Lib Dems enjoy shock gain in the Highlands

The Inverness South, Highland by-election confounded all expectations and resulted in a recently very rare Liberal Democrat gain from Labour. Labour's first preference vote was sharply down, which is possibly expected given the cloud under which the former Labour councillor resigned.

Highland Council
IND		LD		SNP		Lab		IMG			IAG			N-A
25	-	21	+1	17	-	6	-1	6		-	4	-		1	-
Inverness South
By-Election Candidate						Votes			Vote %				+/-
Ken Gowans						885			33.9%				+7.0%
Carolyn Caddick (E)						747			28.7%				+5.6%
Katherine MacKenzie						308			11.8%				-5.3%
David Bonsor						290			11.1%				+0.6%
Gale Falconer						157			6.0%				+6.0%
Donald Boyd (ChrP)						126			4.8%				+4.8%
David McGrath (Ind)						94			3.6%				+3.6%

The SNP benefitted from this the most in the first preference vote share, but the transfers from each round soon started closing the gap until the Lib Dems finally took the lead in the final round, winning by just seven votes.

		Stage (Quota = 1304)
Candidate	1stP%	1	2			3			4			5			6
Ken Gowans (SNP)	33.9%	885	18	19%	903	19	15%	922	45	24%	967	38	11%	1005	79	21%	1084	(41.6%)
Carolyn Caddick (LD)	28.7%	747	14	15%	761	16	12%	777	53	28%	830	141	42%	971	120	32%	1091	(41.8%)
Katherine MacKenzie (Lab)	11.8%	308	11	12%	319	8	6%	327	30	16%	357	22	6%	379
David Bonsor (Con)	11.1%	290	10	11%	300	36	28%	336	3	2%	339
Gale Falconer (Grn)	6.0%	157	15	16%	172	17	13%	189
Donald Boyd (ChrP)	4.8%	126	4	4%	130
David McGrath (Ind)	3.6%	94
No-Transfer		-	22	23%	22	34	26%	56	58	31%	114	138	41%	252	180	47%	432	(16.6%)

The Christian Party had a relatively good result by their standard and their vote, along with the Independent candidate's, were the only ones to transfer more in favour to the SNP than the Liberal Democrats. The Greens were eliminated next, also with a fairly good result for them, breaking just slightly in favour of the Liberal Democrats. However, it was the Labour and Conservative transfers that gave the Liberal Democrats their winning advantage.

The result, a genuine surprise, has given a lot of Lib Dem tweeters some hope and satisfaction today, although it remains to be seen if this is a sign of Lib Dem resilience in the Highlands, or just an example of local issues bolstering their support. As this is a three four member ward, there are still only likely to hold one seat here come next May based on the vote share they received here, so they will need to make progress on this scale on a much wider basis to make any progress, which for the moment still looks unlikely.

The other of Thursday night's Scottish by-elections in Oban North & Lorn, Argyle & Bute proved to be by far the most predictable. The SNP considerably increased their share of the first preference votes, although it still took the elimination of all the other candidates for the SNP to finally defeat the Conservatives in the final round, without reaching quota.

Argyll & Bute Council
AoIC		SNP		LD		AF		Con			N-A			A&BICG
13	-	9	-	6	-	3	-	2		-	2	-		1	-
Oban North & Lorn
By-Election Candidate						Votes			Vote %				+/-
Louise Glen-Lee (E)						1081			44.1%				+21.8%
Roy Rutherford						505			20.6%				+12.1%
Gwyneth Neal						438			17.9%				+17.9%
Graham Dale						260			10.6%				-4.0%
George Doyle						165			6.7%				+2.9%

Neal polled strongly and Doyle improved on his 2007 showing, but the overall Independent vote was sharply down, possibly due to a squeeze effect between the SNP and the Conservatives, or just because the reduced number of independent candidates failed to attract the voters who gave their first preferences to independents in 2007. The Lib Dem vote was pretty static compared to the other two parties' gains, and overall it's hard to draw comparisons for next year as it seems like the vote may be more dependent on the availability of Independent candidates than anything else.

		Stage (Quota = 1225)
Candidate	1stP%	1	2			3			4
Louise Glen-Lee (SNP)	44.1%	1081	36	22%	1117	62	23%	1179	195	35%	1374	(56.1%)
Roy Rutherford (Con)	20.6%	505	18	11%	523	68	25%	591	167	30%	758	(31%)
Gwyneth Neal (Ind)	17.9%	438	58	35%	496	65	24%	561
Graham Dale (LD)	10.6%	260	13	8%	273
George Doyle (Ind)	6.7%	165
No-Transfer		-	40	24%	40	78	29%	118	199	35%	317	(12.9%)

 

Kristofer Keane