SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.
I'm sure that occasionally happens in afleitch's better dreams...
loltiredness
It was appreciated!
Hillhead was a 13.65% turnout; woeful. About a third of the electorate are students so there is alot of 'churn'. SNP doing well to top the poll here. Transfers are interesting. I've been trying to work out, using the recent by-elections in Scotland as a guide to work out what will happen with the inevitable Lib Dem collapse in an STV system.
In Glasgow in 2007 the Greens won 5 seats (on par with the Lib Dems) and the Tories just 1 as the Tories were transfer repellant. Indeed in Pollockshields, the Tories only won by 4 votes on the last count pipping the Greens.
Tranfers from the Lib Dems in te by election were 115 (38.2% to the Greens, 57 (18.9%) to the Conservatives, 49 (16.3%) to the SNP and 42 (14%) to Labour with 38 exhausted
In 2007 the Tories, right the way through to count 7 when they were eliminated only picked up 62 votes. Picking up 69 votes from transfers until elimination in this low turnout by-election is actually not bad; theres much more movement here from the Lib Dems to the Tories than there was in 2007. However, the Greens are in a very good position here, not only to win seats but also unfortunately, to knock the Tories out in Pollockshields (though they would be in a stronger position to win in Newlands/Auldburn as Labour's second candidate performed so poorly)
Of course the SNP undernominated in Glasgow which led to some curious results due to huge surplusses of SNP votes not having a second SNP candidate to go to. They won't be doing that this time round and a fight to the finish with Labour could end up freezing nearly all the other parties out almost exclusively in the 3 seaters.