Question about the local election voting system: "Should I rank all (or most) of the candidates?" Answer: YES, especially if you want to stop the Tories

In the wake of my April Fool (which alarmingly about 10-20% of people took seriously, even though I thought I had made it self-evidently absurd), I was planning to write a genuine guide to how the Single Transferable Vote system for the local council election works.  That's been slightly overtaken by the insanity of certain leaflets that have been dropping through people's doors recently, but there is one specific question that several people have asked me and that I feel I should respond to. In a nutshell, it's...

"I know I should rank all of the pro-independence candidates in my ward, but should I rank all (or most) of the other candidates as well?"

The answer is yes, and I'll explain why.  Suppose I lived in a ward which returns three councillors.  Suppose also that the SNP were putting up two candidates (a typical number in a three-seat ward where the SNP are strong), Labour were putting up one, Alba one, the Greens one, the Tories one, the Liberal Democrats one, and there was also one inoffensive independent candidate with no apparent stance on the constitutional question.  I would probably rank the candidates as follows -

1) Alba

2) SNP

3) SNP 

4) Green

5) Inoffensive Independent

6) Liberal Democrats

7) Labour

8) Conservatives

Most of those decisions are no-brainers.  I have the SNP ahead of the Greens because, at least on paper, independence is the SNP's number one objective, whereas for the Greens it's a somewhat lower priority.  The inoffensive independent is ranked below all of the pro-independence candidates, but ahead of all the unionist candidates, on the logic that a non-unionist is usually preferable to a unionist.  The Tories are ranked last because they're obviously the most objectionable party in all sorts of ways, and more specifically because it's important to reject their "muscular unionism" as emphatically as possible.  The only real dilemma is whether to have Labour ahead of the Lib Dems or vice versa, but I've given the Lib Dems the nod on the theory that Labour poses the greatest medium-term threat to the hegemony of pro-independence parties in Scottish politics.  It's worth giving Labour a ranking to help bury the Tories, but I'm inclined to think every other party apart from the Tories should be ranked ahead of Labour.

So why isn't ranking the pro-indy candidates enough to properly reject the Tories? Well, it might be, but only if you strike it lucky.  In my hypothetical example above, let's imagine that Alba are eliminated early on - which means that my vote will transfer to whichever SNP candidate I ranked highest. Then let's imagine that the two SNP candidates reach the quota and are duly elected.  That means there is one remaining seat to be filled, and it can only be filled by a non-SNP and non-Alba candidate.  Any surplus votes from the two SNP candidates (ie. the number of votes they exceeded the quota by) will be transferred to other candidates and will help to determine the winner of the final seat.  The upshot is that a portion of my vote will be transferred - but only if I gave a ranking to one of the candidates still in contention.  So if I only ranked pro-indy candidates, I'm banking everything on the Greens doing well enough to have a chance of the final seat.  If the Greens are eliminated, I've effectively abstained on the question of who I want to be the third and final councillor from the ward.

Maybe I'll be fortunate and the final count will come down to a straight fight between the Greens and the Tories.  A portion of my vote will transfer to the Greens, and I'll have done everything I conceivably could to freeze the Tories out.  But really it's up to other voters to decide whether the Greens are in with a shout.  If instead the final count is a straight fight between Labour and Tory, a portion of my vote will only transfer if I gave a ranking to Labour - and if I haven't done that, I've sat on my hands and thus could effectively have helped the Tories win the last seat. 

This is what is so bonkers about the leaflet and letter the SNP have just sent out.  There's no joined-up thinking at all.  The content of the letter makes clear that the priority of the SNP's campaign is not independence, but instead to "send a message to the Tories".  And yet it then goes on to recommend an electoral strategy (only ranking the SNP candidates and abstaining on all other rankings) that is tailor-made to help Tory candidates get elected.  That is not an exaggeration at all.  The SNP have huge influence over where the lower preferences of pro-independence voters go - either they'll help elect pro-indy councillors and non-Tory councillors, or they'll go nowhere and be wasted.  At present, the SNP are urging the latter.  If you think you can make any sense of that whatsoever, you're...well, you're probably drunk.

