Local Council by-elections 6th/7th March 2024

[andrewteale]

Mar 7, 2024 23:55:19 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Hillhead has been won by the Scottish Green Party.

A come-from-behind win, as Labour narrowly led on the first count:

[cogload]

[certain]

Mar 8, 2024 0:02:48 GMT andrewteale said:

Mar 7, 2024 23:55:19 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Hillhead has been won by the Scottish Green Party.

A come-from-behind win, as Labour narrowly led on the first count:

Actually elected at stage 6, which is the maximum number of stages with seven candidates.

[andrewteale]

Mar 8, 2024 0:02:48 GMT andrewteale said:

Mar 7, 2024 23:55:19 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Hillhead has been won by the Scottish Green Party.

A come-from-behind win, as Labour narrowly led on the first count:

Top 3: Lab 1472 Grn 1372 SNP 1076
Final: Grn 1908 Lab 1721

[Tony Otim]

First by-election win for the Scottish Greens and also first ward in Scotland to have 2 Green councillors.

[YL]

Who do we think was voting for the Independent Green Voice in Hillhead?

(a) People who actually knew what their programme was and liked it?
(b) People voting personally for their candidate?
(c) People who wanted to cast an environmentalist vote but aren't very keen on the Scottish Green Party for whatever reason and thought they were an alternative?
(d) People who actually wanted to vote Green but were confused, "Literal Democrat" or "Conversative" style?

My guess would be mostly (c).

[Tony Otim]

Mar 8, 2024 12:07:42 GMT YL said:

Who do we think was voting for the Independent Green Voice in Hillhead?

(a) People who actually knew what their programme was and liked it?
(b) People voting personally for their candidate?
(c) People who wanted to cast an environmentalist vote but aren't very keen on the Scottish Green Party for whatever reason and thought they were an alternative?
(d) People who actually wanted to vote Green but were confused, "Literal Democrat" or "Conversative" style?

My guess would be mostly (c).

Well, looking at transfers, at point of elimination there were 146 votes, of which:

20 were non-transferrable (a or b probably)
7 went to Con (again a or b)
27 went to Lab (most likely C)
37 went to SNP (most likely d or c)
55 went to Grn (most likely c or d)

Would be my guess

[greenman]

How about Green leaning people who are not strongly nationalist as well, though I was right that Green won on SNP transfers, around 49.8% of SNP first preferences plus secondary transfers as well.

[xenon]

I note that the guy behind the Ballot Box Scotland account seems very angry in his analysis piece that Independent Green Voice was allowed to stand in the first place. I can appreciate that line of thinking after what happened in the 2021 Holyrood election as well as previous fiascos with "Literal Democrats" and so on. However it would be very tricky for the Electoral Commission to retrospectively cancel the registration, and McConnachie was frankly very lucky that the strongest Green ward in the country just happened to be in an area where he has stood before (he saved his deposit in Glasgow Kelvin in 2003, albeit in the absence of an actual Green Party candidate).

I appreciate a lot of what the aforementioned Twitter account does, particularly in assembling box-level statistics for every contest in the 2022 local elections. However I can't be the only person to have noticed that he spends a great deal of time arguing with online trolls who allege that he is a paid agent of the Green Party or the Scottish Government. Obviously that sort of conspiracy is nonsense, but I do sense an element of truth in allegations of probably unconscious bias towards covering contests with a strong Green presence given his membership and previous candidature. Indeed, he has put out his article about the by-election result before the full results are available from Glasgow City Council (as he usually does), and reels off a whole list of excuses as to why the Greens' result is historic despite them losing votes – none of his reasons are necessarily inaccurate, but it's obvious the way his allegiances lie when there is no similar analysis as to why Labour's vote went up by almost 10% or why the SNP's fell by a similar amount. Most of the analysis is still pretty insightful, but there is definitely a sense of partiality that I don't personally notice with articles by e.g. Andrew Teale or Ben Walker (especially given the latter's fairly well-known Labour membership).

[CatholicLeft]

Fascinating to see so many people tweeting that this is a blow to Scottish Labour and Starmer without understanding how the electoral system works. Labour came from 3rd to 1st place and it bodes well for them to regain Glasgow council next time.

[jamie]

Mar 8, 2024 20:00:04 GMT CatholicLeft said:

Fascinating to see so many people tweeting that this is a blow to Scottish Labour and Starmer without understanding how the electoral system works. Labour came from 3rd to 2nd place and it bodes well for them to regain Glasgow council next time.

Obviously a good result for the Greens to gain a seat and a bad result for Labour to lose one. But only a small minority of comments on the BBS tweet seem to acknowledge the large swing to Labour from the Greens/SNP, which outside the extremely niche peculiarities of multi-member wards having by-elections, is a very good result for Labour and a very bad one for the nationalists*

*This is a council by-election so extrapolation is already extremely limited, but if you want to do it then it points in only one direction. 

