Background
On another busy week for by-elections, we had four on the go last Thursday. All of these came about following Labour councillors who had become MPs resigning. In the capital, that was Colinton and Fairmilehead’s Scott Arthur.
Prior to the close of nominations, based on a re-run of 2022 data I’d declared this a pretty easy Labour win. Yet by the time of my preview I’d had multiple people (including one rather senior in the party) tell me the Lib Dems were throwing the kitchen sink at this one. Given recent examples of what happens when they really go for it, that was enough for me to massively demote my prediction down to a mere “Lean” towards Labour.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
🟠Lib Dem: Louise Spence
Change vs 2022 (notional): Lib Dem Gain from Labour
Change vs vacating: Lib Dem Gain from Labour
Turnout: 37.4% (-22.0)
Electorate: 19907
Valid: 7401 (98.8%)
Spoiled: 45 (1.2%)
Quota: 3701
2 Continuing Councillors:
🔵Conservative: Jason Rust
🟡SNP: Marco Biagi
Candidates
⚪Independent: Bonnie Prince Bob
⚪Independent: Mev Brown
🟡SNP: Mairianna Clyde
🔵Conservative: Neil Cuthbert
🔴Labour: Sheila Gilmore
⚪Independent: David Henry
🟤Libertarian: Tam Laird
🟣Reform UK: Grand Lidster
🟤Family: Richard Lucas
🟢Green: Daniel Milligan
🟠Lib Dem: Louise Spence
⚪Independent: Marc Wilkinson
First Preferences
First Preference History
Well, even that proved massively over-optimistic. The Lib Dems skyrocketed into the lead here, nearly trebling their vote share relative to 2022. Labour would in fact place third, just a smidge behind the Conservatives, though relative to past performances, it’s the Conservatives who are most badly bruised here. Having peaked just above 50% here in 2012, they’ve crashed down to well below half that.
The SNP also had their worst result thus far, albeit this has always been one of their weakest wards anywhere in Scotland, so that’s to be expected under current circumstances. Unlike the other Holyrood parties the Greens were effectively static, with only a tiny loss in vote share, leaving them the least impacted by the Lib Dem surge. That also placed them ahead of Reform UK which hasn’t been a given lately, but which makes sense for Edinburgh.
Moving on to our pick-n-mix of random guys, the only one out of the pack of Independents and microparties to score above 1% of the vote was Marc Wilkinson. Everyone else couldn’t even muster that single percentage point, with the wooden spoons going to “Bonnie Prince Bob” for the Independents and the Libertarians amongst the party candidates. The latter managed the remarkable feat of not even making it into double digit votes despite the large size of Edinburgh ward electorates.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that anyone was going to overtake the Lib Dems with that starting position, and sure enough they ended up with a very comfortable win after transfers. This was against Labour who managed to overtake the Conservatives at the last possible point to enter the top two. Comparing against 2022 for the same match up is pretty remarkable, with a near enough complete reversal in standings. The Lib Dems are not yet fully “back” in my view (I still highly doubt we’ll see much success from them in Glasgow, for example), but they are back to being able to pull off strong local campaigns in certain hotspots.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
The Lib Dem dominance of this ward was almost, but not quite, complete. They had a pretty decent lead in every polling district, most strongly in Bonaly, with the exception of Colinton Mains. Not only was that area Labour lead, but the Lib Dems placed joint-last with the Conservatives out of the six serious parties.
For whatever reason, Colinton Mains was the hotspot for all of Labour, the SNP and Greens on one side of the political spectrum, Reform UK and the Family Party on the other, plus the two B-named Independents. The Conservatives meanwhile had their strongest result in Fairmilehead, the two other Independents (Wilkinson and Henry) did best in Oxgangs, and the Libertarian drew most of their votes from Buckstone.
Second Preferences
Turning to second preferences, you can see how the Lib Dems ate into both the Conservative and Labour voter bases by the fact that Lib Dem second preferences split almost evenly between the two, with Labour a hair ahead. The SNP and Greens had their usual mutual preference flow, though in this case the Greens were almost as favourable to Labour. Unsurprisingly, Reform UK voters were most likely to then back the Conservatives.
From amongst the fringe candidacies, Wilkinson’s voters leaned Lib Dem, Henry’s towards Brown, the Family party to Reform, Brown to the Conservatives, Bob to Brown, and the handful of Libertarians to the Conservatives.
There’s not long left of 2024, but still plenty of by-elections. We have another four vote week coming up, with three of them in Glasgow: in the North East, Maryhill, and my own Drumchapel and Anniesland ward. The always busy Highland council also has one in Fort William and Ardnamurchan.
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