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The Glasgow North East By-election was billed by political commentators as a final test for Gordon Brown and his leadership of the Labour Party. If he was to loose another Labour heartland seat in Glasgow to the Scottish National Party (SNP) then he would struggle to hold on to his position as party leader. Despite many early predictions to the contrary, Labour held on to the seat (formerly held by the speaker and therefore previously benefiting from no opposition from Tories or Lib-Dems) and actually managed to increase their percentage of the vote. But this hides the real story. Labour got 3,000 less votes than they did in 2005, these votes did not fall to the Nationalist, who lost 1,000 votes on last time but instead fell into mass abstentions making this the lowest turn-out in a Scottish by-election ever.