The SNP will likely lead Edinburgh City Council for a further five years, with a coalition deal with the Greens a possible outcome, a pollster has forecast.
Allan Faulds, who runs the election monitoring and polling site Ballot Box Scotland, spoke to the Local Democracy Reporting Service ahead of next week's local elections to discuss what could happen in Edinburgh.
He said Labour's position to reject another coalition with the SNP or any deal with the Conservatives, combined with projected gains for the Greens as seen at last year's Holyrood election, means a SNP/Green administration in the next term is a 'distinct possibility'.
READ MORE: Edinburgh Council Election 2022: Who can I vote for
He added that without support from Labour the Tories are unlikely to lead the new council, but said it's expected whichever groups strike a deal will result in a minority coalition requiring "issue-by-issue support" from opposition parties, as has been the case in the capital since 2017.
"The main thing to watch for is in 2017 the Conservatives narrowly won the most votes but the SNP narrowly won the most seats and what I keep saying is I'm expecting that to snap to one party, so it will be one party winning both the most votes and the most seats and I think that will be the SNP," Mr Faulds said.
"Last year at Holyrood, although the Conservatives increased the list vote nationally, in Edinburgh they lost five per cent. It went from 25 per cent to 20 per cent which is a really big setback for them so that when they lost the constituency in Edinburgh Central, if they hadn't won that in 2016 they would have just made that up in the list and they'd still have had four Lothian MSPs, but they lost so much support that they effectively lost an MSP in Lothian, so I'm expecting to see that replicated next week in the council elections."
He said Labour are "best placed" to benefit from any loss of seats for the Conservatives, in what could be a partial resurgence for the party after losing eight seats across Edinburgh in 2017.
The Scottish election aficionado analyses results and political trends across the map but said seeing what happens in Edinburgh will be "really interesting".
He added: "In line with capitals across Europe and across the world, it's highly politically diverse. It's a lot more fractured than even, for example, Glasgow so it's really worth following from that sense. It's definitely one that was key last year at Holyrood and it will be equally fascinating to watch this time around."
On a coalition being formed, Mr Faulds said he thinks it will be "really tough" for those left negotiating. He added: "The SNP/Labour coalition wasn't a majority coalition and they still needed to seek support from the Greens, Lib Dems, the Conservatives were less keen to pal up through the term."
Whilst both SNP and Labour group leaders in Edinburgh have looked back at the last term's arrangement as a success, the partnership looks unlikely to continue to 2028 after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called for "no formal coalitions" with the SNP or Conservatives - although any final decision falls to the party's Scottish Executive Committee.
"If that position on Labour's part holds it's hard to see what happens," Mr Faulds explained. "It's very hard to see how anyone other than the SNP ends up leading the council because I don't imagine Labour backing the Conservatives and I don't imagine the Conservatives backing Labour in the context of Edinburgh.
"I wonder if one possibility might be a partial replication of what's happened at national level where the Greens — who can probably expect to have another better election and grow their number of councillors — cross the Government line at a local level as well and perhaps formally enter into an agreement, whether that then becomes the minority administration that's seeking issue-by-issue support from Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives.
"I wouldn't say that's the expected outcome but it is a distinctly possible outcome now."
He predicted the Greens will "probably get 10 councillors" in Edinburgh, two more than in 2017, with the SNP also gaining "one or two", which, if correctly predicted would still leave them short of the 32 seats needed for a majority, meaning support from at least one of the other parties would be needed.
He added: "The Greens, although they've crossed a Rubicon at national level, there could still be a bit of a reluctance to take that step of being responsible for Government rather than being able to be a comfortable opposition party. But perhaps if Labour aren't keen to continue the coalition with the SNP it might be one of the only options available."
At the last council election voter turnout in Edinburgh was 50.5 per cent, slightly above the national average of 46.9 per cent. However, due to an increase in postal votes, Mr Faulds thinks this year could see a slightly higher turnout.
He said: "Holyrood last year had the highest Scottish Parliament turnout, I'm wondering perhaps if the same might be true for the council elections. Not necessarily because there's a mass upsurge in interest but just because so many more people have signed up for postal votes as a result of the pandemic.
"Those people are still signed up for those, they'll still be getting them out and we know that postal voters are more likely to return their ballot. It might not be a huge increase but I think we could maybe see another one or two per cent added to the turnout figures which could make a difference, because higher turnouts tend to benefit parties that have low turnout voters because that means that more of those voters are turning out."
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