Crunch time for Council candidates as count begins

You’ve had your say and the count of votes cast in yesterday’s local council elections is now underway at Meadowbank Stadium, where Edinburgh will elect 58 councillors.

Early indications are that voter turnout is not as bad as first feared – there were gloomy predictions of 30% or even less in some areas yesterday. The political parties certainly can’t blame poor weather if the turnout is low – yesterday’s weather was fine.

The composition of the outgoing Council was: Lib-Dem 16, Labour 15, SNP 13, Conservative 11 and Green Party 3. Following that last council election in 2007, the Lib Dems and SNP entered into a coalition to form the administration, and despite directly opposing views on Edinburgh’s controversial tram project, the partnership held firm for the full five year term.

Last night’s results from England show a resurgent Labour party, but this is unsurprising given Labour started from a very low base, having been drubbed in the previous council elections down south. The current Conservative/Lib Dem coalition at Westminster is also particularly unpopular just now; party managers will claim the local election results are ‘mid-term protest votes’ – they usually do!

In Scotland, there is a different dynamic with the rise of the SNP and the party’s historic victory in last year’s Holyrood election. The challenge for the Nationalists is to maintain that momentum, or was last May the high-water mark?

Here in Edinburgh, it’s hard to tell what impact, if any, the trams fiasco had on the way voters cast their ballots. It does appear likely that the Lib Dems will pay the price for both being a partner in an unpopular Westminster government and, locally, the main party heading up a weak and indecisive administration.

What will happen to the Lib Dem vote if, as some predict, it collapses? Hard to say, but it could be the Green Party who are the main beneficiaries of disaffected Lib Dems.

Whatever the turnout, the result will be very tight and before the count no-one really knows how this is going to play out. If forced to make a prediction, I would say Labour will finish as the biggest party with perhaps sixteen councillors. The Greens in particular, the SNP and the Tories could all also pick up a seat or two at the Lib-Dems expense; my guess – and it is a guess – is that the Lib Dems could lose six seats.

One thing for certain is that no one political party can have an absolute majority in the City Chambers, and after the count (or perhaps even before!) the horse-trading begins. We will know the composition of the new Council by late this afternoon, but we may have to wait a while longer to find out who will be running our city.

NEN’s Thomas Brown will be ‘tweeting’ from Meadowbank throughout the course of the day