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Original poster

Council Elections 4th May

31 replies

Beebeeeight · 19/02/2017 08:30

Is anyone thinking about this election yet?

Who are you voting for and who do you think will win (in your area/overall)?

Do you think brexit will affect the vote?

Will the tories overtake labour into 2nd place as they did at Holyrood last year?

Are the lib dems dead in the water?

Will the snp take control of Glasgow?

OP posts:
cdtaylornats · 19/02/2017 09:02

Yes
Conservative
No
Yes
No
No

Original poster
Beebeeeight · 19/02/2017 09:11

That was brief! Smile

I think the left/ general public forget how popular the tories actually are in Scotland.

Look at election results in the 1950s!

Small 'c' conservatism seems to have found its voice in Ruth Davidson.

OP posts:
TinfoilHattie · 19/02/2017 18:36

Is anyone thinking about this election yet? - Trying not to.

Who are you voting for and who do you think will win (in your area/overall)? - SNP will remain strong, Labour will continue to collapse, think Conservative and Lib Dems will make gains. - I'm in East Dunbartonshire. It's a hung Council with Labour and SNP on equal number of seats. I would imagine the balance will shift, but that there will be no overall control again which is a good thing. I'll be voting either Conservative or Lib Dem.

Do you think brexit will affect the vote? - Probably.

Will the tories overtake labour into 2nd place as they did at Holyrood last year? - Here's hoping.

Are the lib dems dead in the water? Not in my area - it was V close between SNP and Lib Dem in the General Election and the Lib Dems are very active locally. Very visible and campaign hard.

Will the snp take control of Glasgow?

titsbumfannythelot · 19/02/2017 20:39

I think the SNP will have more councillors in Glasgow but it'll be a coalition, they really won't want to implement all of the necessary cuts.

I have no idea who I'll vote for. I struggle to vote for a poor leader, so that rules out Labour. I'm not sure I want to ever say I've voted Tory though, even though I really like Ruth Davidson.

I live in east Renfrewshire so think there will be more conservatives voted in here.

OOAOML · 21/02/2017 10:05

Is anyone thinking about this election yet? - yes

Who are you voting for and who do you think will win (in your area/overall)? - I haven't fully decided who I am ranking where. The voting system makes it hard to predict, I think Labour will do badly but will be saved to an extent by transfers. Edinburgh council currently Labour/SNP, I think it may go SNP, but if it does it would be by a narrow margin, but more likely they will end up the major coalition partner.

Do you think brexit will affect the vote? - Yes. Not seeing much discussion of local issues, and Brexit is the big news story.

Will the tories overtake labour into 2nd place as they did at Holyrood last year? - Quite possibly. Not in the part of Edinburgh that I live, but in others yes. We have new ward boundaries so predictions quite hard.

Are the lib dems dead in the water? - They got massively punished here last time, I think both as a result of the coalition nationally and the absolute hash they were making of the trams (it seems like another lifetime ago that we last had a council election). I think after everything that has happened since they may pull back quite a bit of support.

Will the snp take control of Glasgow? - Looks likely to me, but I don't live in Glasgow so I'm mainly basing that on recent elections there. Again, vote transfers could stop it being a sweep. But I'd expect the SNP to be dominant.

Bejazzled · 21/02/2017 17:25

Are you conducting polling or a journalist of some kind?

Apart from that - what cdtaylor said ^^

Original poster
Beebeeeight · 21/02/2017 22:15

No, I'm a long time poster.

I get the feeling there is election fatigue with this vote.

STV does make it harder to predict results than recent votes.

I do hope Labour lose control of the councils they've had since they were created though- too much complacency imo.

OP posts:
OOAOML · 22/02/2017 10:52

Election fatigue is an interesting one - I think quite often council turnouts are lower than other elections, which is strange considering the council services that impact on daily life. But it has been an intense few years of voting. I was talking to someone recently about the elections in 2011 and 2012 and they feel like a different lifetime.

I don't know about other councils, but in Edinburgh I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the colour of councillors doesn't make much difference - the council officials seem to plough ahead regardless and occasionally the councillors attempt to divert them.