[greenman]

I agree that it was a very good result for Labour who obtained 164 preferences from other candidates compared to the Greens only winning 88. That said with SNP in third place nearly half their vote went to Green. So while it may be likely that Labour win the largest number of seats in the next Scottish election, among proportional seats if SNP is in third and Green in second, the chances are that the Greens are going to pick up seats at the expense of Conservative, LD and Labour.

[CatholicLeft]

Mar 8, 2024 20:50:09 GMT greenman said:

I agree that it was a very good result for Labour who obtained 164 preferences from other candidates compared to the Greens only winning 88. That said with SNP in third place nearly half their vote went to Green. So while it may be likely that Labour win the largest number of seats in the next Scottish election, among proportional seats if SNP is in third and Green in second, the chances are that the Greens are going to pick up seats at the expense of Conservative, LD and Labour.

So you believe that a result that saw the Greens fall back, in Patrick Harvie's heartland is going to result in gains for the Greens from Labour, to whom there was a big swing? I really cannot see the Scottish Greens gaining anything at the next Scottish Election, they will fall backwards and, as this election result shows, lose votes to Labour and others.

[Tony Otim]

Mar 8, 2024 20:58:24 GMT CatholicLeft said:

Mar 8, 2024 20:50:09 GMT greenman said:

I agree that it was a very good result for Labour who obtained 164 preferences from other candidates compared to the Greens only winning 88. That said with SNP in third place nearly half their vote went to Green. So while it may be likely that Labour win the largest number of seats in the next Scottish election, among proportional seats if SNP is in third and Green in second, the chances are that the Greens are going to pick up seats at the expense of Conservative, LD and Labour.

So you believe that a result that saw the Greens fall back, in Patrick Harvie's heartland is going to result in gains for the Greens from Labour, to whom there was a big swing? I really cannot see the Scottish Greens gaining anything at the next Scottish Election, they will fall backwards and, as this election result shows, lose votes to Labour and others.

Actually I think other recent Scottish by-elections are probably better evidence for your argument than this one, but the point still holds - if the next Scottish election were tomorrow, but alot can possibly change in the next 2 years especially as Labour will almost certainly be over a year into a government at Westminster.

In terms of this election, the fall in vote share was at the lower end of what I expected for us - both because (whatever the polls say) we have clearly fallen back a bit since 2022, but mainly because Martha Wardrop is a very popular councillor and her vote last time around would include a large personal element, so to drop less than 5% and gain the seat is pretty pleasing.

It was of course a strong performance from Labour who are clearly gaining ground and looking good for gaining seats.

That said, despite the swings - a similar result in all out elections for this ward would still produce no change from 2022 with 1 Grn, 1 Lab and 1 SNP.

[greenman]

I am not denying that the Greens have dropped back, but what I see is that if the Greens are ahead of SNP in some seats on a preferential basis at least half their vote will swing to Green. Labour were 14 votes ahead on first preferences and gained 423 during preference distribution, while the Greens gained 624 preferences during distribution. SNP preferences accounted for 58.9% of Labour growth compared to 85.9% for Green.

Thus even if Greens drop back as long as they are ahead of the SNP the preference split from SNP will likely help Greens keep existing seats and possibly gain some, noting in Glasgow both Conservative and LD votes dropped back so Labour had lower secondary preference support from those parties.

[Tony Otim]

Mar 9, 2024 0:14:20 GMT greenman said:

I am not denying that the Greens have dropped back, but what I see is that if the Greens are ahead of SNP in some seats on a preferential basis at least half their vote will swing to Green. Labour were 14 votes ahead on first preferences and gained 423 during preference distribution, while the Greens gained 624 preferences during distribution. SNP preferences accounted for 58.9% of Labour growth compared to 85.9% for Green.

Thus even if Greens drop back as long as they are ahead of the SNP the preference split from SNP will likely help Greens keep existing seats and possibly gain some, noting in Glasgow both Conservative and LD votes dropped back so Labour had lower secondary preference support from those parties.

I think the point is that that preference pattern was the case and possibly even more so when the last elections were, so it is highly unlikely to lead to Green gains and especially not from Labour under current circumstances. There may be the odd situation where the SNP dropping back more than the Greens leads to a Green being elected on SNP transfers instead of an SNP on Green transfers possibly ...

[jamesdoyle]

GWBWI

Lab +56
LDm +53
Grn +40
PC -7
SNP -13
Con -19

[andrewteale]

Mar 8, 2024 19:34:14 GMT xenon said:

I note that the guy behind the Ballot Box Scotland account seems very angry in his analysis piece that Independent Green Voice was allowed to stand in the first place. I can appreciate that line of thinking after what happened in the 2021 Holyrood election as well as previous fiascos with "Literal Democrats" and so on. However it would be very tricky for the Electoral Commission to retrospectively cancel the registration, and McConnachie was frankly very lucky that the strongest Green ward in the country just happened to be in an area where he has stood before (he saved his deposit in Glasgow Kelvin in 2003, albeit in the absence of an actual Green Party candidate).

