Polling projected properly
Considering we’re only eleven days from a general election, there’s remarkably little politics coverage in the Sunday papers today. Most of what there is is in the Sunday Herald, which has a substantial (and quite entertaining) interview with Kezia Dugdale and another two pages devoted to what’s essentially spluttering attempted justification of its shambolic front-page lead from last week.
We’re not going to go into it in depth, as James Kelly on Scot Goes Pop! has already had a close look and made a pretty fair assessment. But for want of anything more interesting to talk about, and in the wake of some depressing Twitter conversations with people who apparently STILL don’t understand either the Holyrood electoral system or basic arithmetic, we’re going to have one more wade in the list-vote debate.
You might want to see if there’s football on or something.
The refrain we kept hearing this week from advocates of “tactical” list voting in the name of getting more pro-independence MSPs was “but this is what the polls say!”
Now, there are all sorts of obvious holes in that premise – polls are never exactly correct, and have also historically significantly underestimated the SNP list vote and overestimated the Green one. But for the sake of argument, we decided to take them as gospel and see what happened.
Since the current chapter of the debate was triggered by a report from Professor John Curtice, commissioned by the Electoral Reform Society, we used that as our starting point. The graphic above shows the average poll ratings for all the main parties in both the constituency and list votes.
So what we did was compare the parties’ list figures in that graph with their actual shares of the list vote in 2011, and divide one figure into the other to produce a multiplier for each party.
For example, the SNP got 45.4% in 2011 and are now polling an average 46%, so to save on some calculations and slightly bias our experiment in favour of the smaller parties we rounded their multiplier down to 1. (It should strictly have been 1.013.)
Similarly, Labour’s current 19% polling average is 0.72 times the 26.3% they got five years ago, so that became their multiplier. For the Tories the number came out to 1.2, for the Lib Dems 0.76 and the Greens 1.8 (because they’re polling at an average of 8%, almost twice their 2011 share of 4.4%.)
Then we fed those multipliers into the actual list votes of 2011 for every region and worked out how the seats would be distributed, based on the assumption that the SNP won every single constituency seat except the Northern Isles (both held by the Lib Dems) and two in the Borders (held by the Tories).
Here’s how the projected 2016 results broke down.
———————————————————————————————-
CENTRAL
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 108,261 (10,826 after divisor)
Lab 59,379
Con 17,844
Grn 10,141
Lib 2,522
SEAT 1
Labour (60K)
SEAT 2
Labour (30K)
SEAT 3
Labour (20K)
SEAT 4
Con (18K)
SEAT 5
Labour (15K)
SEAT 6
Labour (12K)
SEAT 7
SNP (11K)
RESULT:
Lab 5 (+2)
Con 1 (-)
SNP 1 (-2)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 3
2016 pro-indy list seats: 1
NET PRO-INDY LIST GAIN: -2
—-
GLASGOW
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 83,109 (8,311)
Lab 52,582
Grn 22,417
Con 15,299
Lib 4,037
SEAT 1
Lab (53K)
SEAT 2
Lab (26K)
SEAT 3
Green (24K)
SEAT 4
Lab (17.5K)
SEAT 5
Con (15K)
SEAT 6
Lab (13K)
SEAT 7
Grn (12K)
RESULT
Lab 4 (+1)
Grn 2 (+1)
Con 1 (-)
SNP 0 (-2)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 3
2016 pro-indy list seats: 2
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: -1
—-
HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS
Assumption: SNP 6 constituency seats, Lib Dem 2
SNP 85,082 (12,155)
Con 25,011
Lab 18,636
Lib 16,514 (5505)
Grn 16,337
SEAT 1
Con (25K)
SEAT 2
Lab (19K)
SEAT 3
Grn (16K)
SEAT 4
Con (12.5K)
SEAT 5
SNP (12K)
SEAT 6
SNP (10.6K)
SEAT 7
