Pro-indy parties make progress in Clackmannanshire East by-election

A rare advantage of being forced to have pre-moderation switched on is that I was able to intercept a comment the other night by a well-known unionist propagandist who was attempting to portray the Conservative hold in the Clackmannanshire East by-election as some kind of glorious, game-changing victory for unionism. In reality, the vote share for both pro-independence parties actually went up slightly, and it looks like the unexpectedly sharp increase in the Tory vote can be explained mainly by an intra-unionist swing caused by yet another Labour collapse. 

Clackmannanshire East by-election result: 

 

Conservatives 51.2% (+9.7) 

SNP 32.0% (+1.8) 

Labour 8.1% (-12.1) 

Greens 5.8% (+2.0) 

Liberal Democrats 2.9% (-1.4) 

If we'd seen this result in late 2017 or 2018, I might have interpreted the Tories' relatively strong performance as being of wider national significance. But at the moment we have tonnes of polling evidence, and indeed evidence from other recent local by-elections, that the Tories are struggling across Scotland and that the Douglas Ross experiment is failing. So the Clackmannanshire East outcome has got 'local factors' written all over it. It was a reasonably solid Tory ward in 2017 anyway - it contains Dollar, so it's very much the posh end of the county.

How could you, Keith? You're Cullen my dreams...

Apologies for the uncharacteristically negative headline, but I couldn't resist. It was perhaps inevitable that with five Scottish by-elections taking place in the space of a week, one would prove to be less wonderful for the SNP than the other four. However, this isn't as bad a result as it looks, for reasons I shall explain in a moment.

Keith & Cullen by-election result (Moray Council):

Conservatives 41.5% (+8.8)
SNP 38.1% (-1.6)
Independent - Rob Barsby 12.7% (+3.1)
Liberal Democrats 7.7% (n/a)

The sizeable increase in the Tory vote should be taken with a pinch of salt, because the overall vote for independent candidates dropped sharply from around 28% to 13%.  Moray is one of the parts of Scotland where the independent vote is often pretty much interchangeable with the Tory vote, so in theory that could explain the entire Tory increase.  However, there's no equivalent alibi for the slight fall in SNP support, and this is obviously a sub-optimal result given that Moray is one of the Tory seats that the SNP are targeting in the general election.

On the other hand, it's dangerous to extrapolate from a low-turnout (34%) local by-election result to a general election - it may be that SNP supporters in Moray will be far more motivated to turn out for the latter.  It should also be remembered that Moray is one of the most Brexit-friendly constituencies in the whole of Scotland, so even if the Tories do cling on to it, that doesn't necessarily mean the SNP won't gain other Tory seats where the conditions are far more favourable.  For example, East Renfrewshire and Stirling both had very high Remain votes in 2016.

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I have two more constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Falkirk and Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk.

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Two by-elections, two big swings to the SNP

As expected, the Shetland by-election proved to be just too big a mountain for the SNP to climb, but by any normal standards the swing in their favour was enormous.

Shetland parliamentary by-election result (29th August 2019):

Liberal Democrats 47.9% (-19.5)
SNP 32.3% (+9.3)
Independent - Thomson 10.9% (n/a)
Conservatives 3.7% (-0.1)
Greens 1.6% (n/a)
Labour 1.3% (-4.6)
Independent - Stout 1.1% (n/a)
Independent - Scott 0.6% (n/a)
UKIP 0.5% (n/a)
Independent - Tait 0.3% (n/a)

That's a swing of more than 14% from the Liberal Democrats to the SNP. If that had been the result of a by-election on the mainland, it would look like an unmitigated disaster for the Lib Dems and their new leader Jo Swinson, because if national polls are to be believed they should be closing the gap in seats they don't hold, and sailing out of sight in seats they do hold. They certainly shouldn't be seeing their vote slump in a previously rock-solid heartland. However, we've known since the European election in May that the Northern Isles were bucking the national trend for whatever reason, and we've always known that localised trends in island constituencies don't usually have any wider significance, so the Lib Dems will probably just feel relieved to get out of this with a win of some description. The SNP will also be pleased, though, at this demonstration that there aren't any no go areas for them in Scotland.

There have been some suggestions that the SNP's biggest failing in this campaign was in the realm of expectation management, ie. that they allowed the impression to take root that they might actually win Shetland outright, which now leaves the big swing in their favour looking like a disappointing result. But I think sometimes you have to build a sense of excitement about a campaign if you want a decent outcome. There's not going to be much of a bandwagon effect if people think your aim is a distant second place.

Oh, and it shouldn't go unmentioned that the Tories specifically said in their election leaflets that if voters wanted Brexit, their only option was to vote Tory.  So presumably this result means that 96.3% of Shetlanders don't want Brexit?

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There was also a substantial swing to the SNP in a local council by-election in East Kilbride...

East Kilbride Central North by-election result (29th August 2019):

SNP 46.5% (+4.2)
Labour 20.3% (-11.3)
Conservatives 14.6% (-4.1)
Liberal Democrats 12.4% (+9.9)
Greens 4.5% (+0.6)
UKIP 1.4% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarians 0.4% (n/a)

It's worth bearing in mind that the above percentage changes are from the baseline of the 2017 local elections, when the SNP's national vote stood at 32%. So the SNP are not necessarily setting the heather alight with a 4% increase. But what really matters here is the catastrophic drop in the Labour vote - if that trend continues, the SNP will sweep the board wherever Labour are their main opponents in any snap Westminster election. There still appears to be every chance that Scottish Labour will once again by reduced to just one seat (Edinburgh South).

