Thursday 31 March 2011

Scotland Votes: Highlands and Islands Part 2: The Highlands

This post looks at the mainland Highlands seats in the Highlands and Islands region. The Island seats can be found here. The regional list seats can be found here.

Constituency

MSP

Notional Majority

Swing Required

First Elected

B-V.co.uk

Argyll and Bute

Jim Mather

807

1.5%

2007

SNP Lean

Caithness, Sutherland and Ross

Jamie Stone

2550

4.3%

1999

Too Close

Inverness and Nairn

Fergus Ewing

4995

6.8%

1999

SNP Safe

Moray

Richard Lochhead

7286

13.0%

2006

SNP Safe

Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch

John Munro

2784

5.2%

1999

Too Close

Argyll and Bute is a key battleground seat – the Lib Dem’s number 1 target in Scotland and one of their best chances for a rare gain. They hold the equivalent Westminster seat and held this seat until 2007 when Jim Mather took it on an impressive 9.2% swing. Mather had already been a prominent list MSP, however, as a member of the SNP Shadow Cabinet. The SNP candidate for the seat is Mike Russell, a regional MSP for South Scotland and the Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Executive. He was first elected as a MSP in 1999, lost his seat in 2003, and then regained it in 2007. In his first term he served as Shadow Education Minister and received awards such as ‘Scottish Politician of the Year’ and ‘Debater of the Year’. He has, however, been involved in a couple of scandals. One of his aides was forced to quit after it was found he was using his blog to smear rivals in 2009 though, in fairness, Russell has never been shown to hold definite knowledge of this. Additionally, this year Russell has been accused of using his position as Education Secretary to influence school closures in this seat for his own electoral benefit. His other great weakness is that, as far as I can tell, he has little to no actual connection to the seat. That will provide a contrast with Lib Dem candidate Alison Hay who has been a councillor in this seat since 1992 and who has lived here since 1983. She was also leader of the council between 1999 and 2001. She is on the board of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and the Spokesperson for the Environment for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The Lib Dems are focusing on her local links and knowledge in the election.

Also notably the Conservatives are running perennial candidate Jamie McGrigor, a list MSP for Scotland and the Highlands since 1999 and Tory Shadow Minister for the Environment who lives in the seat. He would require a swing of more than 7.6% to win, which is possible but I’m afraid rather unlikely considering the local dynamics so he is not much of a threat to the main two in my opinion, but with the coalition at Westminster there may be an opportunity for the Lib Dems to attract some tactical voters and dig into this fairly sizeable minority. Additionally Labour got 14.4% of the vote last time round and may drag votes off either the SNP or Lib Dem, though their candidate, Mick Rice, lived in Birmingham until recently and so strikes me as being a bit weak.

Almost all polling shows the SNP gaining votes and the Lib Dems losing them however, so purely on uniform national swing the SNP should increase their majority. It will require an excellent local campaign for the Lib Dems to take this seat back. That said, they have some decent firepower at their disposal and the Lib Dems have always been good at targeting seats like these, nothing is impossible, but I think, for now, the seat is best called as a SNP lean.

Caithness, Sutherland and Ross MSP Jamie Stone is standing down after holding this seat, the most Northerly mainland Parliament seat, since the Parliament’s creation in 1999. The Lib Dems are running Robbie Rowantree, a local councillor. The SNP’s candidate is Rob Gibson, a regional MSP for the Highlands and Islands region, and a former head of the SNP’s student wing. The SNP are intensely targeting the seat. It would be a huge embarrassment and worry to the Lib Dems to lose this seat, however, as the broadly equivalent Westminster seat has been held by the party since 1983 and is held by John Thurso, one of the party’s best known backbenchers. On a uniform national swing on every opinion poll the party would lose this seat and the party generally has more trouble holding open seats, but the long Lib Dem history in the seat, the strong local presence and the fact that, if they have any sense, the party will be deploying local heavyweights John Thurso and Charles Kennedy in the seat makes me shy away from calling this as a SNP lean. I really think this one is too close to call.

