Background
Scotland’s exhaustingly busy season of by-elections continued last week with four-in-one, three of which were in Glasgow. In Drumchapel and Anniesland, it was councillor (and former MSP) Patricia Fergusson who made the leap to become MP for Glasgow West. That triggered a slightly more exciting than usual by-election for me, because I got to vote in it!
This was yet another one where in my preview I’d said that since Labour were the single-seat winners in 2022 terms, they were a certainty to win the by-election. I like to try, but don’t always succeed, and find something else interesting to watch out for in such cases, and here that was to see whether the Greens would overtake the Conservatives, and whether they could even pull into third place. At the same time I was interested in the Reform UK share as whilst the Greens were a good bit ahead at the Westminster election, this ward struck me as the most Reform-friendly within the constituency.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Davena Rankin
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 15.3% (-19.9)
Electorate: 20895
Valid: 3156 (98.7%)
Spoiled: 42 (1.3%)
Quota: 1579
3 Continuing Councillors:Labour: Paul Carey
SNP: Anne McTaggartSNP: Fyeza Ikhlaq
Candidates
SNP: Adekemi Giwa
Independent: Elspeth Kerr
Green: Christopher Lavelle
Reform: Allan Lyons
Conservative: Steven MorrisonLabour: Davena Rankin
Lib Dem: Michael Shields
First Preferences
Note: The Scottish Socialist Party won 1.5% of the vote here in 2022.
First Preference History
All in all, those were relatively sound musings. Labour did maintain a first preference lead, but that came from falling less hard than the SNP did. In relative terms though for Labour this is their worst ever result in the ward, whereas for the SNP it’s only their third worst, though easily their lowest in the years following the referendum.
As with the other Glasgow wards on this day Reform UK managed to make third place, confirming my sense that this ward might be half-decent for them. However not only did the Greens not place third, they came fifth behind the Independent, which to be honest strikes me as more of a by-election protest vote than anything else. That’s no harm meant to said Independent, it’s just that when people are scunnered with party politics, that can be a useful appellation to have!
The Greens nonetheless had their best result so far in this ward, increasing their share by around about a third, which is not terrible given their voters are least likely to turn out for by-elections (if you read the North East result analysis yesterday, you may sense a growing narrative towards Maryhill..) That left the Conservatives behind them for the first time, with their worst result since before their big revival. Lastly, the Lib Dems did tick up a little bit, but still prove very weak in the city.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Labour’s first preference share may have slumped to its lowest levels here yet, but they were still obviously going to remain on top after transfers. You would expect most of what was up for grabs to prefer them to the SNP, and that was indeed the case. Similar to the North East ward though, the widened lead over the SNP after transfers came down to losing less share. More votes went to waste this time than in the 2022 re-calculation, reflecting the rise of Reform UK as two-thirds of the votes sat with them didn’t transfer when eliminated.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Looking at the spread of votes, Labour led in Blairdardie (their strongest patch), western Drumchapel, eastern Knightswood, Temple and Anniesland, whilst the SNP were ahead in eastern Drumchapel (where they did best) and High Knightswood. Both Reform UK and the Independent peaked in western Drumchapel, and although the Greens placed behind them overall, they (narrowly) had the next-best local result with a notably strong patch around Temple. That was also the best bit for the Lib Dems, whilst the Conservatives garnered the most support in the eastern Knightswood/Anniesland area.
Second Preferences
Turning to second preferences, things look pretty ordinary for Glasgow here. Labour voters very narrowly preferred the SNP over the Lib Dems, whilst the SNP and Greens had a pretty strong by current standards mutual flow. There was similar mutuality between the Conservatives and Reform UK, and the Lib Dems tended towards Labour. Perhaps reflecting her status as a former SNP councillor, the Independent’s voters were most likely to rank her former party second.
Notably, the Greens did not have a large preference flow to Reform UK here the way they did in the North East ward. That definitely seems to have been an isolated, contextual protest vote, so folk beginning to draw broad conclusions on the basis of 15 voters can stand down!
Much to my relief the pace of by-elections is slowing a bit as we run out of new MPs to replace. Nonetheless we have two such by-elections this week at opposite ends of the Central Belt. One takes us to West Dunbartonshire’s Kilpatrick ward, one of the strongest Labour wards in the country, and the other to West Fife and Coastal Villages. These votes are in fact ongoing at the time of publication for this piece!
If you find this or other Ballot Box Scotland output useful and/or interesting, and you can afford to do so, please consider donating to support my work. I love doing this, but it’s a one-man project and takes a lot of time and effort. All donations, no matter how small, are greatly appreciated and extremely helpful.
(About Donations)