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How can you tell the difference between a Westminster by-election and a local council by-election? The declaration of a Westminster by-election result is pretty much always broadcast live by the BBC, either on their news channel, or on BBC1, or on a simulcast between the two channels. By contrast, local council by-elections are for obvious reasons never covered live, and indeed are hardly ever mentioned on air after the event. Judging from the complete lack of live coverage of the Shetland result on BBC1, BBC2, the BBC news channel, the BBC Scotland channel and Radio Scotland, it appears that the BBC think that a Holyrood by-election is closer in nature to a council by-election than to a Westminster contest. It's not all that surprising to see London news editors stuck in the dark ages, taking the view that Holyrood is - in the immortal words of Tony Blair - comparable to an English parish council. But BBC Scotland have no excuse after twenty years of devolution, and it's a real dereliction of duty that they didn't broadcast some sort of live by-election special. On past form, it's highly likely they would have done if this had been a Westminster by-election in Scotland.

Hats off to Haddington as SNP give Ruth Davidson's Tories the FRIGHT OF THEIR LIVES in by-election belter

So this is more like it, after the slight disappointment of the by-election in Dundee last week. Haddington and Lammermuir isn't particularly SNP territory - the party finished third in the ward (albeit a strong third) last time around, at a time when there was a clear SNP lead nationally. In yesterday's by-election, they moved into a clear second place as the Labour vote collapsed.

Haddington and Lammermuir by-election result (9th May 2019): 

Conservatives 35.0% (+6.0)
SNP 29.5% (+3.5)
Labour 21.5% (-12.2)
Liberal Democrats 12.2% (+4.9)
UKIP 1.7% (n/a)

That's the result on first preferences, but the SNP were even closer to victory than those figures suggest. Of the hundreds of Labour voters who transferred on the decisive count, 56.2% went to the SNP and only 43.8% to the Tories - once again giving the lie to the notion that the Labour support can be regarded as part of some sort of monolithic unionist bloc. If the Tory vote drops significantly in some of the crucial north-east marginals at the next general election, Ruth Davidson shouldn't expect unionist tactical votes to save her. Labour supporters in those seats may even be rather more tempted to cast a tactical anti-Brexit vote for the SNP.

That said, Haddington and Lammermuir is obviously a solid result for the Tories as well, and defies recent opinion polls by showing no sign of any loss of support to pro-Brexit parties. (There was no Brexit Party candidate, but UKIP were there.) I suspect it's a case of horses for courses, though, and that voters will behave very differently at the Euro elections.

The Clackmannanshire result demonstrates the limits of unionist tactical voting

Local by-elections in Scotland are conducted by Single Transferable Vote (which to all intents and purposes functions like the Alternative Vote if only one councillor is being elected), meaning that the SNP's huge 9% lead over Labour in the first count in Clackmannanshire Central did not guarantee them victory.  Labour and the Tories had almost 52% of the first preference vote between them, which means that Labour would have won with a bit to spare if every Tory voter had ranked Labour higher than the SNP in their lower preferences.  In practice, it would have been obvious as soon as the result of the first count was announced that the SNP were going to hold on for the win.  Really big first preference leads are rarely overturned, due to the fact that a lot of voters don't bother using their lower preferences.  Nevertheless, it's striking just how few Tory voters took the action necessary to prevent an SNP victory.

When the Tory candidate was excluded, he had 447 votes.  More than two-thirds of those votes (68%) were non-transferable, while 25% went to Labour and 7% to the SNP - which means that more than one-fifth of Tory voters who expressed a preference between the SNP and Labour plumped for the SNP.  Admittedly these numbers are slightly complicated by the fact that the Tory transfers will have included a small handful of voters who backed UKIP, the Greens or the Lib Dems with their first preferences and then transferred to the Tories.  But of the 419 people who gave their first preferences to the Tories, an absolute maximum of 112 ended up in the Labour column on the decisive count.  If it's so hard to get Tory voters to give a lower preference to another unionist party even when it causes no harm to their first choice, you have to wonder how many of them would be prepared to tactically switch their one and only vote from Tory to Labour in a first-past-the-post general election if they live in a battleground SNP-Labour marginal seat.

The substantial minority of Tory voters who prefer SNP to Labour shouldn't be such a surprise.  In the 70s, it was taken as read that most Tory supporters would prefer to have an SNP MP if the only other alternative was a Labour MP, and that any Tory tactical voting would favour the SNP.  Given the leftward drift of Scottish Labour since the 2017 general election, the same logic would apply now if it weren't for the constitutional issue.  OK, the constitutional issue isn't going away any time soon, so Labour will remain the net beneficiaries of Tory tactical voting - but the greater ideological gulf between the two main London parties may mean that the benefit to Labour will be smaller in scale in any election this year than it was in 2017.

By the way, it's just as well that David Coburn has left his old party, because he would have been appalled at what UKIP voters did with their lower preferences yesterday.  Of those that transferred, 41% went to the SNP (answers on a postcard, please?), 41% went to the Tories and 18% went to Labour.

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So a couple of quick thoughts about the government's defeat on the third meaningful vote this afternoon.  There were 34 Tory rebels, but 6 of those were actually hardcore Remainers.  Even if every single Brexiteer Tory rebel had switched sides and backed the deal (in the realms of fantasy given that we're talking about the real die-hards), the government would still have been defeated by 2 votes.  So if Theresa May has any path at all to an improbable majority, it can only run through the Labour benches.  (Unless of course she considers a grand bargain with the SNP and offers Devo Max and/or a Section 30 order, but she's far too stubborn and unimaginative to contemplate that for even a micro-second.  All the same, though, today was the first time a meaningful vote could theoretically have gone the other way if the SNP had voted differently.)

