Watch: Voters have their say as Scotland goes to the polls for local council elections

THE SUNDAY POST team were out and about today finding out what people in Glasgow had to say about the local council elections.

With polls warning that the Labour party may face heavy losses, there is a question mark hanging over whether they will able to retain their current control of Glasgow, with either an SNP victory or shared control looking likely.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Lib Dems, Conservative and Greens are all hoping to make gains. In this campaign the Greens are fielding a record number of candidates.

With the General Election only five weeks away, turnout may be low due to ‘election fatigue’ sweeping Scotland– although official turnout figures will not be available until tomorrow.

Philip Braat, Labour Councillor for Anderston, City and Yorkhill Ward, said: “This particular polling station at St Patrick’s is usually fairly quiet, but I think this time round it’s been slightly quieter than normal.

“This polling station does tend to get busier as the day goes on and I think will be a real barometer as to what the turnout will be overall.”

Christy Mearns, Scottish Green Party candidate for the same ward, said: “The turnout seems quite low, unfortunately in local council elections it generally does tend to be. I think in Scotland particularly we have voter fatigue.

“There’s been a lot of election happening, there’s one happening very soon which is very frustrating. It’s no surprise really that people are fed up with having to turn out to the polls.

“People in Scotland are aware of the different levels of government and they’re aware that this election is not about constitutional matters.

“It’s not about independence, it’s not even about big parties, it’s about people who are going to work hard for the local issues people care about. Whether their bins are being emptied, whether local services are being funded. Whether we have a planning system that actually listens to local communities.

“People are on the ball here, and on the whole they do tend to understand that.”

‘It hasn’t been fully explained to people’

Questions were raised by voters today about the quality and amount of information that’s available for people, both in regards to the voting system and to the candidates in each ward.

Katherine Walker, who had her say via postal vote, said: “I’m not so sure about the paper, about the way they set it out. Pick 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 – are they going to add all these up? How’s it going to work?

“It hasn’t been fully explained to people. It just says pick the one you want first and then work your way down.

“There’s not enough information at all.”

Stephen, who intends to vote later in the day, said: “The level of information that you get for local elections is microscopic compared to any other elections , insofar as if you want to have any knowledge of who you’re voting for you have to go and find it.

“It’s not like you’re getting leaflets from everybody through your door.

“That’s what I did this morning – I went online and tried to find out who the candidates are. But even doing that, finding out what those candidates actually stand for, or what their local policies are, that’s really hard to find out.”

‘The labour administration will no longer be’

Stephen also had some predictions for election, saying he didn’t think any party would emerge victorious in Glasgow: “I don’t think there’ll be an overall winner in Glasgow. I think the chances are the SNP will probably have the most seats but whether they actually have control over Glasgow is a totally different matter actually.”

Christy Mearns also thought Labour would lose control of Glasgow: “It’s likely that the Labour administration will no longer be. We’re hoping that we’ll have a good strong amount of Green councillors alongside the SNP which will probably happen.”

The general feeling seemed to be that the local elections have been overshadowed by the upcoming elections, with Stephen saying: “I just don’t think the local elections make that much of an impression on people.”

Students Dan, 20 and Katie, 19, told us that neither of them had registered to vote for the local council elections, but they both said they definitely intended to vote in the General Election in June.