Background
On the busiest single day for by-elections since I started Ballot Box Scotland, we had a whopping five votes on Thursday last week. In Moray’s Elgin City South ward, a seat had opened up after SNP Councillor Graham Leadbitter became MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey. As Labour have typically done quite well in Elgin, and are generally a transfer-friendly option, I thought they were the most likely winners.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
🔵Conservative: Elaine Kirby
Change vs 2022 (notional): Conservative Gain from Labour
Change vs vacating: Conservative Gain from SNP
Turnout: 26.1% (-14.4)
Electorate: 10355
Valid: 2669 (98.8%)
Spoiled: 33 (1.2%)
Quota: 1319
2 Continuing Councillors:
🔴Labour: John Divers
🔵Conservative: Peter Bloomfield
Candidates
🟠Lib Dem: Neil Alexander
🟡SNP: Laura Mitchell
🔵Conservative: Elaine Kirby
🔴Labour: Catriona McBain
First Preferences
Note: Two Independents won 4.0% and 2.5% here in 2022.
First Preference History
Well this was a real upset and no mistake. I did say that I reckoned John Divers had a strong personal vote, but I thought the general decent support for Labour in Elgin would have been sufficient to see them over the line with transfers. Instead, this by-election ended up splitting into two pairs of near-ties.
The two contending to actually win the seat were the SNP and Conservatives. Although the SNP lost support and the Conservatives made gains, it wasn’t quite enough to knock the SNP off the top spot. It was however so tight that it’d all come down to transfers to determine a winner.
Meanwhile, Labour’s share fair crashed, putting them less than 1% ahead of the Lib Dems. That’s an absolutely remarkable result a party who really haven’t registered in Moray at recent elections. When they got a councillor in 2022 by default due to an uncontested election it was absolutely hilarious, as there was no way in hell they’d have legitimately won it. In this case though they really gave the campaign welly, and the result shows that.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
It’s far from guaranteed that Labour votes especially transfer to the Conservatives ahead of the SNP, so despite what some social media commentators might suggest, this wasn’t a foregone conclusion. However, the votes did indeed remain largely within the Pro-Union bloc here, with Lib Dem transfers putting the Conservatives ahead and Labour’s widening that lead.
It wasn’t a particularly big lead though, and I’d say it’s a classic example of what I term by-election conditions. Conservative voters are more likely to turn out than SNP voters, and thus with the turnout of a full election, I’d expect the SNP to have (narrowly) won. Elections are quirky like that!
As this was a hand count, there is no detailed data to be had – Moray seem to be the last council absolutely insisting on not bringing machines in for by-elections. That’s unfortunate because we’d need to be able to see SNP and Conservative transfers to answer an important question: would Labour or the Lib Dems win the third seat at a full election? In 2027 I’d expect Labour to be quite safe if John Divers stands again, but if they didn’t, the Lib Dems would be serious competition.
It’s only slightly less busy for by-elections the week after this set, with another four up: two in East Ayrshire (Doon Valley and Kilmarnock West and Crosshouse), one in West Lothian (Whitburn and Blackburn) and, probably the most interesting of the bunch, Edinburgh (Colinton and Fairmilehead). Due to unavoidable work commitments I won’t be able to cover any of these until Friday evening, though if any of them are overnight counts I might just be able to squeak the headline results from those out.
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