SNP (9.4K)
RESULT
SNP 3 (-)
Con 2 (-)
Lab 1 (-1)
Grn 1 (+1)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 3
2016 pro-indy list seats: 4
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: 1
—-
LOTHIAN
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 110,953 (11,095)
Lab 50,792
Con 39,623
Grn 38,709
Lib 11,847
SEAT 1
Lab (51K)
SEAT 2
Con (40K)
SEAT 3
Grn (39K)
SEAT 4
Lab (25K)
SEAT 5
Con (20K)
SEAT 6
Grn (19K)
SEAT 7
Lab (17K)
RESULT
Lab 3 (-)
Con 2 (-)
Grn 2 (+1)
Ind 0 (-1)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 2
2016 pro-indy list seats: 2
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: 0
—-
MID SCOTLAND AND FIFE
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 116,691 (11,669)
Lab 46,529
Con 43,750
Grn 19,645
Lib 11,478
SEAT 1
Lab (46K)
SEAT 2
Con (44K)
SEAT 3
Lab (23K)
SEAT 4
Con (22K)
SEAT 5
Grn (20K)
SEAT 6
Lab (16K)
SEAT 7
Con (15K)
RESULT
Lab 3 (-)
Con 3 (+1)
Grn 1 (+1)
SNP 0 (-1)
Lib 0 (-1)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 1
2016 pro-indy list seats: 1
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: 0
—-
NORTH EAST SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 10 constituency seats
SNP 140,749 (12,795)
Con 45,217
Lab 31,603
Grn 18,733
Lib 13,815
SEAT 1
Con (45K)
SEAT 2
Lab (32K)
SEAT 3
Con (22.5K)
SEAT 4
Grn (19K)
SEAT 5
Lab (16K)
SEAT 6
Con (15K)
SEAT 7
Lib (14K)
RESULT
Con 3 (+1)
Lab 2 (-1)
Lib 1 (-)
Grn 1 (+1)
SNP 0 (-1)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 1
2016 pro-indy list seats: 1
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: 0
—-
SOUTH SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 7 constituency seats, Con 2
SNP 114,270 (14,284)
Con 65,222 (21,741)
Lab 50,829
Grn 15,581
Lib 11,473
SEAT 1
Lab (51K)
SEAT 2
Lab (25.5K)
SEAT 3
Con (22K)
SEAT 4
Lab (17K)
SEAT 5
Con (16.3K)
SEAT 6
Grn (16K)
SEAT 7
SNP (14K)
RESULT
Con 2 (+2)
Lab 3 (+1)
Grn 1 (+1)
SNP 1 (-3)
Lib 0 (-1)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 4
2016 pro-indy list seats: 2
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: -2
—-
WEST OF SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 10 constituency seats
SNP 117,306 (10,664)
Lab 66,622
Con 43,194
Grn 15,145
Lib 6,952
SEAT 1
Lab (67K)
SEAT 2
Con (43K)
SEAT 3
Lab (33.5K)
SEAT 4
Con (21.5K)
SEAT 5
Lab (17K)
SEAT 6
Grn (15K)
SEAT 7
Con (14K)
RESULT
Lab 3 (-)
Con 3 (+1)
Grn 1 (+1)
SNP 0 (-2)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 2
2016 pro-indy list seats: 1
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: -1
—-
OVERALL LIST TOTALS
Labour 24 (+2)
Conservative 17 (+5)
Green 9 (+7)
SNP 5 (-11)
Lib Dem 1 (-2)
Ind 0 (-1)
———————————————————————————————-
Remember, all of these are projections not predictions. We’ve based the results SOLELY on the numbers in Prof. Curtice’s report that’s being cited by tactical-voting advocates, and have made no judgement calls of our own except in the case of four constituency seats. Again, those calls slightly bias the experiment against the SNP.
(They won just four out of nine in South Scotland in 2011, and we suspect that our assumption here of seven this time may well prove on the generous side.)
And what we find is that a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in FIVE FEWER pro-independence MSPs on the list. The Greens gain seven seats overall, but every one was already a pro-independence seat.
(One in Lothian vacated by the sadly-deceased Margo McDonald, and the other six at the expense of the SNP, who also lose a further five to Labour and the Tories.)
It’s then left to the SNP to do the heavy lifting of ensuring there’s still a majority at Holyrood for independence by winning nearly all the constituency seats.
For perhaps the twentieth or thirtieth time, we’ll once again emphasise that readers should vote for whichever party they want. It may be that readers like the idea of more Green MSPs in its own right, and that’s fair enough.
