Background
It was quite the busy day for by-elections on the 26th of September, with a double bill of double bills. Coincidentally, both were effectively one urban, one rural ward within their respective councils. First to declare – so I might as well do analysis in this order – was Perth City North in, obviously, Perth and Kinross. Labour Councillor Brian Leishman was one of many elected as MP in July, in his case for Alloa and Grangemouth, thus triggering this by-election.
In my preview, I’d given this a currently very rare “Likely SNP” rating. Back in 2022 this had been one of their strongest wards in the country, winning over half the vote. Add in the fact that this was one of the few constituencies the party held in this year’s general election, and it seemed reasonable to assume this was still a pretty safe SNP bet.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
SNP: Carol Mair
Change vs 2022 (notional): SNP Hold
Change vs vacating: SNP Gain from Labour
Turnout: 22.7% (-16.6)
Electorate: 9128
Valid: 2050 (99.0%)
Spoiled: 21 (1.0%)
Quota: 1026
2 Continuing Councillors:SNP: Ian MassieSNP: John Rebbeck
Candidates
Reform UK: Sonia DavidsonSNP: Carol Mair
Lib Dem: Tina Ng-a-Mann
Labour: Kirsten Nkwocha-Dyer
Conservative: Aziz Rehman
Alba: Robert Reid
Green: Caitlin Ripley
First Preferences
First Preference History
I grant you that wasn’t one of the harder predictions, but it was nonetheless well made! Although the SNP lost a fair chunk of their vote, dipping to their second lowest share so far, they still had an unassailable lead over everyone else. The story of this by-election overall is actually the larger parties bleeding support to the smaller. Although for Labour that was only by the tiniest of fractions, it is surprising for them to lose any support at all at the moment. For the Conservatives though decline is to be expected, and it drove them back down into third place for the first time since their big revival.
Newcomers to the local elections scene Reform UK managed a very respectable result, scraping into double digits. I have to admit that of the four by-elections held on this day, this wasn’t the one I’d have guessed they’d be strongest, but it was. Also posting a very creditable increase in share were Alba, which put them ahead of the Lib Dems and Greens who had more modest gains, albeit enough for it to the best in the ward since the coalition and ever, respectively.
I wouldn’t read too much into the order there because Alba campaigned pretty hard, whereas the Lib Dems and Greens were more paper candidates. Of course, that’s exactly what Alba need to do to actually win something eventually, so that’s certainly not meant to dampen what was a good increase for them. Instead it’s just a reminder that in local by-elections, the most of any type of election, campaigning can make all the difference.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
The SNP started most of the way there anyway, so it just a formality to take them through the transfer rounds. It’s not impossible to overturn a circa 45% first preference lead in a really, really tight contest where the second placed candidate is also in the 40’s. That’s obviously not the case here, with their closest competitor only winning around a third as many votes.
For the two-candidate preferred, changes are versus a re-calculation of 2022 for an SNP to Labour head to head; in actuality, that election went down to SNP versus Conservative. This ends up a little bit of a trend buster, as whilst the SNP share is reduced versus 2022, Labour’s is down even more. Given that voters mostly only use a limited number of preferences, it’s possible that the presence of Reform UK pulled some votes away from Labour that didn’t then transfer back later on.
As I always note in these scenarios, it is not a democratically good thing that this ward now only has councillors from one party. The whole point of using a PR system is to represent the diversity of views that exists amongst the electorate; that diversity has been wiped away from this ward which is now an SNP monolith. That’s not the fault of either the voters or the winning party, but it is a serious flaw with our approach to STV.
It remains my position that, barring Independents (who are a different case), we should simply fill vacancies via co-option from the same party, as happens in Northern Ireland. This respects the democratic wishes of voters as expressed at the full election, rather than distorting them with an unrepresentative by-election under fundamentally different conditions where it is often nigh-on impossible for a “minority” group of voters to preserve the representation they should fairly have.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Given the very low turnout there are quite a few mergers here that make it hard to identify trends in smaller areas, and will smooth over the performance for each party. Nonetheless, what we can say for certain is that the SNP and Greens both had their best results in the northern portion of Letham, the one completely un-merged district. The Pro-Union bloc meanwhile all proved strongest in the merger of Hillyland plus the southern stretch of Letham; at a guess, I’d suggest it’s the Hillyland bit that dominated. Finally, Alba did best in the three districts on the east of the ward, stretching down from Tulloch to the cemetary.
Second Preferences
Looking at direct second preferences, we can see some pretty standard patterns, though with a little bit of spice introduced by Reform UK and Alba. As is so often the case, the SNP and Greens were one another’s top next preference, though Alba weren’t very far behind at all in the SNP’s rankings. In total, SNP to Green preferencing was down about 12%, and Green to SNP by 15%. No surprises that Alba voters were most likely to plump for the SNP too, but again that’s down a weighty 11% versus flows in 2022. That’s interesting because back then Alba had what I’d consider a pretty typical small party transfer dynamic of having relatively few sole preferences. Here they have so many sole preferences their pattern looks like a big party.
Over on the other side of the constitutional divide, there was a similarly common mutual flow between Labour and Lib Dem voters. In fact, everybody on that side loved the Lib Dems, with both the Conservatives and, shockingly, Reform UK also most likely to second preference them, albeit both parties had quite fractured spreads and weren’t far off most preferring one another.
Cross-constitutional preferencing is always a lot more common than tiresome internet bores assume and usually isn’t remarkable, but this is the first time Reform UK and Alba have competed in the same election, and I’m fascinated by the size of their mutual transfer blocs. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t huge, but they are much bigger than I’d expect. Reform UK are so hardline Pro-Union I’m pretty sure they are actually anti-Devolution, whilst Alba’s whole deal is being Independence fundamentalists. On that basis they should be anathema to one another’s voters, but perhaps a degree of shared positioning on some social issues and a vibe of being amongst the most anti-establishment options outweigh that for some?
We may only have three months left of 2024, but I’ve still got an absolutely staggering 22 further by-elections on my upcoming list. The first of these are coming up just this coming week on the 3rd of October in the form of another double bill. This one is in Dundee, with what should be an easy Labour win in Lochee and a harder fought one in Strathmartine that’ll make the difference between the SNP continuing their majority administration or slipping into minority, and thus risking losing control.
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