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%)
Inverness South is 4 member ward
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