Inverness and Nairn MSP Fergus Ewing is the son of legendary SNP MP, MEP and MSP Winnie Ewing. In days gone past the Lib Dems would have stood a solid chance here but Ewing has held the seat since 1999, now, is Minister for Community Safety and polls are well in the SNP’s favour. Lib Dem candidate Christine Jardine, a journalist and broadcaster, will have trouble holding onto second place against Labour’s Dave Stewart, a Highlands and Islands MSP, in my opinion. Should be safe for the SNP.

The SNP’s Richard Lochhead first won Moray in a by-election in 2006. The Moray Westminster seat has been held by the SNP since 1987. Lochhead is the Rural Affairs and Environment Secretary in the Scottish Government and should hold his seat easily against 25 year old Scottish Conservative Douglas Ross, a local councillor and assistant to Highlands and Islands List MSP Mary Scanlon. While Ross is clearly an up and coming politician in the making, securing the 13% swing necessary to unseat Lochhead would be a big ask at the best of times. The seat is safe for the SNP.

The Highland Lib Dems must be holding their heads in their hands. The party is generally much better at holding seats when they have an incumbent to rally around, but in both their Highland seats their MSPs are standing down. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but with polls as they are the local party must be more than a little bit concerned. To be fair to Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch’s John Munro, he is the oldest MSP in the Parliament, so it’s about time he hung his order papers up, but it’s still not good news for the party. The Lib Dems are standing Alan MacRae, a Skye born businessman, to run for the seat. He was selected back in 2008, so he’s had plenty of time to work the constituency and get his name out. The SNP have re-selected Dave Thomson who was their candidate here in 2003 and 2007. Notably the seat overlaps with the Westminster seat of Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the seat of Charles Kennedy and with Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, seat of Danny Alexander. No doubt both will be deployed in the defence of this seat. That said, the uniform national swing would have Thomson take this seat. Uniform national swing is one thing, however, a single seat is another. I think this one is too close to call.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Scotland Votes: Highlands and Islands Part 1: The Islands

This post looks at the Islands seats of the Highlands and Islands region. The Highlands seats can be found here. The list seats can be seen here.


The Highlands and Islands are a slightly oddball region. In such a rural, Northerly place, London is remote enough, but even Edinburgh can seem pretty distant. The British state doesn’t penetrate far here and local politics and identities can be more important. The Highlands and Islands councils are all controlled by independents, with the exception of the Highlands Council, which is governed by a coalition of independents and the SNP. As a result the Lib Dems have always been strong here and this area was once one of the last bastions of Liberalism before the Liberal Party started its slow climb back to relevancy. The region has been home to Liberal heavyweights like Jo Grimond, Charles Kennedy and Danny Alexander. That said, in Scottish Parliamentary elections the region has tended to demonstrate much less support for the party in general, in line with the general trend in Scottish Parliamentary elections towards a multi-party system. In particular, the SNP do well in the region, and in fact, factoring in regional seats, the SNP is the largest party in the region.

We’re going to kick off our Scottish election coverage with a look at the three island constituencies in this region. The islands are particularly independent and have strong local identities and cultures, Shetland and Orkney do not even necessarily consider themselves to be Scottish.

Constituency

MSP

Notional Majority

Swing Required

First Elected

B-V.co.uk

Na h-Eileanan An Iar

Alasdair Allan

687

2.6%

2007

Too close

Orkney

Liam McArthur

2467

14.4%

14.4%

2007

LD Safe

Shetland

Tavish Scott

4909

25.1%

1999

LD Safe

Na h-Eileanan An Iar is usually known in English as the Western Isles or the Outer Hebrides, and, as you may suspect, lie to the West of the Scottish mainland. Like all three Scottish island seats Na h-Eileanan An Iar has a strong local identity, though it is ‘more Scottish’ than Orkney or Shetland. The islands were the strongest Scottish Gaelic speaking region in Scotland in the 2001 census, with 59.3% of residents speaking the language. The area is also unusually Christian, with the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland (the ‘Wee Frees’) particularly strong here. Unusually for the region the seat tends to swing between SNP and Labour.

