VOTES are being counted in the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry by-election with the results expected to be announced in the early hours of Friday morning.
Westminster by-election have been triggered for this seat and Aberdeen South after Stephen Gethins and Stephen Flynn, respectively, quit the Commons to take up seats in the Scottish Parliament.
The law does not allow people to hold seats in the Parliament and in the House of Commons simultaneously.
This article will be updated when the results come in for the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry by-election.
The candidates are:
- Tanvir Ahmad, LibDems
- Lara Bird, SNP
- Jack Cruickshanks, Conservatives
- Heather Dorans, Labour
- Bill Reid, Reform UK
The constituency of Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was created at the 2024 general election when it was won by Gethins for the SNP on another low share of the vote, 35%.
Labour finished very close behind on 33%, with the Conservatives in third place on 16%, followed by Reform on 9% and the Lib Dems on 5%.
The seat contains areas of the former constituencies of Dundee East and Angus, both of which had long spells of being represented by the SNP.
Dundee East was held continuously by the SNP from 2005 to its abolition in 2024, while Angus had SNP MPs from 1997-2017 and 2019-2024, with the Tories holding the seat briefly from 2017-19.
Five candidates are standing in the by-election, representing the SNP, Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems and Reform.
This makes it the least contested of the three constituencies up for grabs on Thursday.
The SNP’s majority in 2024 was just 859.
At the 2022 census in Scotland, 96.8% of the population of Arbroath and Broughty Ferry was estimated to be white, higher than Scotland as a whole (92.9%) and the UK (83.0%).
Around 94% of the population was born in the UK, compared with 90% for Scotland and 84% for the UK.
Some 12.0% of children were living in poverty in the constituency in 2024/25, slightly lower than the figure for Scotland (12.3%) and below the figure for the UK (19.3%).
The percentage of residents aged 16-64 claiming unemployment benefit stood at 3.1% in April 2026, the same as for the whole of Scotland (3.1%) and lower than the UK (3.9%).