But the idea that Prof. Curtice’s ERS report “proves” that you should vote for smaller parties on the list in order to maximise the number of pro-indy list MSPs is simply hogwash. Even with their vote almost doubled across the board, which would be a phenomenal achievement, all the Greens do is take seats that were already pro-indy.
If you’re going to put your faith in numbers, it’s always worth doing your sums first.
och I will just vote SNP 1&2. Saves any worries.
Kezia will always vote against Independence for Scotland in her Politics Scotland programme
Scotland comes last in Dugdales Brit Nat mind. Worrying time for the shipyards in Scotland.
Borussia Monchengladbach 1 – 0 Hoffenheim
The Double vote was designed to weaken the SNP. To obviate it treat it as a Single vote….VOTE SNP FIRST AND SECOND.
When we are Independent we can vote for minor parties.
Can’t be emphasised enough.
I listened to the Radio Scotland discussion this morning with Bill Whiteford and Ken MacDonald. At about 1 hr 40 mins in they were joined by Andy Collier, Louise Batchelor, Margaret Curran and someone for the Cons and LDs.
When Andy Collier pointed out that splitting the list vote might cost the SNP their majority, Margret Curran immediately jumped in with “That’s nonsense.”
Labour clearly pushing the split list vote. It’s their only hope.
Has to be SNPX2, Westminster would love it if the SNP had a minority government again , it would show we don’t really want independence , that it was just a fad we were going through , and best just to be ignore us once again !.
It’s staggeringly clear that we have to vote SNP twice and has been for some time, so it can only be a last ditch desperate effort on the part of the msm in Scotland to promote the smaller indy parties as a means of undermining the SNP vote.
There is no practical way the smaller parties can gain in any ‘significant’ numbers enough of the vote share to justify this barrage of ‘tactical’ voting rhetoric from RISE Greens et al.
I’m in Patrick Harvie’s region, and I will be voting SNP on both the regional and constituency lists.
Can’t emphasise enough: if the press are supporting a policy of indy tactical voting, you have to know they have one agenda: TO REDUCE THE SNP’s VOTESHARE THEREBY REDUCE THE POSSIBILITY OF A MAJORITY SNP GOVERNMENT IN SCOTLAND.
Buyer Beware.
And the outcome for Rise is…. sod all. Save it Rise, campaign for Indy then make your pitch once we have it. A vote for Rise achieves nothing other than more Unionist seats.
And the irony is on twitter today Angela Haggerty of the ‘vote RISE in 2nd vote’, saying folk are ‘scunnered’ with all this neverending vote list arguement ‘which is boring the shit out of everyone’.
No self awareness in that statement
Good article. The voting system that was chosen by Labour was at first glance a totally proportional system but when you looked at the detail it was not. What Labour should have done was to give the voters only one vote and how those votes were cast should then reflect the make up of the Parliament by using top up seats. They chose that system to keep a link with a constituency member as they held most Westminster seats with very large majorities.
Labour were very strong in the constituency vote in 1997 at the UK General election and had assumed that that strength would continue into the vote in 1999. The Holyrood results seemed to back that up with Labour winning 53 seats on the constituencies and SNP only 7 with only seat changing hands – Inverness East N & L. Labour gained 3 more list seats, all in the Highland & Island Region. Their share of the vote was not that impressive, 38.9% in the Constituency and 33.6% in the List. Those results are based on what did happen and not what might happen.
If you underperform in the List vote then as night follows day you are not going to do that well on the List. There are no guarantees that the SNP are going to poll as well in the Constituencies as some polling experts in the Press or Green Party keep telling us. I don’t intend to take the chance so I will as I suspect most SNP voters will do and cast a vote for Shona Robison on the Constituency ballot and Nicola Sturgeon on the SNP List.
With all the misinformation being thrown about by the Sunday Herald and the BBC amongst others, voters are as well to just switch off until voting day.
The SH motives have to be examined when all the dust has settled. They have been found sorely wanting with the loss of Ian Bell and since Richard Walker left.
If a minority of Indy MSPs are returned, they along with Rise and Green supporting new media will have a lot to answer for.
Thanks. I’ve been trying not to see the small but loud voices from (predominantly) RISE as another moment when the vague promise of “more socialism” is/was used to prevent genuine Scottish progress. The labour party managed that role from 79 to 2006. If I were in RISE I would be thinking very hard right now.
