Political

SNP loses two seats to Labour as council by-elections resume

After rather a long coronavirus-driven break, council by-elections are starting up again. There were two contests this week, both SNP defences in Scotland. But the SNP didn’t win them:

That pair of SNP defeats mirrors what happened in the last set of by-elections before the latest pause: another SNP loss, that time to the Liberal Democrats.

Those SNP defeats also came in the same week as the latest donations figures from the Electoral Commission, showing surprising weak figures for the SNP.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the SNP received only £2,080 in declarable donations (excluding public funding). This compares with, for example, the Scottish Green Party on £48,786. The Liberal Democrats in total (not just Scotland) received £420,773 in declarable donatinos.

These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections. See my post The danger in celebrating parish and town council wins for your own party for the reasons to avoid straying too often into covering town, parish or community council by-elections.

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2 responses to “SNP loses two seats to Labour as council by-elections resume”

  1. Sorry to disappoint but you should not interpret these results as a blow to the SNP. In Fortissat the SNP added 14% to their vote share while the Labour vote remained the same. It appears as a ‘gain’ for Labour due to the consequence of the original election being by STV but the by-election effectively being by AV. It Norte this – the electoral fact was a swing of 7% from Labour to the SNP.

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