Election withdrawal? Never fear, there are two Westminster byelections to come

For those of you who love the excitement of an election and are disappointed its all over, fear not – for there are byelections coming.

The victory of the Stephens – that is both Flynn and Gethins – means the MPs will shortly need to resign from the Commons.

This is after Holyrood moved to ban dual mandates (otherwise known as double jobbing) towards the end of the last parliamentary session.

The pair have 49 days to resign their Westminster seats or else they will automatically be ejected from Holyrood.

And so voters in Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry will be back at the polling booths sooner rather than later.

So what might these look like?

Aberdeen South

Flynn won this constituency in 2024, despite the rising red tide of Labour in Scotland. In fact, he did so fairly comfortable, coming 3,758 votes ahead of his rival.

Since then, of course, Labour’s vote has fallen back significantly – as demonstrated by their pretty dire results yesterday.

Flynn is now the MSP for Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine, which does partially overlap with his Westminster one. It extends a little further south than the Westminster seat, crossing into Tory MP Andrew Bowie’s patch. That might explain why the Tories’ Liam Kerr came not far behind him in the Holyrood race.

Then there’s the fact that Aberdeen South also takes in some of Holyrood’s Aberdeen Central constituency – which was won convincingly by the SNP’s Jack Middleton.

All in, that puts the SNP on track to possible keep the seat in any byelection.

Though as ever, byelections can end up with a dramatic and unexpected result – so bear that in mind.

Arbroath and Broughty Ferry

Gethins’ majority in 2024 for this seat was wafer thin. He came just 859 votes ahead of his Labour rival.

Does this mean this is a seat the could flip in a byelection?

Again, Labour has suffered significantly in the last almost two years. In fact, Gethins faced off against the same Labour rival, Cheryl-Ann Cruickshank, in his Dundee City East seat and came more than 8,000 votes ahead.

The boundaries are not the same though. Both his Holyrood and Westminster seats cover Broughty Ferry, but his Holyrood seat covers part of Dundee city (one of the few areas that voted Yes in 2014, remember) while the Westminster seat goes north to include Arbroath and the surrounding area.

Angus South is the Holyrood seat to include this more rural bit – but this too went to the SNP yesterday. Lloyd Melville is the new MSP, having won 13,289 votes. Meanwhile, Labour languished in fourth place - behind both the Conservatives and Reform UK.

So while according to the 2024 result, this would be a very close run byelection, these more recent Holyrood result suggest the SNP could hold on here too.