Background
Scotland’s exhaustingly busy season of by-elections continued last week with four-in-one, three of which were in Glasgow. All of these arose from the councillors in question getting new jobs, but this was the odd one out as that new job wasn’t “Member of Parliament”. Instead, first-term councillor Keiran O’Neill was taking up a job that’d keep him too far from his duties.
With no disrespect meant to the other two contests (bearing in mind I got to vote in one of those), this was the most interesting of this week’s batch. Unlike the others where the outgoing party were also the 2022 winners, here the SNP had led at the full election. With a swing of less than 2% require to change hands though, I still marked Labour out as the most likely winners even if I didn’t go so far as to say it was certain. This was also a key ward for the Greens, giving them one of their top two results in 2022 after the wards they actually won seats. That should make this a key target for them and one where they’d have been on the hunt for strong growth in share.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Marie Garrity
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Gain from SNP
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 19.0% (-19.3)
Electorate: 14619
Valid: 2786 (98.6%)
Spoiled: 40 (1.4%)
Quota: 1394
2 Continuing Councillors:
SNP: Franny ScallySNP: Abdul Bostani
Candidates
Alba: Nick DurieSNP: Lorna FinnLabour: Marie Garrity
Green: Ellie Gomersall
Conservative: Susan McCourt
Reform UK: David McGowan
Lib Dem: Daniel O’Malley
First Preferences
Note: The Freedom Alliance won 1.0% here in 2022.
First Preference History
Well, “interesting” was certainly how this one turned out. As with the rest of the city Labour were out in front, though they differed here both in that meaning they overtook the SNP and also gaining share. Even if only a slight increase, it’s still a lot better than the other two wards where it was a case of losing less support than the SNP did. Given the relatively short existence of this ward, that translates to best and worst results yet, respectively.
In third place was not the Greens, but instead Reform UK, appropriately enough securing a hat trick for third places across the city. They beat the Greens by only a narrow margin, but it’s notable that in an opposite case to Labour, this was the only one of the three the Greens lost share in. Given they were up 1.2% in North East and 2.3% in Drumchapel and Anniesland, and that was the order I saw results in, I had anticipated something upwards of +4% here, not basically complete standstill. Frankly, that’s an embarrassing outcome for the Greens. No amount of spinning or desperate attempts to apportion blame elsewhere changes that.
If there was a general backlash against the party, they certainly wouldn’t have gained ground in North East, literally their worst ward in the city. They wouldn’t have grown in Drumchapel and Anniesland. Both wards also had attractive options for protest votes not on the right of the spectrum, in TUSC and a local Independent, so Alba can’t be blamed either, never mind the fact transfer data consistently indicates very little Green-Alba crossover. Something Maryhill campaign specific went wrong for them, so rather than setting up a strong base for a gain in 2027, they’ve gone nowhere. That said, I’m always talking about “by-election conditions” and how Green voters are the least likely to turn out, so at a full election this would very likely really be a modest gain, but they’d still almost certainly be at least 10% shy of quota.
Alba’s first showing in the ward was on the better end of “modest”, but it put them ahead of the crashing Conservatives, this being the worst of a bad bunch of results for them. Deposits don’t exist for local elections but if they did, they’d have held on in the other two wards, but not here. In last place, the Lib Dems are able to claim at
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Labour needed such a small swing to beat the SNP that they could have gotten that on transfers even if they didn’t take a first preference lead. The fact they did so, and it wasn’t because the Greens had ripped chunks out of the SNP’s share, meant their victory was inevitable. Of their new councillors (or returning, in this case), this is the one they should be most chuffed by, representing a notional gain compared to 2022.
Ironically enough despite their lack of progress, if this had been a full election my very quick, rough estimate is that the Greens would narrowly win the third and final seat here – if, and only if, both Labour and the SNP had lopsided distributions between their candidates. In that scenario, the transfers at elimination of the SNP candidate would lift them past both Reform and a second Labour candidate. That being the order, Labour would drop out, and their votes secure it for the Greens.
There’s only a handful of votes in that elimination though and if it was Reform rather than Labour that dropped out, that swings it Labour. However, if both Labour and the SNP get an even split between two candidates, the Greens fall out before them, and the ward goes two Labour, one SNP. That’s why getting a solid first preference share matters so much. Transfers can get you over the line but you want to get as close to touching it in your own right as possible so you aren’t subject to the chaos of elimination order and other party’s voter management strategies.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
At the time of writing (Thursday evening; I’ve got work conference on the Friday when this publishes so won’t have been able to update for any new information), Glasgow City Council still had not published the information necessary to pair ballot boxes with polling districts. Fortunately in this case, the outgoing councillor seemed to have been able to get his hands on that information and sent it my way. So, one week after the result, I’ve managed to get full data for a whopping one out of three by-elections in my home city. Extremely frustrating.
Moaning aside, since we do have the data here, what does it tell us? It shows Labour leading across most of the ward, except for Gilshochill and the Wyndford, where the SNP were out in front. In 2022 the Greens had led the southernmost district covering the western portion of North Kelvinside, one of just a handful of wards they took a district lead without winning a councillor. That doesn’t show here as that district was merged with the one by Dawsholm, but I’d guess based on the data then and relative vote shifts overall that they likely held that lead.
In terms of strongest areas, Labour (and the Lib Dems) did best in what I’d term “core” Maryhill purely based on the fact that’s where the location pin, the Locks, and the station are. Although it wasn’t one they led in, the SNP peaked in Summerston, as did Reform UK. Sans the certainty of that North Kelvinside district, on the surface the Greens appear to have been strongest in the district just to its north, to the east of the Big Tesco. For the remaining parties top spots, it was Gilshochill and the Wyndford for Alba, then North Kelvinside and Dawsholm for the Conservatives.
It’s also worth noting the complete non-intersection of the Reform UK and Green voter bases. Despite winning roughly equal shares of the vote, they were fishing in very different pools. Everywhere one of those parties got double digits, their opposite number only managed single digits.
Second Preferences
A pretty standard spread of second preferences for this one, I feel. Labour voters were pretty split but most favourable to the SNP, whilst pretty unlikely to go for any of the most right wing options. Staying on that side of the constitutional divide, there was a reciprocal flow between Reform and the Conservatives. The Lib Dems however were evenly split between Labour and the Greens for their most popular second choice.
The SNP and Greens had a strong mutual preference link, but much more so from the Greens. Almost none of their voters plumped for Alba, whereas the SNP had a very large pile go to their splinter party. Similar to Drumchapel and Anniesland, note the miniscule transfer flow from the Greens to Reform UK, emphasising the uniqueness of the North East result. Alba themselves, unsurprisingly, were most likely to go for the SNP next.
Much to my relief the pace of by-elections is slowing a bit as we run out of new MPs to replace. Nonetheless we had 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 actually declared hours before this piece published, but it’s just going to confuse me skipping tow sets of by-elections ahead of this one, struggles getting the data be damned.
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