-to-head and see that although Conservative support is up about as much either way, Labour support after transfers has absolutely cratered, down about 20%. Effectively, the fact Labour were able to leverage the two-seat nature of the by-election is partly disguising what is an extremely poor result overall. Combined with the loss in Bannockburn and continued dire polling, Labour are off to a very bad start in Scotland this year.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Turnout remained decent enough for this one that there’s only one additional polling district merger compared to November, so we can still get a pretty decent breakdown of local results. If we just look at the leads in each district, this map is completely different to November, which had seen the Lib Dems leading everywhere bar the Colinton Mains/northern Oxgangs district, which went Labour. This time around that district went SNP, Labour led in Buckstone, and the Conservatives were out in front everywhere else.
In terms of best bits, the Conservatives were strongest in the districts covering Colinton, Woodhall and Hailes, though Fairmilehead was pretty close behind. Labour-led Buckstone was also where the Lib Dems and Family Party did best, whilst that SNP hotspot was similarly warm for the Greens, Reform, and the micro-independents as a bloc. Wilkinson, the largest Independent (why does he not simply eat the other Independents?) did best in Swanston and southern Oxgangs.
Second Preferences
Direct second preferences largely follow patterns you might expect. Both the Conservatives and Labour were most likely to opt for the Lib Dems, though lest you think that was the latter getting off lightly, the proportion was down about -14% and -7% respectively. Lib Dem voters themselves were most likely to go Labour, and whereas that had been a near tie with the Conservative bloc in November, it’s a substantial difference this time. That may reflect just how many November Lib Dem first preferences became January Conservative ones.
The SNP and Greens maintained a mutual preferencing, and in the opposite case to the Lib Dems, this represented a strengthening compared to November. That was more so for the SNP to Greens at about +7%, compared to about +1% from Greens to SNP, which barely increased the margin over the bloc of Greens that went Labour second. Lastly for the parties, Reform still largely went Conservative (and at about the same proportion as in November), whilst Family voters similarly going plurality Conservative was a reversal, having been most likely to go Reform at the last by-election.
Amongst Independents, Wilkinson as the only candidate with a meaningful base of support saw much of it go to Henry, a significant shift away from the overwhelmingly party (and of that, Lib Dem) pattern in November. Henry voters were most likely to go Hornig; Bob voters Brown; and both Brown and Hornig voters Henry. Lastly, Mark Nay-Party’s very funny gag name was largely ignored by the literal handful of voters that gave him their first preference, with 4 of the 5 marking at least one party amongst their preferences.
Just to further emphasise how much voters turned against the Lib Dems, we can look at the total second preferences they got. In November that stood at 1324 votes, 28.1% of the available total. This time around they received 980 second preferences, 18.8% of what was available. That’s not as stark as their first preference losses, but it helped seal the deal on them not winning either of the seats up for grabs.
There were two further by-elections on the same day; Bannockburn will get a full results analysis piece, whereas Shetland North being two Independents won’t. The next by-election comes in mid-February, as the final councillor-turned-MP triggered vote takes us to East Dunbartonshire’s Kirkintilloch East, North and Twechar ward.
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