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of contradictory rumours swirling around about what Theresa May's strategy is (the most plausible of which is that she doesn't actually know herself).  A few people have suggested that the government is plotting a run-off vote between the May deal and whatever emerges from the indicative votes process.  If anything does emerge from the indicative votes, it's likely to be a softer Brexit, which would force the Brexiteers to back the May deal in the run-off.  I don't see how that sort of jiggery-pokery would work, though, because it would just strengthen the Brexiteers' resolve to subsequently vote against the legislation required to implement the deal.  So unless Labour change their attitude to the deal, we'd just end up back where we started after a slight detour.

Wondrous SNP wangle wizard win in windy Wester Ross

I was up to my neck yesterday, so apologies for being a bit late with this excellent news from the Highlands. In a break from the pattern of the recent past, the SNP have not underperformed expectations in a local council by-election - quite the reverse, in fact.

Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh by-election result (first preferences):

SNP 33.1% (+7.0)
Conservatives 26.0% (+7.6)
Independent - Greene 15.6% (+1.4)
Greens 9.0% (-2.2)
Liberal Democrats 8.0% (-5.4)
Labour 4.4% (-0.7)
Independent - Davis 3.3% (n/a)
UKIP 0.4% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarians 0.2% (n/a)

Technically, this was an SNP gain from the Liberal Democrats, but that's just one of the familiar quirks of the STV system - in fact the SNP topped the poll in the ward last time around, and the Lib Dems trailed in fourth. Nevertheless, by any standards this was a dismal attempt from the Lib Dems at defending the seat - they suffered a net swing to the SNP of more than 6%. We probably shouldn't get as excited about the SNP surge as we would do if it had happened in a central belt ward - there's much more of a tradition in Highlands local politics of electing an individual, rather than a political party. But a splendid result for the SNP is always preferable to the alternative.

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SNP vote holds up in agonisingly close Coatbridge South by-election

So unfortunately it turns out that I was correct earlier tonight in suggesting that Labour's chances in the Coatbridge South by-election were being underestimated - they ended up pipping the SNP by just 0.4% of the vote on first preferences, which made it all but inevitable they'd win on a later count due to the greater propensity of Tory voters to transfer to Labour.

Coatbridge South by-election result:

Labour 41.5% (+12.0)
SNP 41.1% (-1.6)
Conservatives 15.1% (+3.2)
Greens 1.4% (n/a)
UKIP 0.4% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 0.4% (n/a)

[UPDATE, Friday, 5pm: I've had to correct the above figures, because the original version of the result that appeared on Twitter last night turned out to be slightly inaccurate.  It's amazing how often that happens.]

Technically this was a Labour hold rather than a gain, meaning that they won't have any more councillors in North Lanarkshire than they previously did.  Nevertheless, on paper it appeared that the SNP should have won tonight, because they topped the popular vote in the ward quite comfortably in May 2017.  This follows the same pattern as a few other by-elections in former Labour heartlands since the general election in which Labour have done significantly better than the national opinion polls would have led us to expect.  So what is going on?  Is there a localised Labour renaissance that the opinion polls aren't picking up?  In this particular case there may be a more prosaic explanation.  Although there was a technical swing from SNP to Labour, the SNP's own vote barely dropped at all.  On the face of it, the big increase in Labour's vote may have come almost entirely from people who voted for independents in May 2017.  And it just so happens that the independents were disgruntled former Labour councillors.  Perhaps, then, the SNP victory in the ward eighteen months ago was a bit illusory, and the 'real' Labour vote was always significantly higher than the 2017 result suggested.

Of course it may well be a bit more complex than that, but I'd be surprised if that isn't at least part of the explanation.  So let's not over-react to what is admittedly a very frustrating result.

Horror show for Labour in Fife by-election

Tonight we have the result of the first local government by-election in Scotland for several months...

Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay by-election result (first preferences):

Conservatives 37.3% (+0.7)
SNP 28.1% (-2.7)
Labour 12.0% (-4.8)
Liberal Democrats 9.1% (+4.1)
Independent - Collins 8.4% (n/a)
Greens 4.2% (+0.7)
Independent - Macintyre 0.6% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarian 0.2% (n/a)

I know the SNP were talking up their chances of outright victory, but for my money this is a very creditable result in difficult circumstances. In spite of the endless stream of negative headlines about Alex Salmond over the last couple of weeks, the SNP are only down a smidgeon on an election last year in which they won the national popular vote by a relatively comfortable margin. And although the Tories usually have an inbuilt advantage in local by-elections due to the greater motivation of their supporters to make it to the polling stations, the modest swing from the SNP they achieved would not be enough to overhaul the SNP's national lead if extrapolated to the whole country.

Technically this has to be reported as a "Tory gain from Labour", but that's just one of those wildly misleading quirks of the STV voting system. The Tories won the popular vote in the ward last year, and Labour were a distant third, so the chances of Labour 'holding' the seat were always remote (although arguably not totally non-existent, because Labour did finish a strong second in the ward back in 2012). Nevertheless, Richard Leonard ought to be horrified to see Labour's vote slip back more than the SNP's. We all know that any real threat to the SNP's predominance in Scottish politics would have to come from Labour, because there is a natural ceiling on Tory support. So the fact that the SNP have somehow improved their position relative to Labour in this ward is extremely heartening in the current climate. OK, Labour would probably argue that this was a classic third-party squeeze, with Labour voters lending their support to either the SNP or the Tories depending on whether they happen to be unionist diehards or not. But if it's quite as simple as that, why did the Lib Dems and the Greens both increase their vote share in fourth and sixth place respectively?  Is Labour's lack of clarity on Brexit costing them?

