Background
We finally concluded 2024’s by-elections with a pair at either end of the Central Belt last week. I had to wait a little bit to get data for them, hence a bit of a delay to analysis. The very last (individual) council by-election I’ll report on this year, Glasgow’s Partick East and Kelvindale was a much more unfortunate vote than most lately. SNP councillor Kenny McLean sadly passed away earlier this year, having been a councillor since 2007 and serving time in the city administration.
This was another one of the many by-elections lately that was a pretty sure bet for Labour. That’s because it’s a ward they won in 2022 and one that’s amongst the least demographically favourable to the SNP in Glasgow. In my preview I therefore picked out two other things that’d be interesting to watch: whether the Greens would place second, and how the Conservatives would hold up since they weren’t facing off against Reform UK here.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
Labour: James Adams
Change vs 2022 (notional): Labour Hold
Change vs vacating: Labour Gain from SNP
Turnout: 21.7% (-25.4)
Electorate: 21307
Valid: 4593 (99.4%)
Spoiled: 26 (0.6%)
Quota: 2297
3 Continuing Councillors:Labour: Jill Brown
Green: Blair AndersonLabour: Lilith Johnstone
Candidates
Labour: James Adams
Lib Dem: Nicholas Budgen
Conservative: Faten HameedGreen: Héloïse Le Moal
SNP: Cylina Porch
First Preferences
Note: Alba won 0.8% and the Freedom Alliance 0.6% here in 2022.
First Preference History
As expected, Labour did indeed make further gains over the SNP here. Their swings here are all but completely mirrored, with a roughly 5% gain and loss respectively. That continues Labour’s steady climb upwards and more than doubles their starting share in 2017, whilst the SNP drop to their worst result so far. Although the overall swings here are at the expense of the SNP and Greens, part of how Labour got back into the lead here was eating into the Conservative and Lib Dem shares, and that’ll be more evident for this particular ward outside by-elections.
For the Greens, this is a bit of a shocker again frankly, after Maryhill two weeks prior. Whilst they’d still comfortably have a councillor on this, it’s about on par with their 2021 by-election share, and their voters are least likely to turn out, it’s backwards motion in a strong ward whilst, on the same day, an absolute no-hoper ward (albeit in a different city this time) with no real campaign shows growth in share. It’s truly bizarre; it’s certainly not uncommon for parties to go in different directions in different places, but that’s usually in line with where they are strongest or weakest.
The Conservatives have recently been a bit of an example of that. Their share generally went up in the likes of Aberdeenshire even whilst cratering in more urban by-elections. They even managed a tiny little smidge of growth here, but in an opposite case to the Greens, their voters are the most likely to turn out. That means that had a full election been held on the same day, they’d have been below their 2022 share. This is also without Reform UK nibbling on their vote share, as much as I think the Conservative vote here is one of affluence, whereas Reform reap the rewards of dissatisfaction.
Last and, we do have to be honest, in a Glasgow perspective least, the Lib Dems. They doubled their vote share here which is not to be sneezed at, but it’s not really a sign of meaningful recovery. They did better here in 2017 and it availed them naught in the longer run, so preparation for a stunning return to the council this is not.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Having improved on their already winning lead in 2022, transfers were obviously going to go Labour’s way. Sure enough, they cruised to an easy victory, achieving a quota without needing to progress to the (meaninglessly completionist) elimination of the SNP. This was a much bigger swing to Labour than they’ve averaged lately – I calculate that to be about 2.2% in the 14 wards that have had a recent Labour-SNP head-to-head. That’s positive for Labour in Glasgow, but it’s again in the absence of Reform UK (who have eaten into that margin in other wards), and doesn’t bode brilliantly well for higher-turnout elections if their best swing is still only 5.7%.
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
Although turnout was low, it was relatively high by recent by-election standards, so not as many mergers as usual. That means we can be relatively certain that party leads are pretty accurately shown, with Labour leading almost everywhere bar Claythorn and the eastern portion of Anniesland which swung SNP. Like Maryhill the Greens did have an in-person vote lead in the Hayburn area they’d led in 2022, but that dissipates when distributing postal votes.
In terms of best patches for each party, for the SNP it was that one bit they led in. Perhaps oddly that was also the Conservative stronghold (may I introduce you to, the admittedly quite remarkable, Kelvin Court?), whereas Labour saw Hyndland just pip central Partick for their top spot. The Greens remained strongest in Hayburn, and the Lib Dems perhaps unsurprisingly in leafy Kelvinside and eastern Kelvindale.
Second Preferences
With just the Holyrood 5 on the paper, second preferences are positively dull. In fact, they’re so easy that in a real rarity, only the Conservatives have a plurality not marking a second preference at all. We had two mutual flows, the first between Labour and the Lib Dems, and the second between the SNP and Greens. It’s usually stronger from Green to SNP than vice versa, but this ward has been the opposite way round in general, and there’s a currently-normal reduction in the size of that flow. That left the Conservatives as the billy nae mates unrequited fondness for the Lib Dems.
We are thankfully done with by-elections for 2024. We start 2025 with Shetland North and an absolutely unhinged rapid return to Colinton and Fairmilehead in Edinburgh, but those are at the end of January and therefore don’t have written previews yet.
You can however look forward to the usual end of year reviews (for by-elections, and polling for parliaments and the constitution), as well as (hopefully) a refresh of my “New Municipalism” project.
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