Maybe we should advocate voting SNP 1&2 when they step up and deliver left leaning policies. It is one think to talk left, but acting it is completely different. SNP talk left and deliver Centre Right. I am not syaing they are doing a bad job, but it’s certainly not as rosie as some indy campaigners believe.
I for one would welcome more Green MSP’s indeed I’d like to see a wider range. I’d also like to see the SNP abolish the Party Whip.
Looks good
SNP x 2
Make Scotland the most prosperous country in the world. FFA/Independence.
Show how much Scotland cares about Cameron.
@Gary.
Could you do 2 things for me. 1 explain how not being independent from rUK will allow ANY significant (Scottish) national “left leaning policies” to survive, and 2 What’s the difference between independence and left leaning policies?
Because they aren’t the same thing.
So in this analysis, the SNP don’t get any list MSPs in 5 of the 8 regions, and are 20,000 votes short of a list MSP in West, and 10,000 votes short in North East, and 40,000 votes short in Glasgow.
Re-run it transferring all the Green votes to the SNP, and somehow Labour gain a seat in Glasgow. Transfer enough votes away from the SNP to another party, and Labour will lose one.
Perhaps that’s part of the intention in the whole portrayal of this election being a contest for first runner up. On it’s own that might encourage both Labour and Conservative voters to turn out and vote. It might even promote voter apathy on the part of SNP supporters. Rise and Green might also do the same but there may be some amongst those they persuade to vote for them who might not have bothered turning out in the first place. There may also be those who vote SNP x 2 because of all this.
End of the day any pretence that sweeping all the constituency seats in a region precludes taking list seats is demonstrably false.
Also let’s bear in mind that the 2015 election was on far fewer seats and on some of the lower constituency polls that means far more than 3 constituencies will not go to the SNP.
“Re-run it transferring all the Green votes to the SNP”
And if yer granny had baws she’d be your grandad. What people have been yelling at me all weekend is “BASED ON THE CURRENT POLLS!”. So this is a calculation based on the current polls.
your totals highlighted in black and used for your conclusion are havers
the reason there is a drop in the number of indy list msps is due to the increase in constituency msps
eg in fife&mid, snp taking cowdenbeath is what causes the -1 loss of a seat for the snp in the list, not tactical voting on the list
this is the basis of the entire argument FOR voting tactically
by your own figures, the snp wins no seats in the list in this region, but an increase in 3k for greens would ensure the greens took the 7th list seat and not the tories,or more likely, due to the wall to wall coverage, the libdems wullie rennie
to increase the snp list vote by 3k, would need an increase of 30k?
contrary to your analysis, not agreeing 100% with you does not necessitate numerical blindness
Garrion there are plenty the Nats could do to work from the left abolition of the council tax for example and replacing it with something far progressive. The removal of the Offensive Communication and Threatening Behaviour at Football is another that should be binned, Using the tax raising powers to be progressive rather than being regressive and not using them for fear of losing votes. These are all things we can do without independence. This belief that only the Nats can lead us to Independence is startling. Indeed, it was Nationalist strongholds that let us down in the referendum.
It is clrear to me, that many of those who support independence on the Interweb aren’t the ones talking to people in the streets and chapping doors. During the referendum campaign it was groups like RIC who were doing solid work chapping doors in the most disenfranchised areas this stirred the vote. Many of these people now feel turned off from politics again.
I am not a supporter of any particular political party, I am on the outside looking in. But I am a lefty activist and I believe strongly in social justice, and in my class. If anything I’d be IWCA.
orri
End of the day any pretence that sweeping all the constituency seats in a region precludes taking list seats is demonstrably false.
no one is pretending this orri, the revs analysis is on current polling trends, eg, i dare say if he had used 100% of list votes going to the snp in every region(not going to happen) then his figures would be different etc.
Hoping the Greems don’t turn out to be the third group of willing idiots we’ve seen over the last few years.
There was the LibDems going into formal coalition with the Tories in Westminster.
There was Scottish Labour working directly with the Tories in the Referendum and doing their dirty work for them, and continuing to prop them up by screaming Westminster isn’t to blame, it’s the SNP.
Now the Greens and the smaller proInd parties pushing to specifically split the SNP vote, having made very little progress attracting from the Unionist parties.
