Background
It was another double bill on the 10th of October, bringing us to two North Lanarkshire by-elections, both arising from Labour councillors becoming MPs. This one was for Frank McNally, the newly elected MP for Coatbridge and Bellshill, who had over a decade of service under his belt as local councillor.
As with many such contests, my preview assessment of this one was pretty clear cut: Labour would win it, no question about it. The SNP’s decline may have stabilised for now, and Labour’s recovery stalled, but relative to 2022 the field has titled a bit more in the latter’s favour.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
🔴Labour: Helena Gray
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 15.8% (-22.3)
Electorate: 10813
Valid: 1686 (98.4%)
Spoiled: 27 (1.6%)
Quota: 844
2 Continuing Councillors:
🔴Labour: Beth Baudo (elected as SNP)
🔴Labour: Jim Reddin
Candidates
🔵Conservative: Aimee Alexander
🟠Lib Dem: John Cole
🔴Labour: Helena Gray
🟡SNP: Shahnawaz Khan
🟣Reform UK: Duncan McMillan
🟤UKIP: Neil Wilson
First Preferences
Note: Alba won 5.2% of the vote here in 2022.
First Preference History
Sure enough, Labour started this with a lead over the SNP, and given every other option on the ballot was Pro-Union, it didn’t matter that it was surprisingly narrow. Indeed, Labour actually managed to lose vote share here, giving them their worst result in the ward thus far. It’s possible that this, plus the other very modest shifts in recent by-elections, is reflecting the rocky start that Labour have had to UK Government. The SNP had a steeper decline which meant relinquishing their first preference lead, but it was perhaps less bad than it would have been given 2022’s Alba voters didn’t really have anywhere else to go this time around.
Placing a very comfortable third here were Reform UK, in their first go at the ward. That shouldn’t actually be too much of a surprise. Although lots of people make the assumption that Reform UK and Conservative support is entirely interchangeable, the reality is that like UKIP before them, Reform UK also do very well in areas that in England would have been referred to as the “Red Wall”. Large parts of the west Central Belt are quite similar to the urban North of England, and if you look at their General Election vote distribution up here, that’s also where you find some of the stronger Reform UK results.
That gave them more than twice as many votes as the Conservatives who did so poorly they fell below the better of their two pre-revival shares. Reform don’t draw exclusively from the Conservatives but that will be there biggest source of votes, which explains that. More surprisingly was a relatively respectable share for the Lib Dems: broadly speaking you expect them to be completely dead on their arse in North Lanarkshire.
I reckon that’s probably down to the fact that they were the only other somewhat “progressive” option on the ballot for people dissatisfied with the big three but utterly unwilling to turn rightwards. It does make me wonder how the Greens would have done, as another such option but on the other side of the constitutional divide. Last and certainly least were UKIP, who I honestly don’t understand why they are even bothering anymore. If we had a slightly more functional system of party registration and ballot access, they’d almost certainly have just given up the ghost by now.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
I said the SNP couldn’t possibly make up the difference given the character of what transfers were available, and that proved the case. Labour’s initial lead of 30 votes nearly tripled to 89 votes at the final head-to-head stage. Yet similar to first preferences, Labour’s support was down versus 2022. In fact, it was down by more than their first preferences were, whereas the SNP were a little bit better after transfers, meaning a smaller swing between parties overall by this measure.
Although you can’t quite piece it together from the above chart, one interesting thing worth noting here is that if this was the 2027 result, the seats would go one each to Labour, the SNP and Reform UK. As we’ll see a bit further down, whilst the combined Labour and SNP share at the point it’s just them and Reform is sufficient to take three seats, the transfers between each party aren’t enough to actually do so. As with Fortissat, the turnout here is completely rotten, so don’t read too much into it, but it’s a very interesting if not entirely reliable pointing of the weather vane.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Shockingly low turnout means a lot of box mergers, and again not necessarily the most geographically sympathetic. Labour ended up with leads in Mossend and Wester Holytown, whereas the SNP led in Holytown and New Stevenston. I also like this map as a fun example of “land doesn’t vote”, because on the face of it, the SNP would look like they have drawn greater support. However, most of their strongest polling district covers fields and the Eurocentral industrial and business estate, so in reality it’s not that much bigger an area than the more densely packed Labour led portion.
Naturally, both parties had their best results in the districts they led in, with Labour’s specific hotspots being the merger of Southwestern Holytown plus what I reckon to be eastern Bellshill. Literally everyone else was strongest in the primary Mossend and Wester Holytown merger.
Second Preferences
With no other Pro-Independence parties and the Lib Dems pretty weak in general here, where Labour and SNP voters marked any later preference, the largest number went for the other. The Lib Dems were similarly most favourable to Labour. The parties of the right meanwhile stuck together, with Reform UK and UKIP most likely to back each other, and the Conservative voter pool to opt for Reform. Most notably though: look at those absolutely astronomical “Only Pref” blocks for Labour and the SNP.
Most voters for both parties simply didn’t do anything other than a first preference. The consequence of them doing so rather than preferencing the other party is that Reform UK notionally get a councillor at a three seat election. It may be that some of those voters are fine with that, but I imagine rather a lot would not be. That’s a good reminder of the importance of the “vote til you boak” principle. Keep marking preferences, even if you’re not dead keen on the party, up until the point you literally can’t stomach going any further, otherwise you might not like what happens!
Just the one by-election next week, in Falkirk South. Whilst in general I prefer a single vote as it makes my life a bit easier, it’s actually a bit annoying because on other occasions over the autumn I’m going to have had two 4x and even one 5x by-election days. You couldn’t have papped one or two of those on this day instead, e-count machine providers?
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