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

STV for dummies

So no, this is not a reference to Scottish Television dumbing down even further, it's about the other STV, the Single Transferable Vote system which will be used to elect our local councillors in just over a month from now. Several people have asked me if I'll be writing another "idiot's guide" as I did in 2017, because STV has a reputation for being far more fiendishly complicated than just about any other electoral system.  However, that does it a disservice.  The real complexity is actually at the counting end of the system - as a voter, it should be relatively simple to use.  So here's my step-by-step guide to using STV, all the way from deciding your voting choices in advance of polling day, through to how to actually cast your ballot in the polling station.

1) STV is a preferential system, which allows you to rank as many of the candidates as you wish in order of preference - and if you want to maximise the impact of your vote, it's vital to rank as many of them as you can bear to (the "vote till you boak" principle).  That being the case, it's far more important than in other types of election to know how many candidates are standing in your ward, who they are, and what party - if any - they're standing for.  So find the name of your ward (which can often be the toughest part of the process!) and search online for the full list of candidates.

2) Look carefully to see whether each candidate is a Red Code or a Blue Code candidate.  Blue Code candidates are relatively rare these days, but it's important to identify them because the quotient that applies to them is different.

3) If a candidate is Blue Code, they are required by Electoral Commission rules to incorporate a QR code into their election literature.  So when they send you a leaflet, scan the code and it will take you to a website setting out the quotient.  Alternatively, you can search for it manually.

4) On polling day, take your polling card to a polling station and hand it to staff - either that or just tell them your name and address.  (Thankfully, the Tories don't control this election and there will be no ID requirement.) 

5) The staff will then give you a ballot slip.  It will be colour coded if there are both Red Code and Blue Code candidates in your ward.  If there are only Red Code candidates, it will be white.

6) Take your ballot paper to a booth, and start by applying the quotient to all Red Code candidates.

7) If there are Blue Code Candidates, apply the Blue Code quotient separately.  The colour coding should assist you here, but to ensure your preferences for Blue Code candidates are correctly counted, you must ensure that each quotient is applied accurately.

8) Indicate your insistence.

9) Fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.

10) Leave the polling station.

11) As an extra precaution to ensure that no mistakes have been made, re-scan the QR code, and if the quotient has been correctly applied, you should be taken to a page displaying a green "W" and a magenta "7".  

12) Excise the coupon.

And that's it, you're done. 

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.

As Ruth Davidson would say, "Well done, Clacks!" - SNP storm past Labour to win bellwether by-election

In the aftermath of the 2017 general election, there was a string of local by-elections in former Labour heartland areas in which the SNP suffered swings to Labour that were significantly in excess of anything the national opinion polls would have led us to expect.  The obvious concern was that there were regional trends going on beneath the radar that could create a nasty shock at the next general election, especially given that there are so many ultra-marginal SNP-Labour marginal seats.  Yesterday's Clackmannanshire Central by-election was exactly the sort of contest where you might have expected to see that trend show up again, because it took place in a part of the central belt where Labour had once been completely dominant.  But this time the opposite happened - there was a hefty swing against Labour, and the SNP came from second place to win the seat.  (Technically it was an SNP hold, but that's just a quirk of the STV voting system - Labour won the popular vote in the ward in 2017.)

Clackmannanshire Central by-election result (28th March 2019):

SNP 40.9% (+2.6)
Labour 31.9% (-8.0)
Conservatives 19.8% (+3.2)
UKIP 3.3% (n/a)
Greens 2.5% (-2.6)
Liberal Democrats 1.7% (n/a)

That's a swing of 5.3% from Labour to SNP, which if extrapolated to the whole country for "just a bit of fun" would see Scottish Labour once again reduced to just one seat at Westminster (Ian Murray in Edinburgh South).  Which adds to the building impression that the storm clouds have now passed for the SNP in the former Labour heartlands - perhaps partly because of the impact of the Independent Group split, but mostly because of the sheer clarity of the SNP's message on Brexit, which a hopelessly divided Labour can't hope to compete with at the moment.

As ever, not too much should be read into the increase in the Tory vote, because the Tories are traditionally better than other parties at getting their supporters to the polls in local by-elections.

By the way, I hope you'll appreciate my restraint, because I very, very nearly titled this blogpost 'SNP crack it in Clacks as Leonard's lousy Labour languish limply'.