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SNP vote remains rock-solid in Highland Perthshire by-election

Just for once we have a by-election outcome where the terminology of 'hold' or 'gain' isn't misleading due to the quirks of the voting system.  The Highland ward in Perth & Kinross was firmly Tory territory in the council elections last May, and the vacant seat was successfully retained by the Tories in the by-election yesterday.

Highland ward (Perth & Kinross) by-election result:

Conservatives 46.7% (+1.2)
SNP 35.9% (-0.6)
Independent - Taylor 6.9% (n/a)
Labour 5.8% (n/a)
Greens 2.5% (-1.4)
Liberal Democrats 1.9% (-1.6)
Independent - Baykal 0.3% (n/a)

For my money that's a very solid result for the SNP. Of course they were talking up their chances of winning outright, which any party with even an outside chance always has to do, but the reality is that they would have needed a hefty 4.5% swing from the Tories, which was always improbable given the greater tendency of Tory voters to turn out in lower profile contests. Essentially what we have is a no change outcome - there's been a tiny swing to the Tories, but nothing of any real consequence. That's consistent with the message of the national opinion polls, which suggests that despite all the media hoo-ha over the general election result, the SNP vote has actually held up admirably since June.

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I think someone at Time magazine has a sense of humour - either that, or (and this is more probable) they're just completely clueless. The publication has named Ruth Davidson - I'm not making this up, Ruth Davidson - as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Well, let's put that seemingly improbable claim to the test, shall we? She's an MSP, so the main arena for her influence really ought to be the Scottish Parliament - but she doesn't have much there, even as the leader of the second-largest party. Yes, the SNP government is just short of an outright majority and is sometimes forced to seek arrangements with other parties to get legislation through, but for obvious reasons parties other than the Tories are the usual port of call for any deal-making. So if Davidson is frozen out of power in Scotland, the only conceivable influence she could possibly have would be indirect influence on her fellow Tories in government at Westminster. But what evidence is there that she even has that? She's made two main boasts about what 'her' bloc of MPs at Westminster would achieve over the last year - 1) that the devolution settlement would be protected with amendments made to the EU Withdrawal Bill at the Commons stage, and 2) that powers over fisheries would be repatriated to the UK immediately after Brexit. Both of those claims came to absolutely nothing, and all we've heard from Davidson is how "frustrated" she is that she can't do anything about it. As a general rule, the most influential people in the world get what they want, rather than whinge about being "frustrated" that the opposite of what they want is happening because other people are calling the shots.

I think GA Ponsonby has it nailed - the bogus narrative of 'Ruth the Powerful' is a fairy-tale dreamt up from scratch by the media, and has somehow gained so much traction that even a few people in other countries have started to believe it. This accolade for Davidson will in a few short years look as mind-bogglingly silly as Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

Magical Mallaig moment as SNP vote increases in Highland by-election

So the STV by-election gods giveth, and the STV by-election gods taketh away.  A couple of weeks ago we were enjoying a technical SNP 'gain' from Labour in Penicuik, even though the SNP's vote had gone down slightly and they had remained in first place in the ward.  Today we're getting the flip-side of the equation: the SNP have technically 'lost' a seat in Caol and Mallaig, even though they have remained in second place in the ward and their vote has gone up appreciably.  On the plus side, because the Liberal Democrats have gained the seat, it's always quite a fun pastime trying to work out which triumphalist Lib Dem supporters are just pretending not to understand how the voting system works, and which ones are genuinely clueless enough to think that this is some sort of terrible setback for the SNP.  For a party that is supposed to regard STV as the holy grail of voting systems, the Lib Dems don't always give the impression of being terribly well versed in it.

Caol and Maillaig by-election result (first preferences):

Liberal Democrats 31.1% (+21.7)
SNP 27.2% (+3.2)
Independent - Wood 21.5% (n/a)
Conservatives 8.7% (+0.5)
Independent - MacKinnon 6.9% (n/a)
Independent - Campbell 4.6% (n/a)

There's probably not a lot of point in trying to make sense of the big increase in the Lib Dem vote - this is a part of the world where the candidate often counts for more than the party label, which is why a lot of people were betting on victory for one of the three independent candidates.  A Lib Dem win is a surprise, but isn't a sign that Rennie-mania is sweeping the nation.  For the same reason we shouldn't get too excited about the fact that there has been a small net swing from Tory to SNP.

SNP p-p-p-pick up a Penicuik in crucial by-election GAIN

I'm not sure if I've been the only person at the 'Hands Off Our Parliament' event today who spent half the time frantically searching his phone for the word 'Penicuik', but the news was good in the end.  The SNP have gained the seat previously held by Labour, and this is the first actual SNP gain in a local by-election since the Westminster general election last June.  Before you get too excited, it's one of those anomalies thrown up by the voting system, where Labour were defending the seat in spite of the fact that the SNP won the popular vote in the ward last time around.  As you can see below, there was no big change in either the SNP or Labour vote.  But it's still a significant blow for Labour, who have been overtaken by the SNP as the largest single party on Midlothian council.  (Labour will presumably cling onto power with the help of their ever-faithful Tory allies.)