Original poster
Beebeeeight · 22/02/2017 20:51

Id agree that in some local authorities the council officers run rings around ineffectual councillors!

OP posts:
UpAwfYerSeatWeeNippy · 28/03/2017 18:09

YES

Who are you voting for and who do you think will win (in your area/overall)?

Conservative- The only option

Do you think brexit will affect the vote?

I hope not

Will the tories overtake labour into 2nd place as they did at Holyrood last year?

Definately

Are the lib dems dead in the water?

Possibly not, but the greens are

Will the snp take control of Glasgow?

Hopefully not

Original poster
Beebeeeight · 05/05/2017 06:30

From what I hear turnout is very high for a council election.

I think the publicity around the GE has helped.

-also the good weather--

OP posts:
Igneococcus · 05/05/2017 09:32

It was certainly busy at our polling station, we had to queue, usually we wander into an almost empty hall.
Is there a good page to follow Scottish results as they come in?

cdtaylornats · 05/05/2017 10:29

I was at the polling station in Scotland at 8 in the morning, one sad looking SNP canvasser, 3 election officers and me.

WankersHacksandThieves · 05/05/2017 10:43

Igneococcus

www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/8201e79d-41c0-48f1-b15c-d7043ac30517/scotland-local-elections-2017

First results expected around 11.30.

NoLotteryWinYet · 05/05/2017 10:50

4pm Edinburgh, 5pm for Glasgow according to the telegraph website. Looks like Guardian and Telegraph both have live update feeds for the local elections.

I was the only one in my voting booth at lunchtime yesterday. DH is in the dog house as he's working away and failed to register a postal vote.

Igneococcus · 05/05/2017 11:02

thanks wankers

Maybe we had a bigger turnout because a lot of people are very unhappy with the A&B council and especially its planning commitee, if it was a bigger turnout and not just my sampling error.

WankersHacksandThieves · 05/05/2017 11:03

I thought it would take a while - how are they counting them given the complicated vote system? Are they scanned in or are people manually inputting data into a programme? I'm presuming they aren't manually counting all the 1s, 2s, 3s etc.?

We've had council FB updates about opening the boxes this morning so far.

I took 16 year old DS for his first vote yesterday :)

Igneococcus · 05/05/2017 11:42

"Sally Cogley has been elected in Irvine Valley for the Rubbish Party, which was set up on a platform to tidy up the local area.

Ms Cogley has been organising clear up events in the local area. "

Love that, I would probably have ranked her quite highly on my list too.

cdtaylornats · 05/05/2017 12:25

Sally Cogley has been elected in Irvine Valley for the Rubbish Party

I thought that was just a nickname for SNP

WankersHacksandThieves · 05/05/2017 15:50

I think you are confusing rubbish with shite cd

TinfoilHattie · 05/05/2017 16:35

Very happy with the election result locally - we've gone from having a SNP, Lib Dem and Independent councillor to a Independent, Lib Dem and Conservative one.

Squeaky bum time for the sitting SNP MP who is on a wafer thin majority.

WankersHacksandThieves · 05/05/2017 16:53

Squeaky bum time for the sitting SNP MP who is on a wafer thin majority.

Especially as these results are being compared to the 2012 results and we know that the SNP had their biggest surge after this. Having said that it's council elections not a GE so not exactly comparable given the higher level of Independent candidates.

I do feel sorry for Labour though. In the end the traditional Labour voters had to make a choice about who they hated more, the Tories or the SNP.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 05/05/2017 17:36

I do feel sorry for Labour though. In the end the traditional Labour voters had to make a choice about who they hated more, the Tories or the SNP

I'm one of those. The choice wasn't difficult. I don't hate the Tories. I detest the SNP.

WankersHacksandThieves · 05/05/2017 18:11

I'm one of those too Lass . Alwayst said I would never vote Tory though, but with tough times come tough choices.

NS going on about the "clear victory" Hmm

NoLotteryWinYet · 05/05/2017 21:48

Yes first time I've ever voted for any conservative candidate too. Fingers crossed for the general election for Scotland.