PARTIES and candidates in Scotland’s local elections were pinning hopes on a sunshine surge, with experts claiming the SNP would be the likely beneficiaries of any impact of the polling day good weather.
Turnout is expected to come in around 40 per cent, the same levels as 2012, with reports last night of sluggish voter traffic at polling stations in what were expected to be key battlegrounds.
But those on the campaign trail said the fine conditions would attract post-work and late evening voters and, crucially, helped bring out party activists to help put ‘voter management strategies’ into effect.
With older voters a perennial factor in local government elections regardless of conditions and Tory support having a high rate of car ownership, those attracted to the polling stations by the weather are likely to ‘floaters’ or in more working class areas.
One expert in local government politics said the council elections were likely to restore the pre-Independence Referendum equilibrium in voter turnout.
Dr Neil McGarvey, of Strathclyde University, said: “Turnout got a boost in 2015, just months after the Referendum, but this dissipated in 2016 and has been heading downwards since. Apathy has now set in and I doubt if the impact of the Referendum will be a factor at all. They’re not quite the forgotten elections but this time it has been almost totally subsumed by the looming General Election.”
He added: “The weather could have an impact but it would be minimal but if there was a benefit it would likely be for the SNP or Greens.”
James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University, added: “The weather can have an impact. Bad weather traditionally favours the Tories, the good weather may benefit the SNP and Labour.
“It could make a differences with turnout likely to be low but similarly it can be overstated as a factor.”
In Glasgow, the biggest contest in the country and where Labour’s last great totem in Scottish politics has been tipped to fall to the SNP, all parties were reporting a slow day and insisted getting out their core vote could be decisive.
Two hours before the polls closed several areas in the city were recording a turnout of less than 20 per cent. It was significantly better in Cumbernauld in North Lanarkshire at the mid-30s per cent and 30 per cent in Renfrew.
One senior SNP source said: “The strategy has been built on the likelihood of a sluggish turnout and the day has been spent maximising our information on who and where are voters are. It’s been a day chapping doors and at polling station and the reports are that our people are coming out.”
Tory MSP Adam Tomkins said his team were reporting above average polling in the areas the party had targeted as it seeks to make a municipal breakthrough in the city.
He said: “City-wide no-one is reporting anything spectacular. There doesn’t appear to be an SNP tsunami. But in places like Jordanhill and Pollokshields its been steady.
“In one engagement we had, a disabled voter in a wheelchair who was Yes in 2014 and Leave last year told us he’d now be voting Tory because ‘Nicola Sturgeon is at it’.”
A prominent figure in Labour’s campaign told The Herald: “Of course we’d rather be in the SNP’s shoes but the 2012 Glasgow experience tels you how difficult it is to call these things. The General Election has changed everything. You’ll always get the hardcore and the habitual voter but this has passed the general public by.”
Patrick Harvie, Green MSP for Glasgow, said he was confident of gains for his party on the local council, particularly on the south side of the city.
He said: “We have been doing well in our target areas so we are hopeful of more Greens.”
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