Penicuik by-election result (first preferences):

SNP 35.0% (-0.2)
Conservatives 30.2% (+4.0)
Labour 27.6% (+2.0)
Greens 7.2% (+1.6)

The SNP had to wait until the Green and Labour votes were redistributed before being formally declared the winners, but from the moment it became clear the Tories were in second place on first preferences, it was pretty obvious what the final result would be.  Ironically, I saw a chap on Twitter claim that this result proves that only the Tories can beat the SNP, but if anything the opposite is true - if Labour had been second on first preferences, they probably would have taken a truck-load of transfers from the Tories, and might just have pipped the SNP on the final count.  But the Tories are never likely to get enough Labour transfers to come from behind in a straight SNP v Tory run-off.

Tory hubris cruelly exposed AGAIN as even the Beast From The East can't stop the SNP from winning the Clackmannanshire North by-election

To quote the immortal words of Ruth Davidson herself: "Well done, Clacks!"  When it was revealed that the turnout in yesterday's Clackmannanshire North by-election had somehow almost reached one-quarter of the registered electorate, many of us feared the worst, because it seemed obvious that a lot of that must have been postal votes - which could quite reasonably be expected to favour unionist parties, and especially the Tories.  But we should have had more faith - the news has filtered through that the SNP have won.  This is the second outright victory for the SNP in local by-elections in the last three weeks - and the third outright defeat for unionist parties.

UPDATE: Here is the full result on first preferences -

SNP 37.0% (-3.3)

Conservatives 31.7% (+7.7)

Labour 23.7% (-3.0)

Liberal Democrats 4.0% (-1.1)

Greens 3.6% (-0.2)

I gather that quite a few Conservative supporters are extremely keen for us to believe that this is not, as appearances would suggest, a defeat for their party, but rather a stunning triumph - ie. because their vote went up and everybody else's went down.  There are even a few wildly optimistic claims that this result is evidence that the opinion polls are wrong to suggest that the tide is going back out on Scottish Tory fortunes.  Well, good luck to them in attempting to make that narrative stick.  I think most sensible people fully appreciate that this by-election was fought under almost unique circumstances, and ones which favoured the Tories heavily.  The SNP have done extremely well to overcome their disadvantages and squeeze out a victory.

There was a poster on the Vote UK forum yesterday who was absolutely incredulous at suggestions that the by-election should have been called off - "what, for snow?" he asked.  I'm not sure if people outside the affected areas quite realise just what an extreme weather event this has been.  I live about twenty miles from the Clackmannanshire North ward, and when I went out for a short walk yesterday afternoon the scenes were almost medieval.  It must have been physically impossible for some people to get to the polling stations, and highly risky for others to attempt it.  Grant Thoms suggested yesterday morning that it was irresponsible for political parties to even encourage people to vote, but the other side of the equation is that some people who wanted to vote were denied their democratic rights by the decision not to postpone the by-election - or more accurately by the fact that it was apparently not possible under the rules for it to be postponed simply because of the weather.  (In 1974 there was a general election on February 28th - the mind boggles as to what would have happened if the weather had been like this.)  It's simply a fact that more affluent people who are more likely to vote Tory are also more likely to succeed in casting a vote in these difficult circumstances.

To the extent we can draw any lessons at all from this result, though, this is how I would look at it.  The SNP have had a few very bad results in local by-elections since last June, and they've all followed the same pattern - they've been in traditional SNP-Labour battleground areas, and the swing to Labour has significantly outstripped anything suggested by the opinion polls.  The Clackmannanshire result very much bucks that trend.  It's a ward that in the past has seen straight SNP-Labour contests, with Labour even managing to just about fend off the Tories for second place last year.  And yet on this occasion there has essentially been no swing at all from SNP to Labour, and Labour have been pushed into third place by the Tories.  OK, the weather might explain some of that, but there's certainly no sign here of the SNP being swept away by a Corbyn juggernaut in the central belt.

Fresh humiliation for hapless Ruth Davidson as Tories LOSE by-election in "safe" Scottish Borders ward

The full result from Selkirkshire hasn't been published yet, but I thought you might enjoy the headline while we're waiting.  Before you get too excited, the Tories were defeated by an independent candidate rather than the SNP, but even so.

UPDATE: Here's the result, and a finer advert you could never see for why it's so important for SNP supporters to use their lower preferences in local council elections.  The Tories were leading on first preferences by a seemingly comfortable six percentage points (albeit their share of the vote was sharply down on their result in the ward last May).  But they still lost, because enough SNP, Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters gave their lower preferences to the leading independent candidate.  The beauty of preferential voting is that even if your favourite candidate or party is well off the pace, you can still help prevent your least favourite party from claiming the seat, and that's exactly what happened here.  Well done to the progressive people of Selkirkshire for using the voting system correctly.

Selkirkshire by-election result (first preference votes):

Conservatives 35.7% (-6.4)
Independent - Penman 29.7% (n/a)
SNP 19.8% (-2.4)
Independent - Gunn 6.3% (-3.5)
Labour 3.8% (+0.1)
Liberal Democrats 2.7% (-0.6)
Greens 2.0% (-1.0)

Even after five counts (ie. after four candidates were eliminated) the Tories were still narrowly ahead by 1307 votes to 1231.  But the decisive moment came when the sizeable pile of SNP votes were transferred on the sixth count - 291 went to the independent, and only 35 went to the Tories, leaving the independent victorious by a margin of 1522 votes to 1342.  If no SNP voters at all had used their lower preferences, Selkirkshire would now be stuck with another Tory councillor.

There's always the fascination of seeing how Labour votes transfer when both the SNP and Tories are still in contention.  In this case the winning independent was the biggest beneficiary of Labour transfers, but nevertheless more than twice as many Labour voters transferred to the SNP as transferred to the Tories.  Clearly the much-vaunted unionist voting bloc has its limitations, even in territory such as the Borders where you'd think the anti-Nat pitch would have some purchase.

