Background
Scotland’s exhaustingly busy season of by-elections continued last week with four-in-one, three of which were in Glasgow. The imaginatively named North East ward (which covers an area north of the M8 stretching from Ruchazie to Easterhouse) was going to the polls after Maureen Burke became MP for the similarly named Glasgow North East constituency in July.
I didn’t see this as being a particularly hotly contested ward, saying in my preview that it would certainly go Labour’s way. I did however also add that I thought this ward especially would be worth watching to see how Reform UK did. I didn’t explain why that was, which was remiss of me, but basically it’s that it’s the kind of area that has been quite badly let down by governments over a very long period, and similar communities in large northern English cities have proven strong areas for Reform and, before them, UKIP.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: Mary McNab
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Hold
Turnout: 12.4% (-18.0)
Electorate: 15040
Valid: 1837 (98.3%)
Spoiled: 31 (1.7%)
Quota: 919
2 Continuing Councillors:
SNP: Ruairi KellyLabour: Sharon Greer
Candidates
Conservative: Thomas Haddow
TUSC: Anne McAllister
Green: Hayley McDonald
Reform UK: Robert McGregor
Lib Dem: Peter McLaughlinLabour: Mary McNabSNP: Kilian Riley
First Preferences
Note: Libertarians won 0.6% of the vote here in 2022.
First Preference History
Well, I proved right on both counts. However, the Labour victory didn’t come from taking a massive lead over the SNP on first preferences. Both parties saw their share of the vote plummet by about 10%, which meant Labour still only had a lead of a couple of points by this measure. That also put Labour on their worst result so far, whilst for the SNP it represented their poorest outcome since before the referendum.
In third place, as I’d expected would be likely, were Reform UK. I will admit I thought the share would be a touch lower, say around 15%, but I wouldn’t class this as unexpected for this area. Not only was that more than treble the Conservative share, which was the lowest it’s been since their surge, but about one and a half times the Conservative’s best share in this ward. That emphasises to me that viewing Reform UK as a party for disaffected Conservative voters is deeply mistaken, albeit we must be cautious about reading too much into a result with such appalling turnout (more on that later).
The Greens then didn’t place that much behind the Conservatives, with their highest share in the ward thus far. This is their worst ward in Glasgow, so in that context gaining any share at all is quite impressive – and something of a rebuke to some in that party seeking to handwave a surprise decline in Maryhill away as some kind of belated anti-BHA vote. If that was the case, why in Maryhill, but not in a ward like this already very disinclined to vote Green?
That’s especially worth ruminating on when you consider that TUSC experienced a near trebling of their vote share. That’d be an easy and obvious capital-L Left alterative for folk scunnered with the Greens, and yet their growth was in addition to rather than at the cost of Green gains. Finally, the Lib Dems ended up in last place, with effectively the same share as they got when they last contested the ward in 2012 and 2022.
One final thing: look at that ghastly turnout. This ward had very low turnout in 2022 as it was at just over 30%, but even by the standards of some shockingly bad turnouts across all the city by-elections, this is awful. I’ve long shocked people by saying maybe we shouldn’t have by-elections under STV at all (what’s the point of a PR voting system if you’re going to have non-PR votes in between elections?), and frankly circumstances like this simply reinforce that belief. To be sure, it’s very easy to feel like voters here weren’t given any reason to vote, but that still doesn’t make 12.4% feel like a great democratic mandate.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Although Labour didn’t have much of a lead over the SNP, the pool of available transfers was overwhelmingly from other Pro-Union parties. The SNP therefore had no realistic prospect for overtaking them, and sure enough Labour went on to a relatively easy win. Both parties again lost share on this measure compared to 2022, in part because so many Reform votes didn’t transfer at all, with only a pretty small widening of the Labour lead.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Given the absolutely abysmal turnout here, there are a lot of box mergers on the go. That limits the ability to meaningfully interpret local data, and might partly explain why the map appears to have almost totally reversed in colours compared to 2022. Labour led in the merged block containing Ruchazie, Craigend, Garthamlock and Gartloch. The SNP then led in Blackhill, Hogganfield and Easterhouse.
Perhaps oddly, both parties shared the same top spot, which was Blackhill and Hogganfield. That was where Reform UK did much worse than in the rest of the ward, and indeed everyone else bar TUSC was notably weak there. All of Reform, TUSC and oddly enough the Lib Dems were strongest in Easterhouse, whilst the Conservatives and Greens proved strongest in the big Ruchazie/Craigend/Garhamlock/Gartloch merger.
Second Preferences
Some really interesting bits and pieces on the second preferences. Labour voters were most likely to opt for the SNP as their next choice, which isn’t necessarily surprising in a Glasgow ward. There was a mutual return from SNP voters who were narrowly more likely to go for Labour than the Greens. Green voters themselves did tend towards the SNP, but in a real bizarre turn of events, they had easily the second highest rate of Reform transfers after the Conservatives: a generalised protest vote against the Westminster parties, perhaps?
Reform voters very much did not return the favour with the Greens their least likely next preference, instead transferring in greatest numbers to the Conservatives, voters for whom were slightly more inclined to go Labour than Reform. TUSC largely stayed on the left of the spectrum favouring the Greens a bit ahead of Labour, and the Lib Dems unsurprisingly tended most towards Labour.
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.
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