Home   News   Article

BREAKING: Inverness South elects Independent candidate Duncan McDonald to replace Colin Aitken





The Inverness South ward by-election count.
The Inverness South ward by-election count.

Voters in the Inverness South by-election have elected Independent candidate Duncan McDonald as their new councillor.

The ballot was held after Liberal Democrat Colin Aitken resigned from the council back in February so this marks a loss for the party, which still had a strong showing.

The most popular candidates after the first preference votes were announced were - Jonathan Chartier (LibDem) on 652 ballots, Gordon Shanks (SNP) who secured 641 and the eventual winner - the new Councillor McDonald (Independent).

The Liberal Democrats led the ballot entering the final stage by just 12 votes and after the SNP candidate was eliminated and new tally saw Cllr McDonald reach 1800 votes and victory.

In all there were eight candidates from seven parties, they were Jimmy Duncan of the Alba Party (107 votes); Andrew MacDonald of the Sovereignty Party (41); the Scottish Greens Arun Sharma (237) and Scottish Labour’s Ron Stevenson (364).

The turnout was low - just 26.3 per cent of the 12,664 people registered to vote with 3325 verified ballots. Cllr McDonald won at stage eight of the contest under the transferable vote system.

The Sovereignty Party was excluded at stage two, Alba at stage three, the Greens at four, followed by the Labour Party at stage five, then the Tories, the SNP were excluded at stage seven and finally the Liberal Democrats.

The vote saw a number of interesting electoral considerations at play. First, the LibDems share of the vote increased by 11 per cent, Labour by 3.8 per cent and the Greens and Alba by 1.8 and 1.4 respectively.

However, both the parties of government saw their vote share drop - the SNP lost a dramatic 15.8 per cent while the Conservatives lost 0.8 per cent.

The biggest surge was for a candidate not representing any party at all as Cllr McDonald secured 22.1 per cent of the total.


Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More