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It's often said that a No Deal exit "can't happen" because the House of Commons wouldn't ever allow it to.  I don't agree with that - for as long as No Deal remains the default outcome in both domestic and EU law, it has to be taken seriously as a real possibility.  Nevertheless, the indicative votes on Wednesday night did once again prove that there is a massive natural majority in the Commons against No Deal, which was voted down by 400 votes to 160.  But probably equally important, and certainly far more astonishing, is the fact that Tory MPs voted in favour of the catastrophe of a No Deal exit in just two weeks from now by an overwhelming majority of 157 to 94.  That helpfully illustrates why no Tory government can deliver a soft Brexit regardless of parliament's wishes - it would split the party apart, probably quite literally.  Brexiteer ringleader Steve Baker has already been openly threatening to resign the Tory whip.  And maybe we're also seeing cause for scepticism that the Tories would do as well in a snap general election as the polls currently suggest - they've basically turned into UKIP, and there's a reason why UKIP have never won a general election.

In other circumstances we'd be shocked to learn that one Scottish Tory MP voted for No Deal, and that four others abstained on the subject.  But compared to their colleagues south of the border, that makes them look like a relatively Remainy bunch - perhaps because they simply have to be for reasons of self-preservation in a very Remain country.  And one of the four abstentions wasn't meaningful anyway, because as a Cabinet minister David Mundell was instructed to abstain on every vote.  (20 Cabinet abstentions also put the relative closeness of the vote on a second referendum into perspective.)

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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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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Jeremy Corbyn is now jointly responsible for the destruction of the devolution settlement

I've been trying to make sense of what happened in the House of Lords on Wednesday without putting myself through the torture of reading every single word of the debate in Hansard.  Having done a skim-read, it looks like the story of the session was of government amendments on the power-grab being passed on the nod, while non-government amendments that would have made the Bill more reconcilable with the devolution settlement were withdrawn without even being put to a vote.  That probably happened partly because no-one outside the SNP (who aren't represented in the Lords) is truly passionate about protecting devolution, and also because the UK government fobbed off the proposers of the amendments with the vague possibility that changes might still be made at Third Reading after further negotiations.  I'm not an expert on parliamentary procedure, but a Google search reveals that amendments can indeed be made at Third Reading in the Lords, although in practice any such changes tend not to be substantive.

Here's the thing: at the start of the week, Richard Leonard made clear that the 'deal' on offer wasn't good enough and that the UK government would have to compromise further.  So why on earth did Labour roll over in the Lords just two days later and effectively remove the last remaining obstacle (other than the Supreme Court) to the government imposing the existing 'deal' without Holyrood's consent?  Labour and the Liberal Democrats between them outnumber the Tories in the Lords, so if the will had been there to defeat the government and strengthen Nicola Sturgeon's negotiating hand, that's probably what would have happened.  Unless you truly believe that some heroic stand is suddenly going to be made at Third Reading, it's clear enough that the Labour leadership has put a directive out that the power-grab is to be enabled, not resisted.  That means in the worst-case scenario, if the Continuity Bill is struck down by judges, Jeremy Corbyn will be the co-author along with Theresa May of a substantial reduction in the Scottish Parliament's powers.  He shouldn't be allowed to conceal his responsibility for the decision he's made. 

The House of Lords is also collectively culpable as an institution.  We hear so much about how the Lords is "an anachronism that works" and how it functions counterintuitively as a guarantor of democracy.  But that all depends on the strict adherence to conventions, without which the unwritten constitution would start to fall apart.  Over the decades, the Salisbury Convention (requiring that the Lords must allow any manifesto commitment of the elected government to pass) has been more or less religiously followed.  Why, then, are the Lords allowing a coach and horses to be driven through the equally important Sewel Convention, without which the devolution settlement is rendered a sham?  If you're conceited enough to think you're an unelected custodian of the constitution, you can't arbitrarily pick and choose which parts of the constitution you think are worth the bother of upholding.  Or if you do, you should expect unsettling consequences to flow.

