TWO leading pollsters have said that Scottish Labour’s three Glasgow by-election victories are not an indication that Anas Sarwar is on course to be First Minister.
In fact, Professor John Curtice branded the results "poor" for Labour and said that vote tallies showed the party's support had dropped.
The party held three seats in Glasgow following a series of by-elections on Thursday in the Drumchapel/Anniesland, Maryhill, and North East wards.
Mary McNab (North East), Davena Ranking (Drumchapel/Anniesland) and Keiran O’Neill Marie Garrity (Maryhill) were all elected.
Glasgow Labour's group leader had hailed the victories as a sign that people "need a change in Glasgow".
Maryhill (Glasgow) by-election, first preferences: Labour: 999 (35.9%, +1.9)SNP: 814 (29.2%, -12.9) Reform UK: 353 (12.7%, new) Green: 338 (12.1%, -0.2) Alba: 118 (4.2%, new)Conservative: 89 (3.2%, -5) Lib Dem: 75 (2.7%, +0.3) Labour elected stage 7. pic.twitter.com/W26UvC9zun
— Ballot Box Scotland (@BallotBoxScot) November 22, 2024
Turnout at all three elections was low, with the highest being 19.3% in Maryhill. Drumchapel/Anniesland and North East saw turnouts of 15.3% and 12.4% respectively.
In terms of first preference votes, Labour’s vote share fell by around 10% in the North East ward and by 3.8% in Drumchapel and Anniesland when compared with May 2022 – the last time elections were held in these wards.
It increased in Maryhill, but only by 1.9%, according to figures from Ballot Box Scotland.
Speaking to The National, polling expert Professor John Curtice (below) said: “These are poor results for Labour. They might have won but their vote is down.
“With the SNP at around 45%, 46% in May 2022 and given at the moment they’re still running at around the 30% they got at the General Election, an average drop of between 11 and 12 points is ‘so what’.
“It’s slightly better than you might expect, but a Labour drop, on a baseline in Scotland when they were at 24/25 points, the evidence of the opinion polls that support for Labour in Scotland has fallen away since the General Election is actually clearly confirmed by these by-election results.”
This week, polling from Survation for the pro-independence think tank Progress Scotland showed Labour had fallen further behind the SNP in the latest Holyrood polling.
At the beginning of November, we told how polling from Norstat showed Labour’s support in Scotland plunged following the Budget.
“Labour might have won but these by-elections do not suggest Anas Sarwar is on course to become the next first minister, it’s the very opposite,” Curtice added.
When asked if he felt the same, pollster Mark Diffley told The National: “I absolutely agree. Labour won but in a sense they’ll be concerned by the extent to which the vote has dropped.”
The party picked up around 35% of the vote in Maryhill, but below that figure in Drumchapel/Anniesland and the North East.
Reform’s rise
For Diffley, the real story of the by-elections was that it confirmed Reform are on the rise in Scotland, having previously told the Sunday National he expected the party to do well in these local elections even if they didn’t win seats.
“What [these by-elections] show is support for Labour has gone down since the General Election and Reform is going to be a force to be reckoned with," Diffley said.
Across the three by-elections, Reform UK picked up more than 1000 first preference votes, polling between 13 and 18% in each and finishing third overall.
Specifically, they picked up 18.3% of first preference votes in the North East ward, 12.8% in Drumchapel and Anniesland and 12.7% in Maryhill.
“It confirms their strength ahead of 2026,” Diffley said.
“They seem to be, from what I can see about it on social media anyway, really pleased with the result and I’m not surprised about that.
“We’ve seen the Reform vote going up and the likelihood is that they’re going to get significant representation at Holyrood next year.”
However, Diffley did also point out that the turnout was very low at the by-elections, even if council elections are lower more generally.
Green activist Niall Christie, who told last week’s Sunday National every party needed to work “extremely hard” to offer an alternative to Reform, reacted to the results on Twitter/X.
He said: “In Glasgow yesterday, we saw Reform take hold. We’ll be seeing far-right MSPs and cllrs in Glasgow before long.
“It’s now clear, with the Green vote being the only one holding or increasing, it’s time to organise on the left with one voice.
“They cannot continue to grow.”
