UK local by-elections 2015

[afleitch]

12 UKIP to SNP transfers. Lovely.

Well, 12 votes is more than 25% of your vote, so I would stay quiet if I were you. To be fair to you, that wasn't a good area at all for you and an e-sports journalist (!) might be a very poor fit for Fife.

It's only eight years since the Lib Dems came nine votes short of winning a seat in this ward.

Well, it was in 3BC (before Coalition). Things changed since then.

And 2007 itself was generally seen as a 'bad' year for the Liberal Democrats at both Holyrood and local government elections.

[afleitch]

This Thursday is a Glasgow spectacular: Anderston/City, Calton, Craigton and Langside all have by-elections.

[afleitch]

Heavier swings in areas like Calton and Craigton where Labour are strongest. Langside and Anderston/City even without the Greens were trending SNP before hand. Similar pattern to May.

[afleitch]

I've posted this elsewhere;

I’ve been looking at the total number of votes cast in local authority by-elections in Scotland since ‘the event.’ Here are the figures

SNP 48.8
LAB 24.2
CON 11.7
LIB 5.2
GRN 5.0

The results in those same wards in 2012 was as follows:

SNP 34.9
LAB 38.3
CON 9.3
LIB 4.7
GRN 4.6

Bearing in mind that the SNP topped the poll (just) in 2012, then the wards being fought are slightly more ‘Labour’ than the national average.

The change in vote across those seats was therefore;

SNP +13.9
LAB -14.1
CON +2.5
LIB 0.5
GRN +0.4

Remember, this is a change on 2012, If this change happened across all seats in Scotland then you’d get the following result (using proportional rather than UNS)

SNP 45.2
LAB 19.8
CON 16.9
LIB 7.3
GRN 2.5

So while on raw totals, the Labour and SNP position looks comparable to the General election, in fact adjusting for the neck and neck 2012 results suggests that Labour are doing worse (and the Conservatives significantly better) than they did in the GE. Given that Labour have posted pooer results in Holyrood/Local Elections for many years than they do at the GE, this is to be expected.

There have also been four by-elections each in Aberdeen and Glasgow, so we can look at some regional variance too;

Aberdeen

SNP +16.8
LAB -14.6
CON +6
LIB -0.8
GRN +1.2

Glasgow

SNP +19.6
LAB -19.9
CON +1.9
LIB -0.8
GRN +2.4