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From what I've written above you can see that I hold no brief for Labour, but my eyes still rolled to the heavens a number of times overnight at Laura Kuenssberg's transparent attempts to get a "disaster for Labour in the local elections" narrative to take root.  John McDonnell made a fairly unanswerable point at the start of the results programme - he reminded everyone that Labour took just 27% of the vote in the local elections last May, but then 40% in the general election only one month later, which should have been utterly impossible if the conventional wisdom was to be believed.  But that reality-check didn't deter Ms Kuenssberg from breathlessly telling us throughout the night that Labour's performance was falling well short of what is supposedly "needed" to put the party on course for a general election victory.  Question: if a 27% showing in May 2017 didn't preclude Labour from coming very close to victory in June 2017, why on earth would a mid-30s showing in May 2018 prevent Labour from winning an election that might still be two, three or four years away?

The reality is that the Corbyn surge at the general election was dependent on demographic groups that are less likely to turn out in local elections.  The polarisation of public opinion on Brexit is perhaps also undermining the usual phenomenon of casual protest voting for opposition parties in mid-term elections.  It's no longer the case that you can automatically say "Labour need to be twelve points ahead now if they want to win the general election by four."  It may actually be that people voted yesterday in a very similar way to how they would have voted if they were electing a government.

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%.

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.

Lib Dem blogger Mike Smithson hits new low as he poses in letter as 'impartial expert' to interfere in the East Dunbartonshire election

As long-term readers of this blog know, nothing ever surprises me about the antics of the Bedfordshire-based Liberal Democrat blogger Mike Smithson, but this latest incident takes the biscuit.  Clearly with his full blessing, the Lib Dems have sent out a letter from Smithson, featuring his signature and photo, to voters in the East Dunbartonshire constituency.  The letter is presented as if it's just a piece of helpful information from an impartial expert, rather than the party political propaganda that it actually is.  (Indeed, recipients of the letter would be forgiven for genuinely believing that it comes from Smithson's Political Betting blog, aka Stormfront Lite, rather than from the Lib Dems.)

(Click image to enlarge.)

Voters are informed that, for Smithson, politics is a "serious business", and that making the right calls based on hard data is how he makes his living. They are then told that his "work" on the East Dunbartonshire data leads him to conclude that the constituency is going to be a straight fight between the SNP and the Lib Dems, that the Conservatives will be far behind, and that if Tory and Labour voters want to stop the SNP they should vote Lib Dem.  He's not in any way trying to actually influence people's votes (perish the thought!) but he just thinks the "information" will be useful to them as they make their own choices.

All of this raises a number of important questions -

1) Wouldn't a voter receiving this letter be interested to know that Smithson, whatever his claimed expertise, is not in any sense impartial but rather a long-standing member of the Liberal Democrat party, a former Liberal Democrat county councillor, and a former Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate?

2) Why has a self-styled expert in electoral data chosen to discount the results of the local elections only a few weeks ago, when the Conservatives outpolled the Liberal Democrats in East Dunbartonshire to finish second in the popular vote behind the SNP?  How can any serious analyst look at that result and claim virtual certainty that the Conservatives are out of the running in the constituency?

3) Would potential Scottish Liberal Democrat voters not be interested to know that this man, who is using deceptive means to influence their voting choice, loathed Charles Kennedy and made several cruel and highly personal comments about one of Scotland's most liked and respected political leaders?

4) Wouldn't voters be interested to know about the track record of this 'expert' and his previous predictions in individual constituencies?  Wouldn't they be somewhat bemused if, for example, they were to learn that Smithson branded Alex Salmond as yesterday's man in the run-up to the 2015 general election, and claimed the former First Minister didn't have a hope in hell of defeating the mighty Lib Dems in the Gordon constituency?  (Salmond actually defeated the Lib Dems by a whopping margin of 8687 votes.)

5) Why is Smithson interfering in a Scottish election, and specifically offering 'advice' with the purported aim of preventing a pro-independence candidate from being elected, when he has publicly claimed in the past to be a supporter of Scottish independence?

6) Doesn't the deliberate deception that this letter represents constitute a breach of electoral regulations?

7) If Smithson takes politics so "seriously", why has he for the last few years employed a Deputy Editor on his blog who is a known fantasist (he invented two dreadful family tragedies to avoid settling a bet for several months), and who routinely uses deeply embarrassing and puerile language in his articles for the site?  Witness this effort on Saturday : "Winning general elections, it is said, are a lot like orgies, you’re never quite sure who to thank afterwards."