All that may slightly explain the incumbent MSP, the SNP’s Alasdair Allan, who holds a PhD in Scots Language, and is former Gaelic language journalist. He has also previously worked as a senior media relations officer for the Church of Scotland. A google search for him throws up a rather caustic blog which purports to be written by Allan. It’s hard to know who writes this blog, but it criticises him for such things as not living in the constituency, being too closely aligned to his party, and not doing enough to help the local community. It’s difficult to tell how widely read it is on the islands, but the hit counter puts the hits at almost 18,000, which in a constituency of less than 27,000 people may mean a decent readership on the islands, though it’s impossible to be sure.

On a uniform swing recent polling would show this seat as extremely close, some with the SNP winning and some with Labour winning, on paper it is Labour’s 10th highest target. Labour’s candidate is Donald Crichton, an area manager for the Scottish Health Council in the Highlands and Islands region who previously contested Charles Kennedy’s Ross, Skye and Inverness West constituency for Labour in the 2001 Westminster election, finishing second, but losing 11.8% of the vote in the process. To be fair Kennedy had just become Lib Dem leader and party leaders always experience a good result, indeed all four major parties lost significant numbers of votes. To me, this one looks too close to call.

Orkney is a bit more straightforward. At Westminster, Orkney and Shetland is the safest Lib Dem seat in Britain, by far, and it’s been held by Lib Dems, and previously Liberals since 1950. Indeed, since 1830 Shetland and Orkney has had only two MPs who did not come from the Liberal tradition. That said, Orkney is the less solid of the Orkney and Shetland constituencies, and times are not good to be a Lib Dem. Incumbent MSP Liam McArthur grew up in the constituency and was then the researcher of the seat’s MP, Jim Wallace. Wallace became Scottish Lib Dem leader and then Deputy First Minister in the first Scottish Executive and MacArthur was appointed as a Special Adviser to him, taking over his seat when Wallace became a Lord. What opposition to McArthur there is, is highly fragmented with the SNP just 0.06% ahead of the Conservatives and Labour only five points behind that. The SNP have selected Donna Heddle, lecturer in Nordic Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands, whereas the Conservatives have selected Jamie Halcro-Johnson, who quit the Edinburgh North and Leith seat, where he’d been selected, to stand here as a favour to his party after they couldn’t find anybody to stand. Suffice to say Heddle looks like the stronger candidate to me. Nonetheless, while I would not be surprised to see a strong swing against McArthur I would be absolutely shocked to see his 28.6% majority overturned. A Lib Dem safe seat me thinks.

If Orkney was safe then Shetland is safe as safe can be. Shetland is the seat of Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott who got 66.7% of the vote in 2007. As the leader of his party with such a whopping great majority I really cannot see anyone but Scott winning. For what it’s worth the SNP have nominated Jean Urquhart, a councillor on the Highlands Council. In a seat like this if you want to challenge then you need a local candidate, and I doubt she’ll perform impressively. Safe as houses.

Scottish Parliament Election coverage starts tonight!

Tonight our first look at the Scottish constituencies will go up. It's a little later than initially planned so expect a flurry of activity on that front for the next few weeks! The election is just five weeks tomorrow and opinion polling is suggesting the race to become First Minister is very tight, and almost certainly won't be resolved on the night.

We will be following the same format as the Welsh 'Look @s' with two posts on each region's constituencies to be followed by a discussion on the potential list permeations. To complicate matters, Scotland elects seven 'top-up' MSPs compared to just four in Wales and candidates are permitted to run in a constituency as well as on the regional list. In light of this we'll try to make the regional posts as easy to follow as possible…!

