Moray By-election (Holyrood)

[Voice from the South West]

Here's the % swings needed for each party to gain Moray (compared with Election 2003)

Conservatives: 9.85%
Labour: 11.54%
Liberal Democrats: 15.02%
Scottish Socialists: 19.09%

Supposing a swing from the SNP to the Tories took place and that was supported by a the defection of leftie SNP’ers and Labourites to the LibDems a Tory win would be a strong possibility.

No doubt I'll be disappointed and see the SNP hang on... but it'd be interesting to see a Tory win, so I hope what Afleitch reports is true, what evidence of the Tory campaign I’ve seen seems pretty solid, so we might see a Tory by-election win which would be very satisfying, especially in Scotland and over the SNP.   

Not that I have a clue what’s going on up there, but the letter fiasco can't have done the Tory campaign any good - what is it with this party and incompetent/poor by-election campaigns, sometimes I think I could run a better campaign than they do - so I'm not terribly optimistic. I've been lead up the garden path too may times by optimistic by-election predictions so I suspect a comfortable SNP hold on a low turn-out.

Your optimism makes me wonder Ben, have you officially converted to the Tories?

[Voice from the South West]

Perhaps my pessimism was slightly misplaced:

http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=589402006

Is this by-election really as bitter as this? All we need now is for someone to accuse the SNP of dirty tricks for accusing the other parties of dirty tricks

[Voice from the South West]

The thing is, its become so "bitter" to the point where its laughable. No wonder why by-election turn out is so low when all this almost comical mud-slinging goes on.

[Voice from the South West]

If we (Tories) come third then that is a thoroughly risible result. Heads should roll for this; I hope the constituency agent/organiser is never hired again.

[Voice from the South West]

If we (Tories) come third then that is a thoroughly risible result. Heads should roll for this; I hope the constituency agent/organiser is never hired again.

If the Tories come third, but with an increased % vote (remember, the Tories were pretty far behind - there are dozens of other seats they wish to target in 2007 before Moray) then it will be an acceptable result.

Well lets wait for the final result, it's been a long day for me (uni work) and will probably be longer still. Will post something more thoughtful tomorrow.

[Voice from the South West]

DECLARATION:

Mr. Richard Neilson Lochhead, SNP    12653   46.14%
Mrs. Mary Scanlon, Con     6268   22.85%
Mrs. Linda June Gorn, LDm     5310   19.36%
Mr. Alexander Keith, Lab     2696    9.83%
Mr. Melville Brown, LocHosp      493    1.79%
Total    27420   45.05%
SNP Majority      6385    23.29%
SNP Hold

SNP UP 3.95
CON UP 0.35
LIB UP 7.19
LAB DOWN 9.28

Well could be better, could be worse. I should not have believed so easily some of those "sources" on PB.com. Usually I don't fall for the over-optimistic Lib Dem crap but after more or less dismissing them over their Dunfermline predictions, and being proved spectacularly wrong, I was more inclined to believe that we could have come third, especially after that ridiculous letter cock-up. Anyway the moral of the story is: don't trust anyone when it comes to predicting by-elections on the basis of what a "source" has been telling them.