8) What hope has Smithson got of passing off the analysis on his own site as non-partisan and trustworthy in future, now that he's used that site's name and reputation (such as it is) to lend credibility to a deliberate deception on behalf of his own political party? 

Boost for SNP as post-locals YouGov subsample fails to find a Scottish Tory surge

As we've discussed many times, Scottish subsamples from GB-wide polls are of only very limited use, but I always think that one time it's worth keeping a beady eye on them is immediately after a potentially 'disruptive' event, because they'll often be the first warning sign that public opinion has changed.  From that point of view, it's an enormous relief (particularly in the light of yesterday's Panelbase numbers) to find that the first YouGov subsample conducted since the local election outcome was fully digested shows an entirely familiar picture : SNP 46%, Conservatives 26%.  If anything, that's a little better for the SNP than most recent subsamples.

The potential error in an individual subsample is so enormous that this doesn't rule out the possibility of a post-locals Tory surge.  But the fact that we've got such a typical result does at least make it somewhat less likely that there's been a transformative shift.

Subsample average puts SNP on 45%

You may have heard a rumour today that Panelbase's latest Scottish subsample puts the Conservatives in the lead, but that's not actually true.  On the headline figures excluding Don't Knows, the SNP and the Tories are tied at 42% apiece. That's sobering enough, but to put things in perspective, a Survation telephone subsample yesterday put the SNP ahead of the Tories by more than 30 points.  Even if they were properly weighted (which they're not), individual subsamples have such a huge margin of error that both of those results are perfectly consistent with what we've seen in the full-scale Scottish polls during this campaign, ie. an SNP lead over the Tories of between 11% and 15%.  The slight cause for concern, though, is that Panelbase's fieldwork finished much later, and there's a theoretical possibility that it was picking up genuine momentum for the Scottish Tories brought about by the reporting (or misreporting) of the local elections.  All we can do is wait and see.  The next straw in the wind will be a YouGov subsample released in the morning.  In the meantime, here is what an average of subsamples over the last seven days looks like...

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

SNP 45.0% (+2.2)
Conservatives 31.5% (+2.2)
Labour 15.8% (-0.7)
Liberal Democrats 4.8% (-2.2)

(The Poll of Polls for Westminster voting intentions uses the Scottish subsamples from all GB-wide polls that have been conducted entirely within the last seven days and for which datasets have been provided, and also all full-scale Scottish polls that have been conducted at least partly within the last seven days. Full-scale polls are given ten times the weighting of subsamples.)

Popular vote totals revealed : the over-hyped Scottish Tories took just a QUARTER of the vote

So, three days later than we might have hoped, we finally have the popular vote figures for the Scottish local elections.  Both of the predictions I made a few hours ago were slightly off - the Tories were in the mid-20s rather than the low-20s, and the SNP's vote was unchanged since 2012 rather than slightly up.  (Although of course the latter point also means that John Rentoul has egg on his face after telling anyone who would listen on Saturday that it was an established fact that the SNP's vote share had fallen.)

Scottish local election results :

SNP 32.3% (n/c)
Conservatives 25.3% (+12.0)
Labour 20.2% (-11.2)
Liberal Democrats 6.8% (+0.2)
Greens 4.1% (+1.8)

It should be noted that the comparison with 2012 isn't totally exact because this time a handful of councillors were elected unopposed.  So strictly speaking this wasn't a completely nationwide election, although the difference that makes is only trivial.

Both the SNP and the Tories underperformed in comparison to their recent showing in opinion polls, but the divergence is much greater in the case of the SNP.  That could mean the polls have been overstating the SNP all along, but personally I think this result has got 'differential turnout' written all over it.  The Tories, and to a lesser extent Labour and the Lib Dems, worked their supporters up to fever-pitch over the issue of an independence referendum, while the SNP remained in a different universe fighting a very traditional, 'worthy' local election campaign that was never likely to excite their core support in the same way.  It appears as a result unionist voters were significantly more likely than pro-independence voters to make the trek to the polls - which is a problem that can be successfully addressed over the coming weeks.