So look out for the Islands' constituencies which, will be posted in around an hour.

A Look at North Wales (Part III)

This post looks at the list seats in the region. You can find the Anglesey, Conwy and the north Gwynedd seats here and the Vale of Clwyd, Flintshire and Wrexham seats here.

The 2007 Regional List Result was as follows:

Party

Const. Seats

Region Votes

Region Votes %

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

5

51831

26.4%

0

5

Plaid Cymru

3

50558

25.75%

1

4

Conservatives

1

50266

25.6%

2

3

Lib. Dems.

0

15275

7.8%

1

1

  

  

  

  

  

  

BNP

5.1%

Christian Party

0.7%

UKIP

4.1%

Communist Party

0.4%

Green

2.8%

Christian Peoples

0.3%

SLP

1.1%

  

  

  

Additional Members

1. Brynle Williams

3. Eleanor Burnham

2. Mark Isherwood

4. Janet Ryder

Most Likely Result

There are fewer competitive seats in this region compared to Mid & West Wales which should make calculating potential list seats a lot easier. Of course, things that should happen sometimes don't! Realistically, given the current polling position Labour are likely to hold every seat they won in 2007. Clearly Wrexham is going to be an interesting contest but I don't think John Marek as a Conservative will be able to cobble together a coalition of voters big enough to beat a sitting Labour AM in a Labour year.

The really competitive marginals in this region are discussed in this post. Plaid Cymru's leader Ieuan Wyn Jones faces a strong challenge in Ynys Mons from the Conservatives but in general party heads don't lose their seats. Clwyd West is CON/LAB marginal and Labour would take this seat on Uniform Swing. Finally, Aberconwy is a bit of a lottery with the potential to be a tight three way contest.

The latter two I've classed as Too Close but Clwyd West could tentatively be placed in the Labour column on polling evidence. Aberconwy could go any which way but as Plaid's current AM isn't standing and the Conservatives were second in 2007 then the Tories should be slight favourites. So, IF Labour take Clwyd West and the Tories gain Aberconwy then, using Uniform Swing from the January YouGov poll, the regional seats would be allocated as follows:

Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

6

37

0

6

Plaid Cymru

2

26

2

4

Conservatives

1

25

2

3

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

Under this scenario the Liberal Democrat AM Eleanor Burnham in North Wales would lose her seat to Plaid Cymru. To be honest, in every realistic scenario Burnham loses her seat as she was beaten by Aled Roberts in the selection to be the party's lead list candidate. Roberts is currently the leader of Wrexham Council and, to be quite frank, is likely to remain so after this May's Assembly election. This is because the Lib Dems are hovering around 4-5% in the North Wales list vote which is below the effective quota to win a regional seat.

In the above result the Conservatives take the first seat which would return Mark Isherwood to the Assembly for a third term. Isherwood was the Tories #2 candidate at the 2007 election but he edged out Brynle Williams to top his party's list this time around. The second seat would head to Plaid Cymru whose sole list AM Janet Ryder is standing down. They have selected Llyr Huws Gruffydd, who stood in Clywd West at last year's General Election, as their lead candidate. The third seat would go to the Tories and so their other current AM Brynle Williams would return to Cardiff Bay.

The final seat would be won by Plaid's #2 candidate Heledd Fychan, who contested Montgomeryshire last May. However, Fychan would only just hold off the third Conservative candidate on these vote shares. There is a fair chance that the Tories could take a higher percentage of the list vote than Plaid and if they do Antoinette Sandbach, who has fought the Delyn constituency in recent elections, will win the fourth seat.

