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. In the east, we had appropriately enough Stirling East, where Labour councillor (and council leader) Chris Kane had become MP for Stirling and Strathallan. This is one of the more surprising by-elections to arise from the General Election, as very few people (myself included) expected Labour to win that seat.
In my preview, I’d noted that although the 2022 election would have been an SNP vs Conservative head-to-head, Labour were only 2 votes behind the Conservatives at the key stage. Had they gotten through, their head-to-head vs the SNP was an 8.8% gap. Given the scale of Labour success earlier this year and the relatively small swing needed, I’d pegged this as a Labour Lean. However, I write my previews about a month before the vote, and although not a lot usually happens in that time, sometimes it does.
In the very many by-elections in that busy period, I’d noted a trend for Labour not to really make that much headway against the SNP, especially after transfers. Although the 4.4% swing needed here was very modest, on polling day I quickly ran through a dozen recent Labour vs SNP head-to-head by-elections and established the average post-transfer swing had been just 2%, and only two of the by-elections exceeded what was needed here, neither by very much. With that in mind, I might have more accurately come to describe this as a tossup.
Headline Results
Councillors and Key Stats
1 Councillor Elected:
SNP: Willie Ferguson
Change vs 2022 (notional): SNP Hold
Change vs vacating: SNP Gain from Labour
Turnout: 21.7% (-23.7)
Electorate: 8754
Valid: 1881 (98.8%)
Spoiled: 22 (1.2%)
Quota: 941
2 Continuing Councillors:SNP: Gerry McLaughlan
Conservative: Bryan Flannagan
Candidates
Green: Andrew Adam
Reform UK: William DochertySNP: Willie Ferguson
Labour: Anne Kane
Independent: Gary McGrow
Lib Dem: Christopher SpreadboroughConservative: Jennifer Ure
First Preferences
Note: The Family Party won 1.4% here in 2022.
First Preference History
Although “lean” is hardly a strong prediction anyway, re-assessing to a tossup would indeed have been wise. Looking purely at first preferences, the SNP to Labour swing was 8%: decent, but somewhat short of what they’d need with transfers. The SNP did slip to their worst result this side of the referendum in this ward, but retained a pretty clear lead over Labour, who for their part managed to recover somewhat from their 2022 low and return to second place.
Rather than slump to third place, the Conservatives actually found themselves relegated to fourth, their share practically halving in the face of Reform UK’s ongoing surge. For whatever reason, returning Independent Gary McGrow also fared quite poorly, losing a fair whack of his prior share.
That left him only a smidge ahead of the Greens who experienced a very slight uptick, in line with a recent pattern of generally going up in weaker areas despite limited progress in stronger ones. It also nearly matches their 2015 by-election performance on the chart, though remember the previous boundaries were actually more Green-favourable than they are now. Lastly, the Lib Dems too saw modest growth in share, to unarguably their best in this form of the ward.
Transfers
Two-Candidate Preferred
Rather than make up further ground on the SNP through transfers, the swing to Labour actually narrowed following transfers. What had started as a 4% swing ended as just 0.7%, as both parties lost share to the non-transfer pile relative to the same head-to-head in 2022. That allows the SNP to end the year if not on a high note, at least with a sigh of relief that they managed what was in electoral terms a hold.
Some have noted this as a break in the SNP’s losing streak for by-elections: dedicated followers of Ballot Box Scotland will know that wasn’t ever a useful measure given that all bar four of these votes took place in wards the SNP hadn’t won in 2022. You might as well make a big deal out of a Labour losing streak in England across seats the Conservatives won in July – it’s true, certainly, but it doesn’t tell us all that much.
In terms of trends across the elections that do tell us more, I point back to what I said in the introduction. Even after the other by-election this day had a much better swing towards Labour, after transfers the average over the past while is still only a bit short of 2.2%. The SNP are clearly losing ground to Labour, but they aren’t haemorrhaging it the way they were earlier this year. The question is whether this is just teething problems for the still new Labour government at UK level, or whether it’s going to be longer term pain, and on that front, nobody can yet say.
Anyway, one final curiosity here: Reform UK’s final transfers split almost evenly between the SNP and Labour, with the SNP taking a slight lead. That’s in stark contrast to the more than 2-to-1 advantage across most other recent by-elections. I don’t have any explanation for it here beyond the fact that maybe the SNP have a longer-established voter base in Stirling than in e.g. Glasgow, and so there may be a greater willingness to transfer to them?
Detailed Results
Results by Polling District
There already weren’t very many polling districts in this ward, and by-election low turnout meant merging them into two pairs. As the SNP had a decent lead over Labour overall they retained their lead in both pairs, doing better in the Whins of Milton districts. That was also where Reform UK, the Conservatives and Lib Dems had their better shares. For Labour, the Independent and Greens, their better half was the Broomridge and Braehead merger.
Second Preferences
Turning to direct second preferences, and it’s a pretty ordinary story compared to some of the peculiarities seen in other recent by-elections. On the Pro-Independence side, there was a usual mutual flow between the SNP and Greens, though down significantly in both directions compared to 2022. Similarly, there was a mutual flow on the right between Reform and the Conservatives.
Keeping it mutual, those who backed the Independent and the Lib Dems were very narrowly mostly likely to back one another, whilst Labour voters had a slender preference for the Lib Dems over the SNP. These were all pretty fractured spreads though, with none of them exceeding 20% to any other party.
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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