The slight fall in the Liberal Democrat vote from 3.3% to 2.7% may not look terribly significant - but when you realise this was a ward in which the Lib Dems took 19.7% of the vote as recently as 2012, it puts things in a completely different perspective.  In Westminster terms, this is part of a constituency that was a Lib Dem heartland until very recently.  So much for the "fightback".

Although the SNP vote fell a little, the fact that the Tory vote fell significantly more means there was technically a swing from Tory to SNP of approximately 2%.

Buoyant SNP bag belter of a by-election win in bloomin' Bonnybridge

The SNP have had a frustrating run of local by-elections since the UK general election last year - they've had one or two creditable results in wards they were never going to win, but in wards where they should have been competitive they've fallen short of expectations.  At last tonight we can celebrate both a substantial increase in the SNP vote and an outright victory.

Bonnybridge & Larbert by-election result (15th February 2018):

SNP 38.6% (+4.9)
Conservatives 32.4% (+8.1)
Labour 24.2% (+8.5)
Greens 3.7% (-0.1)
UKIP 1.0% (n/a)

The SNP candidate was eventually declared the winner on the fifth count, and was presumably helped by the fact that the Tories were the main challengers.  Labour voters are less likely to transfer to the Tories than vice versa.

Obviously the fly in the ointment here is that both the Labour and Tory vote increased more than the SNP vote did, meaning there was technically a swing from SNP to both Labour and Tory.  However, the reason for the increases across the board is that the independent councillor Billy Buchanan wasn't on the ballot paper this time, leaving his 20% of the vote up for grabs.  I gather that Buchanan is more associated with the unionist parties, so it may well be that his votes are predominantly unionist in character, and that you would have fully expected them to switch mostly to Labour and the Tories.

Extraordinary Perth by-election result illustrates the limitations of anti-SNP tactical voting

In my post on Thursday night, I pointed out three remarkable things about the Perth City South by-election result: a) that, on first preference votes, the SNP had moved from second place into first, b) that the SNP share of the vote had increased by 6.4%, and c) that there was a slight swing from Tory to SNP.  Well, here's a fourth remarkable thing.  In spite of the surge they enjoyed, the SNP still 'only' took 32.1% of the first preference vote, and almost all of the remaining two-thirds of votes were cast for unionist parties.  Given the perception of a unionist bloc vote that wants to stop the SNP at all costs, you'd therefore expect the SNP to have suffered a lopsided defeat once the lower preferences of eliminated unionist candidates were redistributed.  But that simply didn't happen.  Even after several rounds of redistributions, the SNP were still agonisingly close to winning the seat - they were only beaten by 154 votes.

The simplest way of demonstrating what happened is to look at how the Lib Dems' votes transferred once it became a straight contest between SNP and Tory.  Apart from a very small number of votes that had been transferred from the Greens at an earlier stage, almost all of these Lib Dem votes can reasonably be described as 'unionist party votes'.

Liberal Democrat transfers :

Non-transferable 44.4%
Conservatives 35.7%
SNP 19.8%

So almost two-thirds of this supposed unionist bloc failed to express a clear preference for the Tories over the SNP, and almost one-fifth actually expressed a preference for the SNP over the Tories.  Obviously the high number of non-transferable votes can be partly explained by unfamiliarity with the voting system, but nevertheless, even among those Lib Dem voters who did use their lower preferences, more than one-third backed the SNP.  The fact that more Lib Dems broke for the Tories than for the SNP explains why the Tories managed to squeak a victory - but unless the original first preference result had been extremely tight, that wouldn't have been enough to swing the balance.  You're not going to see the Tories overcome first preference deficits of 8% or 10% on this pattern of transfers.

I'd suggest all of this could pose a problem for the Tories at the next Westminster general election.  Assuming the 29% of the national vote they managed this year proves to be 'Peak Tory' (and there are many reasons for thinking it probably will), they're going to be looking to buck the trend in seats they already hold by appealing to Labour and Lib Dem supporters to cast an anti-SNP tactical vote.  It may be that not enough people are going to be receptive to that message - and the problem could get a lot worse if the Tory government goes on to become anything like as actively disliked in the north-east and the south as the Major government was in the 1990s.  I'm increasingly optimistic that the SNP can win back at least some seats from the Tories, whenever the election is held.

In SNP-Labour battleground seats, it's obviously a very different story, because most Tory supporters are for the moment obsessed enough with the constitution to think Labour are preferable to the SNP.  But for how much longer will that be the case?  Richard Leonard's elevation to leader could prove to be something of a watershed for unionist tactical voting, because Tory supporters will no longer be able to tell themselves that Scottish Labour is more centrist than the Corbyn-controlled UK party, and thus 'safer' to vote for.

We know that Labour are going to take every opportunity at the next election to peddle the fiction that voters need to abandon the SNP for Labour if they want to see a non-Tory government.  Well, Tory supporters are going to hear that message as well, and some of them may even start to convince themselves that a tactical vote for the SNP could be the most practical way of preventing a Corbyn administration.  At the very least, they may become more conflicted about whether the SNP or Corbyn is the greater and more immediate threat, which could lead them to simply revert to a non-tactical vote for their own first-choice party.

*  *  *

After the SNP's 'curate's egg' performance in by-elections this week, I was hoping that the two new Scottish subsamples from YouGov would offer some clues as to what the state of play really is, but in fact they've just muddied the waters even further, because they're completely contradictory.

