John Curtice: Now for a council thriller

WE MIGHT be thought to have had more than our fair share of electoral excitement during the past two years. In 2010, a UK general election witnessed a Liberal Democrat surge in the polls, no clear winner on polling day and Westminster’s first post-war coalition. Then in last year’s Scottish election there was a dramatic last minute rise in SNP support that, despite the use of proportional representation, did produce a clear winner and so set the country on course for an independence referendum.

So you might imagine that this year Scotland’s voters will enjoy a rest, leaving their politicians to get on with the job they have now been elected to do. Not a bit of it. On 3 May everyone goes to the polls again, this time to fill the 1,222 seats on the country’s 32 local councils.

Thanks to last year’s drama, these local polls will be of far more than parochial interest. The SNP will be keen to strengthen their grip on the body politic in Scotland and maximise their position ahead of the independence referendum. Their opponents, in contrast, will be seeking to show that, having shaken off the debris of last year’s debacle and equipped themselves with shiny new leaders, they are back on the road to recovery.

Meanwhile, many a commentator will be wondering what the eventual result portends for the future of the Union.

Not only will voters have to go to the polls again in May, but they will have to cope with a relatively unfamiliar electoral system – the single transferable vote (STV). Rather than just vote for whichever candidate they like best, voters will be invited to place them in order of preference. Each ward will elect not one councillor, but three or four, using a complex system of counting that produces a a roughly proportional result.

One of the key gains secured by the Lib Dems from the 1999-2007 coalition, this system was used instead of first-past-the-post for the first time in 2007 – alongside a Holyrood vote that witnessed an unusually large number of spoilt votes. Although the new local voting system does not seem to have been responsible for the fiasco, Holyrood decided to “decouple” the two sets of elections so there was no danger that voters could be confused by being asked to vote in two very different ways on the same day. It is that decision that ensures voters go to the polls again this May.

The SNP did relatively well in the 2007 local elections. Not only did they secure an increase in their vote, albeit one that was much more modest than the ten-point or so increase they enjoyed in the parallel Holyrood battle, but they were the principal beneficiaries of the switch to the more proportional STV system.

Although narrowly outpolled by Labour in the Scotland-wide, first-preference popular vote, the Nationalists emerged as the largest single party in Scottish local government too, albeit without securing majority control of any councils.

So the SNP have plenty to defend in May. Consequently, Labour might be thought to be in with a chance of regaining some lost ground, perhaps adding at least one or two councils, such as Midlothian and West Dunbartonshire, to the tally of just two, Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, in which it retained overall control in 2007. Yet, of course, last year the SNP made another giant leap forward at Holyrood. As a result, the question now being asked is not what Labour might gain, but rather could the SNP come to dominate local government?

The omens are limited, but promising. Since last May, only three polls have taken the nation’s party political pulse and one of those interviewed only 500, rather than the usual 1,000+ people. But between them, these polls put the SNP’s Holyrood support at between 49 per cent and 51 per cent – even higher than the 45 per cent the party won in the ballot boxes last year. Labour, meanwhile, has languished at between 26 per cent and 29 per cent in the polls, somewhat lower than their tally last May.

But there has also been evidence of further SNP advance in recent local by-elections. Individually, the outcome of these is affected by particular local considerations, but where there is a consistent pattern of success or failure for a party, they can give us a good guide to the direction in which the wind is generally blowing.

In the 11 such contests held since the SNP secured a majority last May, the Nationalists have enjoyed on average an eight- to nine-point increase in support (as compared with 2007), not far short of what the party achieved at Holyrood last year.

However, these local contests have been a little more encouraging for Labour than the polls. On average, the party has actually enjoyed a four-point increase in support since 2007. Some of its best results might have been inflated by the absence second time around of previously popular local independent candidates, but even so Labour’s support has certainly not been anything less than steady.

The big losers in local by-elections – as at Holyrood last year and in the handful of opinion polls taken since – have been the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, the near nine-point average drop in their support even somewhat understates the scale of the loss that has typically been befalling the party. Leaving aside a single atypical success in one Inverness contest, the drop in Liberal Democrat support has averaged 11 points. With Conservative support also holding steady, it would seem Willie Rennie’s party is at serious risk of once again being run over by Alex Salmond’s Nationalist bandwagon.

Nowhere do the Liberal Democrats look at greater risk than in Edinburgh, where, as the senior coalition partner, they also have the albatross of the trams fiasco hanging around their neck. But the party’s continued ability to play a key role in the coalition administrations in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Fife must also be considered doubtful.

But even, if unlike the Liberal Democrats, Labour do manage more or less to stand still, the Nationalists could still make key gains. If they can match their current poll and by-election performances, securing majority control of Angus, Dundee and Perth might well be within their grasp, despite the use of proportional representation.

However, the big prize on which the Nationalists have set their sights is Glasgow. Nothing did more to symbolise the new political order heralded last May than the fact the party even outpolled Labour in its Clydeside heartland. Nothing would do more to affirm the Nationalists’ grip on Scottish politics than for them to topple Labour from its accustomed position of power in the city’s ornate council chambers.

In truth, the SNP would have to do spectacularly well to win overall control of Glasgow – the party would need to add as many as 18 seats to the total of 22 it won in 2007. But nearly every one of the 21 wards contains one seat that might conceivably be gained by the SNP, such that winning the dozen or so seats needed to emerge ahead of Labour and thus occupy pole position in the quest to form a new coalition or minority administration could well be a realistic target.

Still, this time last year few thought the SNP could win a majority at Holyrood. So, with four months still to go, it would be unwise for Mr Salmond to start counting his local chickens yet. Nevertheless, the new Labour leader, Johann Lamont, clearly has hit the ground running to ensure her party avoids another election disaster.

• John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University.