SNP x 2
I dont care what the polls are its clear that slab and others are trying to manipulate the second vote by coming out with all sorts of crap, im not listening to them, they can all go and jump.
…as a general rule whenever unionist pollsters, unionist media and unionist bloggers are helping to “promote” an idea it is best to do the exact opposite.
If the other “independence supporting parties” got under the SNP banner we would gain list seats and have an even stronger voice in arguing for Scottish matters.
A simple choice for me SNP X 2
@Gary, 4:28
Thanks for your reply. I believe that the problem here is that, on the one hand, the SNP have been trying to get ALL the country on board a commitment to independence.
Unfortunately we are not there yet. In this undertaking there is not a clear index between more “radical” policies and creating a watershed that translates into creating an independence minded majority.
You and I may believe that more socially equal and inclusive policies are the right way to run a country, but that is not the point of the exercise right now.
You can’t conflate achieving independence with seeing your political preferences enacted. First independence, then we determine the kind of country we are.
Gary
Do you not think it a better strategy to win self-determination first, before seeking to express your political individuality? Otherwise, Scotland’s political arena will remain within the constraints of a UK political space dominated by English votes. Your personal ambitions will count for naught compared to those of swing voters in middle England.
#DemocraticDeficit
It certainly looks a lot easier just to vote for the party you support.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/a-vote-for-the-snp-is-a-vote-for-the-lib-dems-is-a-vote-for-the-tories-is-a-vote-for-ukip-2015021295288
So Garrion is it independence at all costs? The SNP are close to the most authoritarian party on these islands. I can’t vote for that. If it was tight between them and Labour I’d vote for them.
The Nats will piss this election with an ncreased majority. I’d quite like to see a more colourful and vibrant parliament.
I’m with Schrodinger’s Cat, I’m only a biological scientist but my PhD is in a numerate biological science, physiology and in my scientific career I have chased CAUSES from end points: This mouse is different, why?
Which is why just looking at the end point without proper analysis will almost always lead you astray. Something we always have to drive into new research students who are inclined to go for logical shortcuts.
This is what I have been banging on about, if we get a rerun or near rerun of the GE and the 50% constituency vote indicates that, then the D’Hont multipliers are going to be horrendous for the SNP and they will need much more than SNP X 2, they will need pretty much everyone else to lend them their list vote to have a chance at list seats.
And of course, why under a proportional system should the SNP have a majority without a majority of the vote? 50% is not a majority except under a FPTP multiparty constituency election. When it comes to list votes it all changes. SNP win big in the constituencies that means they lose in the lists. THAT IS THE SYSTEM. That is how it works, how it is supposed to work.
I grew up in NZ and was the generation which signed petitions to force the government to change the voting system. We then voted for MMP, AM except the lists are unitary and national with a 5% threshold. We had a big pre internet national conversation on proportional voting systems. I understand them.
The Rev and others wearing SNP tinted spectacles have let their desire, nay overriding hunger for an SNP majority blind them to electoral reality. Proportional systems working properly should not deliver a majority without majority support.
Divisors of 10+! for the SNP mean they need 10X the list vote of the other parties. They don’t have 10X the Greens, let alone SLAB or Con, they don’t even have 10X the FibDems on the list. The only party they should beat to a list seat if there is one left is UKIP or maybe RISE.
Which is why if you are Yes voting SNP on the list is a WASTED VOTE. IF you want a YES Majority in the parliament it has to come from the SNP plus someone else.
All the Rev Stu has done is make our argument for us.
Joseph Robinson
yup, in my spare time im a shape shifting lizard alien
if the unionist and slab are trying to manipulate the population, they are making a piss poor attempt., long may it continue
Brian
“Now the Greens and the smaller proInd parties pushing to specifically split the SNP vote, having made very little progress attracting from the Unionist parties.”
aye, never really understood this argument, the greens used the opposite in NEF, eg folk in st andrews would never vote snp so standing a green candidate made sence in NEF. I argued with them, and other snp members, that even if it were true (doubtful) they had no way of knowing this,
the ballot paper doesnt indicate who you vote for if there was no green candidate and it risked splitting the vote and dividing the yes campaign.
as it was, the green vote in NEF made no difference to the SNP win, but in Mundells seat, the animosity generated between the greens and the snp has done more to damage the yes campaign than anything else.
