Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, 9 February

[Peter]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4627952.stm

Hilary Armstrong has moved the writ.

Apparently the Labour front-runner is Catherine Stihler, presently an MEP. The selection meeting takes place Friday night.

The Lib Dems have selected Willie Rennie, a party press officer. The SNP have selected Douglas Chapman. Realistically it doesn't matter who other parties select.

[Peter]

The SSP have thrown in a wildcard: John McAllion, a former Labour MP (Dundee East, 1987 - 2001) and MSP (Dundee East, 1999 - 2003). He was something of a rebel when in the Scottish Parliament and was previously a member of the Socialist Campaign Group in Westminster.

Candidacy declarations close this Thursday. On top of the usual four and the SSP, there will also be UKIP and Green candidates.

[Peter]

Well, at least Rodgers and Hargreaves can have a race to double-digits.

[Peter]

How Catholic is Dunfermline (I know Scotland actually has accurate data on this sort of stuff so...)?

Amazingly the Scottish GRO does not actually disclose this data on their website. They give the following "explaination":

This contains detailed information on religion and ethnic group which is not available on the SCROL website because of the risk that sensitive data of this kind might be perceived as disclosive - even though the measures taken by GROS prevent actual disclosure. If there is a need for detailed information, please contact GROS Customer Services on 0131 314 4254 or email customer@gro-scotland.gsi.gov.uk.

[Peter]

I remember on General election night that the Lib Dems were claiming victory in Birmingham Perry Barr and they missed it by a mile. Pinch of salt I think .......

Yes... I remember that as well... I think my first reaction was unprintable but along the lines of "f***ing racist ****ing Brummie f***ers". Which I took back when it turned out to be untrue...

Reminds me of how a certain poster told me to take Windsor out of the Safe Tory column because the candidate was black .....

[Peter]

The problem is the turnout was pretty high for a by-election, as Matthew Parris mentioned in his column its the third highest turnout for a by-election since 1997 and is only 10% down on the 2005 election.

And there we were all thinking that good turnout would favour Labour. Scrub that theory from now on.

The electoral maths can always present a somewhat murky picture. The Conservative vote drop can reasonably be attributed to tactical voters switching to the Lib Dems - it was no secret that the Tories had no chance in this seat.

The SNP actual vote drop - I don't think so - my feeling is that the % vote gain was a genuine representation of feeling rather than some statistical fluke. It was well advertised that the SNP considered themselves to have an equal chance to the Lib Dems to take this seat, and I don't think much has changed within the SNP since the general election, so not that many voters will have walked out.

With the feeling that their party had some chance, SNP voters were much less likely to go tactical than their Tory counterparts. The drop in the SNP actual vote was most likely caused by people simply not caring about a by-election because it does not have the same significance as a general election and/or being unavailable to vote. Remember this by-election was only called on 19 January - barely 3 weeks before the actual date - if you were due to be away from the seat on that date, it would be difficult to arrange a postal vote at such short notice.

Undoubtedly there were a lot of Labour voters who stayed at home or couldn't vote for one reason or another. There would have been a few Lib Dems similarly situated. All tolled, I would estimate that about 4,000 Labour voters switched, especially when you take into account that there was a slight "other" gain in actual votes.

[Peter]

The (non-partisan) Neill Report of 98/99 recommended the limit and this is all it had to say as far as I can tell:

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The proposals were adopted somewhere in the mammoth Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

Its worth considering that in some of the larger constituencies, such as the Isle of Wight, you can presently spend on the order of £15,000 in a general election campaign. In Dunfermline and West Fife it would have been around £10,500.

Lets also not forget that in any general election, there is not just the 646 local campaigns spending money to whathever limit exists, there is also a national campaign occurring that is regualted by different limits - I think the present figure is £20 million, averaging to around £31,000 per constituency. Looking at it that way, a more accurate way of looking at the "total" limit on spending in Dunfermline and West Fife would have been about £41,000 at the last general election. So, the £70,000 figure isn't as bad as its made to sound and provided the money is spent and declared properly, the limits probably do place a realistic limit on by-election campaign spending.