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. East Ayrshire had two such votes on the go, with Doon Valley coming from Elaine Stewart being elected as MP for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock. My preview for this, reflecting on the fact that this ward had a strong Independent but otherwise was very Labour-favourable, had one of the shortest predictions I’ve ever made: Labour would win.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Jim Kyle
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 18.6% (-25.4)
Electorate: 8763
Valid: 1602 (98.3%)
Spoiled: 27 (1.7%)
Quota: 802
2 Continuing Councillors:
Independent: Drew Filson
SNP: Jennifer Hogg
Candidates
Conservative: Tracey Clark
Lib Dem: Trevor GrantIndependent: Jim IrelandLabour: Jim KyleIndependent: Stef McNamaraSNP: Lorraine Pollock
Green: Korin Vallance
First Preferences
Note: Independent Drew Filson won 27.9%, Independent John Bell 8.0% and Independent Murray Hendrie 3.5% in 2022.
First Preference History
As expected Labour did indeed take a winning position from the outset. Perhaps surprisingly though the Conservatives overtook the SNP to place second, although all three appear on the surface to have gained versus 2022. Folk who read through the analysis pieces for the various by-elections on the 7th of November may be familiar with this process, but given how many votes Independents won in 2022, the raw swings are pretty much useless here.
If we use transfer data to estimate shares without those Independents, Labour actually end up a good about -12% behind their 2022 share. That’s a fair bit worse than the SNP who hardly had a good result either, dropping about -7.5% by this measure. That makes the Conservatives the only returning party to genuinely improve, up by just shy of 1%.
Of the new candidates, Independent Jim Ireland won more votes than the remainder combined, the only one to make it into double digits. Neither the Lib Dems nor the Greens had particularly remarkable results, though for both this is one of their weakest parts of the entire country. That left former Libertarian Stef McNamara in last place with just 9 votes, mirroring the continuing Libertarian in the Colinton and Fairmilehead by-election on the same day, though given the relative size of electorates that’s about four times as strong a performance.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Transfers (against a 2022 re-calculation for the same matchup) make that point about Labour weakening versus 2022: a net swing of about 7% to the Conservatives by the end of the process. They didn’t really have any chance of winning because SNP and Green voters especially would massively favour Labour, but it’s still a strong result for them. There’s only so many times I can write “Labour appear to be struggling with their rocky start to government” in my analysis pieces, but, that’d strike me as the obvious explanation here.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Note: This section has been updated after the initial publication, as East Ayrshire Council kindly provided a reworked set of box mergers.
Despite Labour’s overall lead in the ward, the map here shows a fair bit of diversity across it. Labour only led in the districts covering Patna and Dalmellington, whilst the Conservatives were ahead around Drongan, and the SNP in Dalrymple and Bellsbank. Each of these leads also reflected the strongest area for those parties. For the smaller parties and candidates, the Lib Dems had their best share around Dalrymple and Bellsbank, and for the Greens it was Patna and Dalmellington which is also where most of the very few Independent votes came from.
Second Preferences
Transfers here were generally quite poorly used, but amongst those that did, Labour voters were most likely to give the SNP their number two, whilst Conservatives went towards the Lib Dems. The SNP and Greens had the only mutual flow of preferences out of this bunch, whilst the Lib Dems and McNamara most often plumped for Ireland, and Ireland himself saw his voters trend Conservative.
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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