The city centre by-election may be over, but next year the whole city will return to the polls to elect a new council. We asked James Mackenzie to give us his views on what lessons the political parties will have drawn from this weeks by-election results.

1 - We haven't learnt as much as we should have. First, it was conducted in the depths of holiday and festival season, and second, the students were away. Parts of the ward are 50% student, so that'll make a substantial difference. Also, a by-election allows parties to focus their efforts, as all did, but as a result they favour those parties with larger machines.

2 - The Lib Dem-SNP administration will retain knife-edge control, barring defections or other misfortunes, until May next year, which will be the first time Edinburgh (and Scotland) have held PR local elections without a Holyrood election at the same time.

3 - People in City Centre didn't clearly vote strongly on the trams question. A fair few voted for anti-tram independent John Carson, pushing the Lib Dems into last, yet the pro-tram Tories picked up most of his second preferences, while just nine more of his voters went SNP next than switched to the Greens.

4 - The Lib Dems are in perhaps even more of a pickle than they thought. They lost almost two thirds of their first preference votes, and from being elected first in 2007, they were ejected first this time. On this showing they wouldn't just lose Charles Dundas in this ward, but would be left with a small rump group, mostly in the city's West. In some seats last time they stood two candidates (and in two - Drumbrae/Gyle & Corstorphine/Murrayfield - they elected two as well). Next time they'll surely have to stand just one candidate per ward to avoid second preferences leaking to other parties. There are some tough choices there for the SNP and Labour, though.

5 - The idea that Lib Dem voters switched clearly to the SNP in May looks ever less likely, although it's hard to tell, not least because those who still vote Lib Dem will be unrepresentative of the people who used to vote for them in larger numbers. Of the 251 people who put the Lib Dems first, 82 put the Greens second, the largest group, then 67 went blue (yellow-leaning supporters of the UK coalition aren't a huge demographic in Edinburgh City Centre, it seems). The SNP got the fewest transfers from the Lib Dems, in fact. And the Lib Dem first preference vote fell 13%, yet the SNP were up just 3% on first votes.

6 - The Tories - as I pointed out on the day of the poll - do well on first preferences, but they are the second preference party for very few people in City Centre/Edinburgh/Scotland. The only reason they look relatively transfer-friendly here is the pickup of essentially Tory votes from John Carson. Leaving those aside, they stayed in to the end but picked up less than 300 preferences from the supporters of other parties. Credit goes to Iain McGill for the Tories, though; he's a strong hard-working candidate.

7 - The SNP machine keeps rolling with a win they'll be pleased about, although the Holyrood results for the area suggest they ought to have won more overwhelmingly. They topped the first preference vote in 2007 and fell back to second this time, and staying in by barely a hundred votes over Labour led to a win by barely more than a hundred votes. If they'd picked a more engaging candidate they might not have been so close, but it certainly seems that Cardownie's group have to some extent escaped public opprobrium for a pretty badly-run Council, and they will probably be optimistic for next May.

8 - Labour will be frustrated not to have made the final two, but their vote is up, and finishing third should put them in a strong position for May. Only the Greens can have a hope of sneaking ahead of them for that third slot. Their failure to pick up many transfers from the Lib Dems will be a little alarming, though. Anoraks will be intrigued to see that almost a third of Labour voters prefer the Tories to the SNP.

9 - The Greens got their best ever local by-election result in Scotland - and put in the strongest ground campaign the local party has ever delivered. The 3% drop in first preferences is more than compensated for by a move up from fifth to fourth, and the absence of student voters this time will give the local party hope. Tails are up. Interestingly, Green voters narrowly preferred Labour to the SNP, perhaps because the latter have adopted a clearly anti-public-transport position.

10 - Edinburgh's next administration will probably be as hard to form as the last one, given a five-party system. Labour or the SNP look most likely to lead it, but either party would need partners. The Lib Dems are likely to be too weakened to take part, and neither Labour nor the SNP will want to work officially with the Tories. Which leaves...

James is head of media for the Greens at Holyrood by day, and by night he blogs at Better Nation.