General Election 2017: Is Alex Salmond's seat really under threat?

Former First Minister Alex Salmond is no stranger to winning elections – indeed it was once said that Mr Salmond hadn’t lost a vote as an individual since losing out in a bid to become head boy at his former high school.

Since then, the former SNP leader has often defied underdog status to win a number of elections in both UK and Scottish Parliaments.

Gordon, formerly a safe Lib Dem seats, was caught up in an SNP tsunami in 2015 when Mr Salmond won by over 8,000 votes against prominent Lib Dem activist Christine Jardine.

Ruth Davidson arrives to vote in Edinburgh at the local authority elections, which saw her party increase its number of first preference votes and total number of councillors. Picture: Lisa Ferguson/TSPL

Ruth Davidson: '˜We will bring SNP back down to size'

Ms Jardine made a number of bold predictions despite the grim polling for her party, and on the eve of the election seemed genuinely convinced of her victory.

Now, however, it is the Conservatives who feel that Alex Salmond’s seat is in-play, with Ruth Davidson eyeing one of the biggest scalps in Scotland’s electoral history.

But how likely is that? We look at the constituency, and both sides of the debate’s approach to the upcoming election.

Gordon and the national picture

Alex Salmond has been called something of a ‘marmite’ politician, but he clearly still commands a personal vote, especially in the North-East of the country.

Gordon has slightly different boundaries than the old Scottish Parliament constituency which share its name (and was also won by Mr Salmond against a Lib Dem incumbency).

The Lib Dems, hammered at successive elections since their controversial decision to enter into a coalition Government with the Conservatives, feel they have turned a corner.

Not even the most optimistic Scottish Liberal Democrat would claim that all of their former seats (they lost 10 of 11 to the SNP in 2015) are in play, but they have a number of targets they feel they can reclaim, including in Edinburgh West and East Dunbartonshire.

It is perhaps telling that they feel that Gordon is beyond their grasp, they had a strong tactical voting message in 2015, so perhaps they feel that the unionist vote for the Lib Dems to keep out the SNP has plateaued somewhat.

The Aberdeenshire seat is yet another in the North-East where the Tories will feel enough Brexit voters will be outraged over the SNP’s pro-EU stance to cost them seats.

“Game on”

Ruth Davidson won’t like to admit borrowing from the SNP playbook, but there has been something almost Salmond-esque in her boasting that her party will take seats from the nationalists on June 8.

Ms Davidson had already predicted a Portillo moment in Moray, the home of SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson, but now seems to think that Gordon is within her grasp.

Now, it seems that the Conservatives have set their sights higher and want to claim what would be an extraordinary result.

In Gordon in 2015, the party was a full 21,000 votes behind the SNP, but clearly believe that the momentum is with them.

They will take heart from their showing in the local elections, not just in Aberdeenshire but across the whole of the North-East and indeed the rest of the country.

Colin Clark, the Tory candidate in Gordon, was re-elected to Aberdeenshire council in his district of Inverurie, where he won the most first preference votes of any candidate.

Mr Clark was over 700 first preference votes ahead of the SNP candidate, and was easily elected in the first round of voting.

The Conservatives won the most councillors on Aberdeenshire Council, with 23 seats to the SNP’s 21.

Ruth Davidson tweeted that the Tories were ‘ahead in boxes’ on the count, and declared this meant it was ‘game on’ in the seat, which she visited on Saturday.

Still unlikely

The SNP, for their part, are outraged at what they see as the arrogance of Ruth Davidson in predicting success for her party.

Alex Salmond has accused the Conservative leader, who has lead the Scottish Tories to increased success since the referendum, of ‘vainglorious boasting’.

Mr Salmond has said that he relishes the fight against the Tories, and Nicola Sturgeon visited the constituency last week to offer her support.

In truth, despite what some have said is naked ‘trolling’ of the former First Minister by Ruth Davidson, her party’s chances of snatching the seat seem slim.

Bookmakers rate the Tories in Gordon as a 9/2 shot, odds that Alex Salmond, known to like a flutter, would say are reflective of their chances.

The Tories would also need to come from third and overcome the over 20,000 vote lead that Alex Salmond currently has over them.

Despite Mr Salmond not being universally popular, he does enjoy a name recognition that his opponent Mr Clark doesn’t.

It is clear Ruth Davidson is pursuing a strategy of making the SNP nervous about some of their big-hitters.

She may succeed in making them sweat, but in Gordon, a victory over Alex Salmond still seems a long way away.