So, what if Plaid hang on to Aberconwy and Labour take Clywd West:


Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

6

37

0

6

Plaid Cymru

3

26

1

4

Conservatives

0

25

3

3

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

Under this scenario Plaid Cymru's victory in Aberconwy seat would then lose them a list seat. The first three top-up seats would be won by the Conservatives so Mark Isherwood, Brynle Williams and Antoinette Sandbach would be elected in that order. The final seat would be filled by Plaid's lead candidate Llyr Huws Gruffydd but his place in the Fourth Assembly is by no means assured. If the Tories get a higher regional vote share than Plaid then they could win all four seats! Ironically, their #4 candidate Janet Howarth tried to become the Tory candidate in Aberconwy
but she lost out to Janet Finch-Saunders. If Finch-Saunders fails to win the constituency seat for her party then Howarth could become an regional AM!

The next scenario is if Labour have an outstanding performance in North Wales and gain both Clywd West and Aberconwy (from third):

Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

7

37

0

7

Plaid Cymru

2

26

1

3

Conservatives

0

25

3

3

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

In this outcome the Conservatives win three seats and Plaid one, with the same familiar faces elected. The order would be Isherwood (CON), Williams (CON), Gruffydd (PC), Sandbach (CON). Even if the Tories beat Plaid in the regional vote the seat allocation would remain the same. The only difference would be that Sandbach would pip Gruffydd to the third berth.

As we have already met all the candidates in contention I'll keep the other three scenarios, where I'll hold the Conservatives beating Labour in Clwyd West as a constant, short and sweet.

If the Tories have a very good night and hold Clwyd West and gain Aberconwy then:

Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

5

37

0

5

Plaid Cymru

2

26

2

4

Conservatives

2

25

2

4

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

The elected AMs would be: Gruffydd (PC), Isherwood (CON), Fychan (PC), Williams (CON). If the Tories beat Plaid in regional vote share then it would go CON, PC, CON, PC.

If the Tories hold Clwyd West and Plaid hold Abercowy:

Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

5

37

0

5

Plaid Cymru

3

26

1

4

Conservatives

1

25

3

4

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

The elected AMs would be: Isherwood (CON), Williams (CON), Gruffydd (PC), Sandbach (CON). If the Tories beat Plaid in regional vote share then Sandbach and Gruffydd would swap.

Finally, if Labour gain Aberconwy and the Tories hold Clywd West:

Party

Const. Seats

U-Swing

Add. Members

Total Members

Labour

6

37

0

6

Plaid Cymru

2

26

2

4

Conservatives

1

25

2

3

Lib. Dems.

0

4

0

0

The elected AMs would be: Isherwood (CON), Gruffydd (PC), Williams (CON), Fychan (PC). If the Tories beat Plaid in regional vote share then the Tories would take an extra seat at Plaid's expenses. The elected AMs would be: Isherwood (CON), Williams (CON), Gryffydd (PC), Sandbach (CON).

So, what have we learned?! The two current Conservative Assembly Members Mark Isherwood and Brynle Williams will almost certainly be heading back to Cardiff Bay. Plaid's lead candidate Llyr Huws Gruffydd is quite likely to win a seat but if Plaid lose out to the Tories in the regional vote share then there is an outside chance he could miss out. This is only really possible if his party win the Aberconwy constituency. Antoinette Sandbach (CON) and Heledd Fychan (PC) will be the most nervous candidates on election night as they are in contention for that fourth and final seat.

As for the other main parties, the Liberal Democrats look set to lose their sole North Wales AM unless their polling improves. Equally, Labour's lead candidate Gwyneth Thomas is unlikely to become an Assembly Member unless her party seriously under-perform in the constituencies or seriously over perform in the list vote.

Finally, there is an outside possibility that UKIP could win a seat in this region as the effective threshold looks likely to be as low as 6.5% of the regional vote. Nathan Gill is their lead candidate and the party seem quite hopeful he could become their first Welsh Assembly Member. They won 4% of the vote in 2007 so they would need to increase their vote by over a third to sneak a seat. Not completely out of the question but they will need to work hard.


 

This post ignores the latest YouGov Wales poll so as to keep consistency throughout the original previews. An initial forecast based on the previews will be up shortly and a revised prediction will follow shortly after that.