SNP 1&2 the red yellow and blue yoons are in the bunch to split the vote to one of their advantages and they don’t give a shit what way it splits just so long as it splits the SNP vote then they will have done the job.
Gary says:
24 April, 2016 at 4:05 pm
Maybe we should advocate voting SNP 1&2 when they step up and deliver left leaning policies. It is one think to talk left, but acting it is completely different. SNP talk left and deliver Centre Right. I am not syaing they are doing a bad job, but it’s certainly not as rosie as some indy campaigners believe.
Gary
If you think an anti Trident / free prescription / free education / free bus pass / welcoming immigrants / environmental green energy policy / etc / etc is centre right you must be a radical left winger. Only from a far left position could you frame SNP policies in that manner.
They have followed centre left policies for years. I think you are mixing them up with New Labour.
@Alan Ritchie at 4.11
(My bold)
Quite apart from the fact that this article is about current polling (as was pointed out), when you go into the polling station it will be impossible for you to know how many is “enough”:
You cannot know
a) what the final turnout will be
b) what the constituency results will be
c) what other people have done in your region
All of these will affect the definition of “enough”. Anyone who is not basing their decision on approval of a party’s policies/a desire to see that party represented come what may, but is hoping to vote tactically, is taking the risk that “not enough” others will do likewise (and they have to vote for the same smaller party to make it work, too).
So take that risk if you want, but please don’t present it as a tactic that is guaranteed to succeed. (Even if you’re not doing that, some people are.)
I’d quite like to see a more colourful and vibrant parliament.
I think we would all like that (but possibly not Coburn no matter how cringe worthily entertaining he is).
Yes if the polls are right the SNP should just about nail this on the constituency vote. However, there is nothing stopping disgruntled Labour and Liberal voters voting Green too. The Tories will likely vote Tory. Any Labour voter that votes Tory needs their bumps felt.
@Gary. With respect, I get the sense that your information is coming from somewhere other than experience of SNP governance.
I’m afraid that calling the SNP (one of) the most authoritarian parties on these islands is frankly horseshit, and means that your information is coming from somewhere like the Times or Hootsmon. Not exactly hard left media sources.
Pity, thought we could reason together.
@CrazyCat
Except we will have a recent FPTP constituency election exactly one year ago when the SNP got 50% of the vote to serve as a pretty good predictor of what is going to happen in May. And plan accordingly.
Look, if Labour get a constituency then their list vote gets cut in HALF. So exactly how does relative failure in the constituencies harm the SNP and benefit the unionists?
Look at the fucking causes. Differences cause things. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Also there are more constituencies than there are list seats, a proportional weakness in AM in Scotland. IF the SNP take all or pretty much all the constituencies they will have their majority. They won’t deserve it any more than they did last May. But then the SNP are supposed to be in favour of proportional systems. If that is so then their membership/support like you are getting your wires crossed.
The SNP say use the two votes to ensure their majority.
They know what is needed, I will follow their suggestion.
Why take a chance, they are performing well, and if you are not sure of that have a look at Grousebeater’s post on achievements.
That tells the real story of the SNP in power.
They are the ONLY Scottish party and the only party in Scotland who has the ability to govern. Get them in with your two votes if you want Independence. The rest is suiting the Unionists down to the ground. Do not forget that.
As for the greens, sorry but I trust them as much as I do the Tories or the libdems, they will move to whatever suits them,
forget Independence they have little taste for it.
1. I want Independence for Scotland.
2. NONE of the other parties appeal to me.
I know who I trust. I know who’s policies appeal to me most.
And I know who will give us our best chance at Independence.
SNP and SNP = )
Gary
It is clrear to me, that many of those who support independence on the Interweb aren’t the ones talking to people in the streets and chapping doors. During the referendum campaign it was groups like RIC who were doing solid work chapping doors in the most disenfranchised areas this stirred the vote
bollox, you think that only ric was canvasing and talking to people in poor areas? complete havers.
RIC were only a very small but welcome part of a much bigger indy movement
you could argue that since the snp have more members alone in NEF than RISE and that they are and were active in YESNEF, that YESNEF did more than ric to get the vote to 45% ? see what I did there?
YESNEF AND RIC have no allegiance to each other, only to the indy movement. it is only via independence that any of the social issues you mentioned will ever truly be addressed
I have actually stayed away from Twitter today after reading the SH at 1am, I was just beyond anger.