That's not to say there's no danger at all of this result recurring in June.  The SNP had an in-built disadvantage last week (albeit one that was partly of their own making), but it goes without saying that they also face an in-built disadvantage in any Westminster election because of the skew towards media coverage of the London parties.  They are fortunate in the sense that Labour aren't regarded as a credible government-in-waiting, so on this occasion the SNP are less likely than usual to be crowded out by a binary Tory v Labour choice.  Nevertheless, the challenges ahead are considerable, and another safety-first campaign may not be a great idea.

One interesting aspect of the result is that both the SNP and Labour ended up with a proportion of seats that slightly exceeded their vote share, while for the Tories the reverse was true.  That may have just happened by complete chance because of the way votes were distributed, but it also may be that the Tories remain a toxic party and are significantly less likely than others to pick up lower preferences.  I'm sure someone will trawl through the results to shed some light on that question.

The untold story of this contest is Labour's relative resilience - they've done somewhat better than their consistent sub-20 showings in recent opinion polls, and ran the SNP closer than expected in several councils.  Aside from differential turnout, I'm wondering if that may simply be because of their historic strength in local government, and the large number of familiar names they were able to put on the ballot paper.  Even after everything that's happened over the last few years, the act of voting Labour is still a bit like slipping on an old coat for some people.

Take a bow, SNP voters of Irvine Valley - you voted till you boaked, and stopped the Tories

I know that some people are looking for reassurance that the "vote till you boak" message didn't go totally unheeded on Thursday.  So allow me to present to you Exhibit A - the Irvine Valley ward in East Ayrshire, which has become famous for its new 'Rubbish Party' councillor, but which should really be better known for its shrewd use of lower preferences to prevent a Tory from being elected.  This was the result on first preferences -

SNP 1128
Conservatives 920
Rubbish 784
Labour 775
SNP 551
Others 468

You wouldn't have been terribly optimistic about the chances of stopping the candidate in second place from being elected in a three-seat ward, but that's exactly what happened.  The decisive moment was the elimination of the less popular SNP candidate after five counts.  With the top-placed SNP candidate having already reached the quota and been declared elected, there were now only three candidates left in contention for the two remaining seats, and so whoever found themselves in third place on the sixth count was going to draw the short straw.  The Tory looked safe-ish, with a lead of 75 votes over the Rubbish Party, and 84 over Labour.  But then 112 of the votes from the eliminated SNP candidate transferred to Labour, 147 transferred to the Rubbish Party, and only 25 went to the Tory.  That meant the Tory was brutally leapfrogged by the other two candidates simultaneously - but only just.

Sixth count (votes rounded to nearest whole number) :

Rubbish 1036
Labour 992
Conservatives 989

Councillors elected : 1 SNP, 1 Rubbish, 1 Labour

So the equation here was really simple and stark - if all SNP voters had only ranked the two SNP candidates, they would have ended up with a Tory councillor.  But because a significant number of them used their lower preferences, they got a Labour councillor instead.  Maybe not something to dance in the streets about, but I think most of us would regard a Labour councillor as the lesser of two evils in the current circumstances.  The flip-side of the coin, though, is that the majority of SNP voters did not use enough of their lower preferences, which made the Labour-Tory battle for the final seat much closer (3 votes!) than it needed to be.

*  *  *

We still don't have the nationwide popular vote totals, but a lot of the gaps have been filled over the last 24 hours.  In most councils that I've been able to find figures for, the SNP vote share was up.  That's been offset by sharp declines in a limited number of SNP/Tory battleground areas (such as Moray and Angus), but given that those are not the most populous councils, I'm struggling to see how the national SNP vote share isn't going to be up at least slightly.  I may end up eating my words, but that's how it looks at the moment.

I'm more confident in saying that the Tories' vote is only going to be in the low 20s.  The increase in their vote in some councils looks reasonably impressive until you recall that it's being measured from a pathetic 13% national vote at the last local elections in 2012.  When the exact percentage figure is finally revealed, there are going to be some red faces among the media organisations who indulged in wishful thinking over a Tory performance that in reality is almost certainly well short of the high 20s/low 30s recorded in recent opinion polls.