By-Election Result: Stranraer and the Rhins

Now, I don’t always get my predictions absolutely spot on, but I have a pretty good record, so you’ll forgive me for crowing about being bang on the money here. I could not have been more spot on as first preferences showed the complete dominance of, but extreme closeness, of the right wing parties. That was so close it was impossible to guess in advance whether transfers would swing it. I had a source at the count, which as it was a hand count involved several stage-by-stage updates, and neither of us could settle on how it was going to end up.

Sticking to first preferences for now though, this is Reform’s best ever result in Scotland, the first time they’ve cracked 30%, and the first time they’ve topped the first preference count. That’s a remarkable result, but also in the direction that it’s still well below their best performances down south. A drum I feel like I’ll have to keep banging over the coming months is that it’s equally foolish to have pretended Reform were never going to take off in Scotland as it is to pretend there remains no distinction between the depth of support across the nations of the UK.

Looking at these figures in the round, it’s actually as if 2025 Reform simply substituted for 2017 Scobie. They were only 1.3% short of his tally back at the first election in this ward, and all of the Conservatives, SNP and Labour are within 1% of their shares then too. None of the latter three will have much cause to be happy about that, but it’s also not in local terms a shattering result either. 

The Conservative vote held up perhaps a little better than I might have expected, even having thought they were one of the likely winners. I’d be interested how many of those voters might actually have plumped for another party but (understanding of STV not being fantastic) went Conservative to stop Reform. It won’t be an enormous proportion, but it might be enough that their “natural” vote could have just missed 30%.

On the other hand, a relatively poor SNP result was probably made all the poorer by the fact they stood a Dumfries resident for this one. Don’t let the name “Dumfries and Galloway” make you forget how huge this area is. As I quipped to one pal when discussing the result, doing the geographic equivalent of standing a Musselburgh resident in Paisley isn’t going to do you any favours, especially not when it’s a by-election to replace an extremely weel-kent local councillor. 

Although they may not appear to be the biggest losers, either in absolute or relative terms, in one sense Labour did end up worst off here. Recall that Scobie was a former Labour councillor, and in theory you might have expected a fair few of his former voters to turn to his former party. Though they may have been drawn off by another Independent who placed not far behind Labour, it’s still not the best sign.

Bringing up the rear, the Greens were notably not only the sole returning party to grow their share, but they also increased their raw number of votes. This is still a very modest share, but when you consider that Green voters are least likely to turn out at by-elections and how little they need to grow their overall vote to secure a South Scotland MSP in May, it’s not a bad sign. They remained ahead of the Lib Dems, who will also have drawn off some of the Labour and Conservative support, whilst fringe outfit the Heritage Party failed to secure even a whole percentage point.