YouGov (a): Labour 36%, SNP 33%, Conservatives 22%, Liberal Democrats 5%, Greens 3%, BNP 1%, UKIP 1%

YouGov (b): SNP 38%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrats 7%, UKIP 2%, Greens 1%

So we have the first YouGov subsample since the summer to put Labour in the lead...and then the first YouGov subsample since the general election to put Labour as low as third.  Across all polling firms, twenty-two of the last twenty-four subsamples have shown an SNP lead - but the two that didn't have both been published within the last week.  Make of that what you will.

SNP vote surges in Perth by-election - but it's a tougher night in Rutherglen

It's already clear from gossip on Twitter that Labour have won the Rutherglen by-election.  That's a disappointing result for the SNP, who comfortably won the popular vote in the ward back in May, so clearly there has been a significant swing to Labour.  It's the third time over recent months that the SNP's performance in a west-central Scotland by-election has fallen well short of what the opinion polls would lead us to expect.  The obvious means of explaining that away would be to point to dismally low turnout - although it's not immediately clear why that would favour Labour so much (in contrast to the Tories, whose supporters are well known for flocking to the polls in low turnout contests).

All we know about the Perth South by-election so far comes from Pete Wishart, who says it's a two-horse race, with the SNP as one of the two horses.  My guess would be some sort of Tory victory, but we'll see.

UPDATE: I'll double-check the figures when I get a chance, but this appears to be the result from Rutherglen -

Labour 38.5% (+7.5) 
SNP 27.4% (-12.0)
Liberal Democrats 18.2% (+8.9)
Conservatives 12.1% (-4.2)
Greens 2.9% (-1.1)
UKIP 0.9% (n/a)

If true, there's no way of putting a positive gloss on that - it represents almost a 10% swing to Labour since May, and if extrapolated across the country would point to a clear Labour lead.  That obviously seems highly unlikely based on opinion poll evidence, so perhaps Labour are doing much better in some geographical pockets than in others, or perhaps they were simply better organised than the SNP in a low turnout by-election.  (Only about one-quarter of eligible voters took part.)

The only good thing is that the media, with their customary cluelessness about the quirks of STV by-elections, will report this in one-dimensional fashion as a Labour hold - which technically is what it is, but that doesn't tell the real story of Labour overtaking the SNP in the ward.

UPDATE II: As I suspected, the Tories have won Perth City South.  However, this one is much better news, because the SNP actually 'won' the by-election on first preference votes - an improvement from their second place in the ward in May.  The Tories only took the seat after the lower preferences of eliminated unionist candidates were redistributed.

The full result doesn't appear to be available online yet. Ruth Davidson seems to be suggesting that the Tories took 31% of the first preference vote - which would mean that the SNP must have done at least as well as that, pointing to an increase in the SNP vote of 5% (or more) since May.  A highly creditable result by any standards.

In the case of Perth, the media's cluelessness about STV by-elections will not work in the SNP's favour.  The result will be reported as a "Conservative hold", but the real story is the SNP jumping from second place to first (on first preference votes, that is), the Tories jumping from third place to second, and the Lib Dems slumping from first place to third. 

UPDATE III: According to Pete Wishart, this is the full result on first preferences -

SNP 32.1% (+6.4)
Conservatives 31.2% (+6.0)
Liberal Democrats 28.8% (-5.9)
Labour 5.7% (-0.7)
Greens 1.8% (-1.3)

Leaving aside the annoying fact that there's going to be a Tory rather than an SNP councillor, this is a cracking result for the SNP - it really is.  It looks like both the SNP and the Tories have been flattered by the drop in Lib Dem support (presumably caused by a popular Lib Dem councillor not being on the ballot paper this time), but even allowing for that, there has been a slight swing from Tory to SNP - which is not really what you'd expect given the greater tendency of Tory supporters to make it to the polls in local by-elections.  It's not a disastrous result for Ruth Davidson, and she'll obviously spin the 'victory' for all she's worth, but privately she must be less than thrilled with yet another second place finish in Perth.

There's also a reality check for Labour here - they may have done extremely well in Rutherglen, but it could be that they're being squeezed in traditional SNP-Tory battlegrounds.

Blow for the Tories in Fortissat and Cardonald by-elections

As I suspected might happen, Labour have won both of today's local by-elections - although as is often the case with STV by-elections, the results require a fair bit of interpretation, and classifications like "Labour hold" or "Labour gain" are not really adequate.

Cardonald by-election result :

Labour 48.6% (+10.1)
SNP 36.7% (-7.5)
Conservatives 10.3% (-1.7)
Greens 2.7% (+0.2)
Liberal Democrats 1.5% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarians 0.2% (n/a)

This is technically a "Labour hold", but it's arguably the worse of the two results for the SNP because they won the popular vote in the ward in May, and have since suffered a swing of 8.8% - enough to put Labour ahead if repeated nationwide.

Fortissat by-election result :

Labour 38.5% (+2.0)
A Better Britain - Unionist 23.3% (+12.2)
SNP 20.6% (-8.4)
Conservatives 11.5% (-1.8)
Independent - Cefferty 5.0% (-5.1)
Greens 0.7% (n/a)
UKIP 0.5% (n/a)

This is officially a "Labour gain from the Conservatives", even though Labour comfortably won the popular vote in May with the SNP in second place. The drop in the SNP's vote is slightly steeper than in Cardonald, but probably more important is the fact that the swing to Labour is more modest at only 5.2%, which would actually leave the SNP narrowly ahead if repeated across the country.

The average swing in the two by-elections is roughly 7%, implying an extremely tight race between SNP and Labour nationally - which has been very much the message of recent polling subsamples. Juteman told us the other day that a full-scale Scottish poll from Panelbase appeared to be in the field, which if true would be the first poll of its type from any firm since the general election. If I was a betting man, I would guess that it will show a very small SNP lead, but on tonight's figures it's obviously impossible to rule out a small Labour lead. I'd be very, very surprised if Labour have powered miles ahead, though - there's no evidence at all to support that notion.

