SNP win the first preference vote in the Cromarty Firth by-election, but miss out after transfers

There were two by-elections in the Highlands yesterday, both of which were counted today.  And while there is nowhere in Scotland more fascinating in geographical terms than the Isle of Skye, I think politically the Cromarty Firth by-election was probably the more interesting of the two, so I'll start with that.  When I sat down to write this post, nobody had yet transcribed the result or calculated the percentages, so I've gone old school and calculated them myself manually from the video of the announcement.  Hopefully I haven't made any mistakes...

Cromarty Firth by-election result on first preferences (19th June 2025):

SNP 23.8% (-5.3)
Independent - Cross 20.1% (n/a)
Independent - Rattray 15.4% (n/a)
Reform UK 14.6% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 12.2% (-15.7)
Greens 3.9% (+1.0)
Alba 3.8% (n/a)
Labour 3.2% (-1.0)
Conservatives 2.0% (-4.7)

The percentage changes above are measured from the 2022 local elections, rather than from the previous by-election in the same ward last year.  The SNP vote has held up pretty well, bearing in mind that in 2022 Nicola Sturgeon was still in her pomp and her party was still polling in the mid-to-high 40s in opinion polls.  Normally a 3.7 point lead on first preferences would be enough to be transfer-proof and to seal the victory, but probably a lot of unionist voters got through all the independent candidates before they 'boaked', allowing Mr Cross to sneak home from second place.  

Alba, as we know, clutch to absolutely any straws they can find in any and every situation (now that McEleny has been expelled it'll probably be HQ's resident wonderbairn Robert Reid doing the clutching, albeit from behind the curtain of anonymity), so they'll undoubtedly crow about finishing ahead of both Labour and the Tories.  But in context I don't think this is a great result for Alba.  They had a high-profile candidate in Steve Chisholm, who is well known for his championing of freeports, which obviously has a special relevance in the Cromarty Firth area.  Yet even with that USP he still didn't break the 5% barrier.  That said, of course, a lot of actual Alba members absolutely loathe and despise Chisholm's stance on freeports and believe it is contrary to the democratic wishes of the party rank-and-file, so maybe his candidacy was a double-edged sword.

The slump in Lib Dem support is surprising given that they did well in Skye, but perhaps it can be put down in part to the loss of any personal vote for Molly Nolan, who was on the ballot for them in 2022.

Obviously the Highlands aren't a Labour-SNP battleground area, so the swing between those two parties is less meaningful than it would be in the central belt or parts of the north-east.  But for what little it's worth, there was a nominal swing from SNP to Labour of just over 2%, which if extrapolated to the whole country is consistent with a Scotland-wide SNP lead of around eight percentage points over Labour.

More to follow...