The SH are entitled to print what they want but after Richard Walker had build up the trust of the paper and let’s face it the majority of their readership the last 2 years has been SNP supporters/members that have been burned by every other main stream media outlet; it feels without hyperbole like a kick in the crotch.
I don’t know what happened with Richard Walker leaving the SH and the National but almost immediately afterwards there seemed to have been a change in the way they reported news especially Scottish Government /SNP news.
They always rightly challenged but normally seemed respectful now it seems to be actual attacks like the yooning press carry out. In particular the commentary from Iain macwhirter became almost foam at the mouth stuff and deliberately baiting SNP supporters. Though I have nothing really other than the above to support it, I really do think Richard Walker was given a choice, stay and change the slant of the papers or go. It is probably just the conspiracy nut in me, I just don’t get why a paper will deliberately piss of a large section of the readship.
Neil had a choice after last week, he could have said look we got it wrong. We should have been more clear in that both votes SNP could be the actual way to go. But he didn’t and has now well and truly nailed his papers and the Nationals colours to the mast.
So now the entirety of the MSM, Bella, Common Space, the BBC, STV and who knows who else are against basically the most trusted and I dare say the most liked Scottish Government there has been with one of the most popular leaders I have know in my lifetime. I have read arch unionist reporters praise the SNP Westminster group as the true opposition with Angus’s question at PMQs quite often are the ones to put Cameron under pressure.
We have Mhairi Black who one day will be the leader of the SNP. Who have labour got in the wings as prospective leaders ? The Greens (Ross Greer !!!)
So we are all wrong with our support, nah don’t think so.Just think the Sunday Herald has jumped the shark and left our Sunday Mornings at little less cultured.
Brilliant analysis, Rev.
In 2011 the difference between SNP constituency and list was just over 1%
2016, and people are telling polsters that the might vote 54% & 46%, a difference of 8%.
Let’s consider the pollsters overestimate that difference, as I believe they did in 2011.
That would mean more to the SNP, less to Greens, and Others. Suppose the difference were 4%, not 8% – that would make the multiplier for SNP 1.09.
Feeding through the figures above (and rounding).
CENTRAL
SNP 118000 (11800 after divisor)
SEAT 6
Labour (11900)
SEAT 7
SNP (11800)
Labour and SNP might change 6 & 7th places. Overall result unchange.
GLASGOW
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 90600 (9060 after divisor)
SEAT 7
Grn (12K)
IF those extra votes had come off Green, the SNP could be challenging for that 7th seat.
HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS
Assumption: SNP 6 constituency seats, Lib Dem 2
SNP 92700 (9270)
The Conservatives might have got seat 5 instead of 4. Overall result unchange.
LOTHIAN
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 120900 (12090 after divisor)
The Greens might have got seat 6 or 7 instead of 5. Overall result unchange.
MID SCOTLAND AND FIFE
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SNP 127200 (12720)
SEAT 7
Con (15K)
Overall result unchange.
NORTH EAST SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 10 constituency seats
SNP 153400 (15340)
SEAT 6
Con (15K)
SEAT 7
Lib (14K)
The SNP would have taken 6 or 7 and removed the LibDem. Net SNP Gain.
SOUTH SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 7 constituency seats, Con 2
SNP 124500 (15570)
SEAT 6
Grn (16K)
SEAT 7
SNP (14K)
Might have become ….
SEAT 6
SNP (16K)
SEAT 7
SNP (14K)
… if Green dropped while SNP increased. CLOSE.
WEST OF SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 10 constituency seats
SNP 127800 (11620)
SEAT 6
Grn (15K)
SEAT 7
Con (14K)
Overall SNP result unchange. If Green fell, Labour might take the seat.
CONCLUSION
If the SNP list vote is closer to the constituency vote then polls suggest, the SNP would get ONE extra list seat at the expense of the LibDems. Also be very close with another TWO Green seats.
SNP+SNP instead of SNP+other will gain list seats.
[Apologies in advance for inevitable mistakes!]
Orri 4.12, your bang on, the 2nd place chat is all about ensuring these voters get out to vote. The Snp so far in the lead chat is about creating complacency. And the list vote strategising is about splitting the vote to maximise chance that snp fail to get a majority. Dangerous times, but we just need to make sure that we get the vote and vote snp x 2.
