Labour’s victorious result from the Glasgow North East by-election was declared in the early hours of this morning. Labour defeated the SNP with an impressive 60% of the vote, compared to the SNP’s 20%. However Labour’s delight might be tempered by the lowest voter turnout in a Scottish by-election at just 33%. In the 2007 Glasgow East by-election, the turnout had been 42%. Despite this, Labour’s its newest MP Willie Bain told the BBC that he had celebrated with an Irn Bru. In the 2007 by-election in the neighbouring Glasgow East constituency, the SNP won with 43% of the vote compared to Labour’s 41%.
Given the similar nature of the two seats, Labour will feel it has perhaps reconnected with their traditional support. But there the turnout does rather put the damper on any celebrations.
Could the type of voter that switched to the SNP in the 2007 by-election have just decided to stay at home in 2009? Especially after the negative campaign Labour ran? The number of votes Labour polled in this contest was 12,000, only just more than a thousand more than they polled in 2007 in Glasgow East. So this isn’t a surge in the numbers of Labour votes. Rather it’s about the failure of the SNP to win support. In 2007 they won 11,300 votes in Glasgow East. In this morning’s result though, they won a mere 4000 votes.
The Nationalists will have to figure out what went wrong. They may not have expected to win this contest, but they will have expected to do better than this. Did the Labour campaign tactics attacking their candidate as non-local and anti-Glasgow really hurt them? If so, then future by-elections are likely to see candidates selected on their local credentials rather than any other abilities.
Or was the Labour strategy of campaigning as an opposition party against the SNP Scottish Government effective? If this was the case, then what can the SNP do to better present their case as Scotland’s governing party.
For the Conservatives the result was not too bad. In an area where they are nearly extinct they came third and their candidate Ruth Davidson is widely seen to have ran a good campaign. The BNP came fourth, and actually demanded a recount last night as they were 30 votes away from saving their deposit. The recount confirmed however that they had indeed lost their deposit. The Lib Dems had a truly dreadful night coming just 6th and winning only 474 votes. They may not have put any resources into this contest, but to be defeated by five other parties, come behind the SNP and win a meagre 2.5% of the votes should worry a party that only recently were seen as by-election specialists.
