Leven, Kennoway and Largo by-election result, 15th December 2016 :
SNP 37.0% (-4.0)
Labour 28.4% (-6.9)
Conservatives 18.5% (+11.7)
Liberal Democrats 14.3% (+4.3)
Greens 1.8% (n/a)
Things have come to a pretty pass when Labour are quite genuinely 'celebrating' a defeat in a former heartland, a 7% drop in their own vote share, and a 1.5% net swing from Labour to SNP. But it's probably fair to say that, in the context of the times, this is a tolerably good result for them. If extrapolated nationally on a 'just a bit of fun' basis, it would put them only a few points behind the SNP. The snag is, of course, that there is absolutely no evidence from any opinion poll or from any other recent by-election to suggest that their resilience tonight is anything more than a freakish one-off. The chances are that there were local or personality factors that worked in their favour in this particular contest.
Should we be at all concerned about the slippage in the SNP vote, given that the party had only a modest national lead in the last local elections in 2012? A loss of support is certainly more noteworthy in this sort of by-election than it would be in areas of traditional Tory strength - we can't just neatly put it down to a small number of No-voting ex-SNP supporters finding a way of resolving their cognitive dissonance. However, the most recent national opinion poll (conducted only two or three weeks ago) gave the SNP almost half of the popular vote, and in spite of the question marks that now hang over the polling industry, it's unlikely that polls would completely fail to detect a dramatic shift in public opinion.
The small increase in the Liberal Democrat vote is very much in line with last week's Scottish local by-election, the parliamentary by-election in Sleaford and North Hykeham, and also a couple of Britain-wide opinion polls. So there does seem to have been a genuine post-Richmond Park bounce for the party. The problem is that they'll need to follow up that win at some point if they want to maintain their momentum, and respectable third or fourth place finishes aren't really going to be enough. The afterglow of a single by-election success - no matter how spectacular - is generally pretty short-lived, and if what we're seeing now is as good as it gets for the Lib Dems, they're not really back in the game in any meaningful sense.
I voted in this election yesterday. The polling clerk told me to use numbers, listing as many candidates as I wanted to rate in order.
ReplyDeleteWhy then, were these preferences not used when no candidate achieved quota? For a single-member election, this would have been 50% + 1 vote.
The figures James has used is the first preference count before the 2nd preferences were distributed of the eliminated candidates. Full details will be on the Fife Council website.
Deletewith only 38.8% of the vote, a unionist solidarity pact could easily have seen the Best placed indy candidate outpolled.
ReplyDeleteSshh. Don't give them ideas.
DeleteTories won GE15 with "only" 37% of the vote.
DeleteCan't see them lying awake at night worrying about being outpolled by some sort of pact.
It is still a pretty good result for a party which has been in power at Holyrood for nigh on ten years and how many unionists will actually vote Tory in the event of a formal unionist bloc which is what such a bloc would be .
ReplyDeleteI'm at at loss to see how important the rise in the Lib Dem vote is surely the issue is the much larger rise in the Tory vote. Is this a Tory revival at work? Your thoughts into this much larger increase would be insightful as always.
ReplyDeleteI think that the battle for the socialist vote has been lost by Labour to the SNP, has the Unionist vote been lost by Labour to the Tories? In which case will Labour fade away and leave the left in Scotland dominated by the SNP and the right by a revived Tory party?
I think Scottish politics has changed forever.
DeleteIt will be a straight fight between the SNP and the Unionists until independence is delivered.
The non-nats, for want of a better collective noun, have nowhere else to go. The Tories will be hitting 30% before long. I was saying it back when they were raising eyebrows getting into the high teens. Now they're well in the 20s and rising.
DeleteMarcia, the 'full figures' on Fife's website are just those quoted above. There seem to have been no counts beyond the first round!
ReplyDeleteI have finally come across the transfers from this election (thanks to Vote UK Forum):
ReplyDeleteTransfers from Leven, Kennoway and Largo.
First prefs: SNP 1501 Lab 1155 C 752 LD 580 Grn 74
LD and Grn eliminated: SNP 1615 Lab 1302 C 954
C eliminated: SNP 1668 Lab 1620
It seems that of 954 voters eliminated at the final hurdle, just 53 preferred SNP to Labour. Without them, there would not have been a pro-indy winner - thank you, these 53.
On the other hand, just 318 of those 954 could bring themselves to vote Labour above SNP. Long may the unionists be disunited!
The Tory 2nd pref available for transfer would be 752, and not 954.
DeleteYes, but the 954 include Greens and Libs who preferred Tories to either Lab or SNP.
ReplyDelete