Background
The flurry of by-elections in Scotland continued last week but, mercifully, reduced in intensity with just two on the go. One of those brought us back to West Dunbartonshire, which this project had only visited for a by-election for the first time earlier this year. Kilpatrick Labour councillor Douglas McAllister was one of many to make the bump up to MP, in his case for West Dunbartonshire.
That didn’t just trigger this by-election but also a bizarre temporary collapse in the local Labour administration, which had been a majority, after the group proposed a Vale of Leven based councillor to replace McAllister as Provost. Two unhappy Clydebank Labour councillors voted for the SNP’s pick for Provost instead, the administration resigned, and then… resumed again a month later, albeit as a minority. Local shenanigans aside, I pointed out in my preview this had consistently been one of the strongest Labour wards in Scotland even when they were at rock bottom, and it was therefore absolutely going their way.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: William Rooney
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 19.2% (-26.0)
Electorate: 8879
Valid: 1696 (99.5%)
Spoiled: 9 (0.5%)
Quota: 849
2 Continuing Councillors:
SNP: Gordon ScanlanLabour: Lawrence O’Neill
Candidates
Green: Paula Baker
Communist: Dylan McAllister
Conservative: Ewan McGinnigleFamily: Andrew Muir
Lib Dem: Kai O’ConnorLabour: William RooneySNP: Marina Scanlan
Reform UK: David Smith
First Preferences
First Preference History
Sure enough, Labour managed to retain a comfortable lead in first preferences here, albeit one of their sharpest drops in share lately, almost twice the size of the decline for the SNP. One thing missing from my preview was the fact that the split of votes between McAllister and the other candidate was remarkably uneven, even allowing for the known alphabet effect, suggesting McAllister had his own substantial personal vote.
That Reform had a strong, double-digit debut here but the Conservatives barely budged seems like evidence of that to me. Especially with the Lib Dems and Family in the mix too, I’d have been unsurprised to see the Conservatives fall behind the Greens, replicating their Westminster crash. The Greens themselves, and the Lib Dems, achieved shares I’d class as “modest but respectable” for them in this part of the country, ahead of a near tie between the Family party and Communists at the bottom of the pile.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred (Estimated)
If you’ve been following every single by-election we’ve had in Scotland closely, you’ll know that the transfers here could only go Labour’s way. Sure enough, as the count progressed they picked up almost twice as many of the votes up for grabs as the SNP did, cruising unchallenged to victory at stage 6 – despite not reaching quota. One of the quirks of hand counts is that if you hit a point where it’s no longer mathematically possible for transfers to change the outcome, the count just stops.
In this case that meant concluding at Stage 6, which still had Labour, the SNP and Reform all in the running, because even in the mind-boggling event that all 200 Reform votes transferred to the SNP, that couldn’t close the 250 vote lead Labour had over them. That’s convenient for those at the count but a pain in the backside for me, because it means there’s no way to get a definite two-candidate preferred comparison. I have however looked at the four most recent Central Belt by-elections where that was the top three arrangement and taken the average of Reform’s terminal transfers, which was about 22.5% Labour, 10% SNP, the rest exhausting.
The estimated head-to-head share here takes the edge off the loss of votes for Labour and the SNP, reflecting the much expanded list of parties available here. Both are still a fair bit down, with Labour more than twice as badly impacted as the SNP, as the flip side of having lots more options to vote for means lots more votes exhausting.
Detailed Results
As this was counted by hand, no detailed data is available.
Much to my relief, the by-elections are about to dry up. This week we again have just two votes on the go, a return to Glasgow for Partick East and Kelvindale, and a Stirling by-election that isn’t for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, but instead Stirling East. I might be able to report the PEK result the night before, if it counts quick enough, but assuming Stirling is a daytime count I’ll be in the office and then socialising so won’t be able to report that until Saturday.
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