Even though the Labour gain from Tory in Fortissat is a bit of a technicality, it's reasonable to say that both results are mildly disappointing for the Tories - their vote is down in both wards in spite of Tory voters being traditionally more likely to make it to the polling stations in low turnout local by-elections. It could be a sign that Peak Tory was reached in May and June, and that there's been some modest slippage since then.

I haven't been able to find details of lower preference transfers in Fortissat yet, but what happened in Cardonald was pretty incredible (if not surprising) - 253 Tory voters transferred to Labour, and only 35 to the SNP.  It really does appear that Tory voters hate the idea of their own country governing itself to such an extent that they'd rather vote for a party led by the far-left.  Who in the 1970s or 80s would ever have thought we'd reach this point?

Oddly, although the Scottish Libertarians are a pro-independence party, not a single one of their twelve voters transferred to the SNP.  Four went to the Greens, two to the Tories, two to the Lib Dems, one to Labour, and three votes were non-transferable.

Two key by-elections today

You may not be aware of this, but today (Thursday) marks the biggest electoral test in Scotland since the general election on June 8th, with two crucial local government by-elections taking place in the west of the central belt.  The Fortissat by-election in North Lanarkshire could almost have been devised as an illustration of just how barmy the world of STV by-elections is - the Tories are defending a seat in a ward where Labour won the popular vote, and yet if the SNP don't gain the seat, they will lose their hard-won position as the outright largest party on the council.  Doesn't sound entirely fair, does it?!  Meanwhile, in the Cardonald by-election, Labour are defending a seat in a ward where the SNP narrowly won the popular vote, meaning on the face of it that the SNP have a golden opportunity to increase their representation on Glasgow City Council from 39 seats to 40, edging them closer to the 43 required for an absolute majority.

The only other real-life election we've seen in Scotland since June 8th was the Elgin City North by-election in mid-July, which resulted in a moral triumph for the SNP - they didn't quite win the seat, but there was a negligible swing from SNP to Tory, implying (if that ward is typical) that things hadn't got any worse for the SNP since the general election in places where the Tories are their main opponents.  But the limited polling evidence of late has suggested that the main problem for the SNP is no longer the Tories, but Labour.  So today's two contests in SNP-Labour battleground areas may tell us quite a bit.  Given that Labour won the popular vote in Fortissat in May, I'd suggest they're quite strong favourites to gain that seat because there appears to have been a nationwide swing towards them over the intervening months.  It's a different story in Cardonald where the SNP start with a bit of a cushion, but even there Labour probably ought to be regarded as slight favourites.  If you want to do something about that, here is a public service announcement I spotted on Twitter -

SNP by-election fundraiser

Just thought I'd give a quick plug to a particularly important SNP campaign fundraiser.  There's a local government by-election taking place in early September in the Cardonald ward - and it's one of those STV paradoxes where Labour are defending the seat even though the SNP won the popular vote in the ward in May.  In theory it's a golden opportunity for the SNP to increase its representation on Glasgow City Council from 39 seats to 40, inching slightly closer to the magic number of 43 required for an absolute majority.  Unfortunately, however, the SNP only won the ward by a roughly 43% to 38% margin in May, and there's almost certainly been a swing to Labour since then (even if there's ongoing uncertainty over exactly how big that swing has been).  Labour probably ought to be regarded as the slight favourites for this contest, so the SNP's campaign on the ground will be all-important.

A relatively modest £1000 is being sought for the campaign - if you'd like to contribute, the fundraiser page can be found HERE.

There's also a by-election coming up in North Lanarkshire, which if anything is even more important, because it will decide whether the SNP remain the single largest party on the council.  If anyone spots a crowdfunder for that one, let me know and I'll post the details.

Colonel says "Phew"! Huge scare for Ruth as SNP run Tories close in Elgin by-election

It always looked fairly predictable that the Tories would win yesterday's Elgin North by-election.  They had won the popular vote in the ward in May, their tails were up after winning the Moray parliamentary constituency in June, the local SNP were presumably a tad demoralised, and of course we know from long and bitter experience that Tory supporters are more likely to make it to the polling stations in low turnout local by-elections than supporters of other parties.  Given all of those disadvantages, it's really quite striking just how close the SNP came to pulling it off...

Elgin City North by-election result (first preference votes) :

Conservatives 40.0% (+7.1)
SNP 38.8% (+6.1)
Labour 15.8% (+3.9)
Independent - Monaghan 5.4% (n/a)

We shouldn't get carried away by the increase in the SNP's vote, because like the other parties they benefited from the much reduced vote share for independent candidates.  Nevertheless, the closeness of the result gives us a fair bit of reassurance that things have not worsened for the SNP since the general election in areas where the Tories are their main opponents.  (For what it's worth, there's also no sign of any Tory bandwagon effect in the Scottish subsamples of opinion polls.)  It remains to be seen what is happening in the SNP-Labour battleground areas.

One of the fascinations of local elections conducted under STV is seeing how Labour voters transfer when faced with a choice between SNP and Tory.  The answer in this case was pretty evenly : Conservatives 91, SNP 90.  If the SNP suffer significantly from unionist tactical voting in the next general election, it's unlikely to be in Tory-SNP marginals.  I have my doubts as to whether it will happen very much even in Labour target seats, because Tory voters will surely feel increasingly conflicted about helping a left-wing Labour leadership into power.