I appreciate a lot of what the aforementioned Twitter account does, particularly in assembling box-level statistics for every contest in the 2022 local elections. However I can't be the only person to have noticed that he spends a great deal of time arguing with online trolls who allege that he is a paid agent of the Green Party or the Scottish Government. Obviously that sort of conspiracy is nonsense, but I do sense an element of truth in allegations of probably unconscious bias towards covering contests with a strong Green presence given his membership and previous candidature. Indeed, he has put out his article about the by-election result before the full results are available from Glasgow City Council (as he usually does), and reels off a whole list of excuses as to why the Greens' result is historic despite them losing votes – none of his reasons are necessarily inaccurate, but it's obvious the way his allegiances lie when there is no similar analysis as to why Labour's vote went up by almost 10% or why the SNP's fell by a similar amount. Most of the analysis is still pretty insightful, but there is definitely a sense of partiality that I don't personally notice with articles by e.g. Andrew Teale or Ben Walker (especially given the latter's fairly well-known Labour membership).

Reading between the lines, I think that there has been some sort of behind-the-scenes row between McConnachie and Ballot Box Scotland. On that basis I can understand why BBS wouldn't be well-disposed towards him.

Independent Green Voice have been on the party register continuously since 2003 and the Electoral Commission was clearly happy to accept their registration and logo on the basis that they couldn't be confused with anybody else. The Scottish Greens' objections appear to be that IGV's name is not reflective of their ideology, but that's not a consideration within the party registration rules.

The Electoral Commission have retrospectively removed a ballot paper description in the past: the "Remember Lee Rigby" description, which caused widespread offence (and led to heads rolling at the Commission) when Britain First used it in the 2014 European election. I understand that the legal position for removing the description was on the basis that the decision to accept it was defective.

For what it's worth, I get very few Twitter trolls - but BBS has more than five times as many Twitter followers as me, and Britain Elects' following is an order of magnitude higher again!

[Tony Otim]

My impression, and this may be wrong, is that Scottish politics generally attracts more trolls (from both sides) than is the case in England. It really is very tiresome...

[batman]

Mar 9, 2024 8:49:58 GMT andrewteale said:

Mar 8, 2024 19:34:14 GMT xenon said:

I note that the guy behind the Ballot Box Scotland account seems very angry in his analysis piece that Independent Green Voice was allowed to stand in the first place. I can appreciate that line of thinking after what happened in the 2021 Holyrood election as well as previous fiascos with "Literal Democrats" and so on. However it would be very tricky for the Electoral Commission to retrospectively cancel the registration, and McConnachie was frankly very lucky that the strongest Green ward in the country just happened to be in an area where he has stood before (he saved his deposit in Glasgow Kelvin in 2003, albeit in the absence of an actual Green Party candidate).

I appreciate a lot of what the aforementioned Twitter account does, particularly in assembling box-level statistics for every contest in the 2022 local elections. However I can't be the only person to have noticed that he spends a great deal of time arguing with online trolls who allege that he is a paid agent of the Green Party or the Scottish Government. Obviously that sort of conspiracy is nonsense, but I do sense an element of truth in allegations of probably unconscious bias towards covering contests with a strong Green presence given his membership and previous candidature. Indeed, he has put out his article about the by-election result before the full results are available from Glasgow City Council (as he usually does), and reels off a whole list of excuses as to why the Greens' result is historic despite them losing votes – none of his reasons are necessarily inaccurate, but it's obvious the way his allegiances lie when there is no similar analysis as to why Labour's vote went up by almost 10% or why the SNP's fell by a similar amount. Most of the analysis is still pretty insightful, but there is definitely a sense of partiality that I don't personally notice with articles by e.g. Andrew Teale or Ben Walker (especially given the latter's fairly well-known Labour membership).

Reading between the lines, I think that there has been some sort of behind-the-scenes row between McConnachie and Ballot Box Scotland. On that basis I can understand why BBS wouldn't be well-disposed towards him.

Independent Green Voice have been on the party register continuously since 2003 and the Electoral Commission was clearly happy to accept their registration and logo on the basis that they couldn't be confused with anybody else. The Scottish Greens' objections appear to be that IGV's name is not reflective of their ideology, but that's not a consideration within the party registration rules.

The Electoral Commission have retrospectively removed a ballot paper description in the past: the "Remember Lee Rigby" description, which caused widespread offence (and led to heads rolling at the Commission) when Britain First used it in the 2014 European election. I understand that the legal position for removing the description was on the basis that the decision to accept it was defective.

For what it's worth, I get very few Twitter trolls - but BBS has more than five times as many Twitter followers as me, and Britain Elects' following is an order of magnitude higher again!

I think some members of Lee Rigby's family were displeased too IIRC