“And if yer granny had baws she’d be your grandad. What people have been yelling at me all weekend is “BASED ON THE CURRENT POLLS!”. So this is a calculation based on the current polls.”
Great, so what did it actually tell you? Your conclusions don’t match all the work you have put into the analysis.
The SNP don’t get any list seats in five of the eight regions. Most of their current 16 list seats get converted into the 16 constituency seats wins you assume at the start, and then ignore in the conclusion. All the green seats are coming at the expense of parties that are actually losing seats – Labour and the Lib Dems.
You state “But the idea that Prof. Curtice’s ERS report “proves” that you should vote for smaller parties on the list in order to maximise the number of pro-indy list MSPs is simply hogwash.”
So prove that the number of pro-indy list MSPs will go up if we all vote SNP twice. Glasgow would gain two unionists.
Or show it going down if you take votes away from the SNP – you should be able to find an example. Take Central, have enough SNP supporters split their vote, and it costs the SNP the last seat – but it goes Green before Labour. So the two regions where it can happen are Highlands and Islands, and South, the two that aren’t all SNP wins in the constituency. But in the other 6, Prof Curtice is right, AMS is broken by the huge SNP results in the constituencies, and can be broken further with tactical voting on the list.
Of course, if you think that the Labour manifesto launch will kickstart their campaign, and keep lots of Labour MSPs in constituency seats, then list tactical voting will backfire.
OK, first mistake ….
NORTH EAST SCOTLAND
Assumption: SNP 10 constituency seats
SNP 153400 (13940)
SEAT 7
Lib (13,815)
The SNP could remove the LibDem from 7th position. Net SNP Gain.
…. same outcome, but very close.
Maybe we should advocate voting SNP 1&2 when they step up and deliver left leaning policies.
havers, people vote for the snp because they believe this will bring about indyref2 and ultimately independence.
any policy that the snp or indeed rise can introduce that westminster cannot and does undermine.
voting snp1&rise2 in glasgow, isnt to help introduce left wing policies, a rainbow coalition or hold hands and sing fukcin’ kumbaya. it is to get rid of unionist msps. end off
If one more person mentions Greens to me
They’re not a political party they’re a Fukcing protest group with Victor Meldrew economic policies for God sake
“Get a bike” There you are I’m Green see how easy that was have a go it’s a doddle
I wouldn’t mind so much but they’re freaking everywhere telling anybody who’ll listen that they’ll be giving their first votes to the SNP and supporting Indy 2, honest, I met one this morning and asked him about the Clyde still not answered except to sympathise with the workers but no warships should be built on the Clyde “What do you suggest says me” “Diversify” says him “What like this week next week when would that be because there’s not Oodles of time”
“Renewables” says him
That’s the moment when I mentally stuck my hand down his throat and ripped his lungs out, but I restrained myself called him a stupid Bastirt and walked away
I thought that was the Green thing to do (Well, I’m not a Tory)
Its independence first and foremost so its two votes for the SNP, sod the rest.
On the politics show how many times does Nicola have to answer Gordon Brewers question on what conditions would cause a second referendum. The man seemed obsessed about a second referendum, maybe a secret admirer of Ruth Davidson.
Though when it was Kezia Dugdales interview he didn’t have to try hard to mess her up, what a car crash of an interview. When she doesn’t know the answer to a question (and believe me she doesn’t know the answer to a lot of questions) all she does is repeat her previous answer.
lord help us, if by some miracle she ever became First Minster, that was beyond dire for the head of a political branch office.
Vote 1 – Vote 2 , Vote SNP
Gary @ 4.28pm
You are a strong believer in social justice. That’s good. We all are.
But not the ‘social justice’ we see pouring from the concerned and compassionate Westminster Government.
We can only have the kind of social justice in Scotland that we all would really wish for when our country is independent.
RIC did amazing work in the run up to the Referendum. Along with every other group fighting for independence, each in their own way. Every effort counted and contributed to a result that shook Westminster to it’s foundations!
Lets keep them shaking = )
SNP and SNP!
Why are the SNP asking for both votes, WHY WHY
Because they know that’s how you win…..Jeeez!! this is not rocket science
Every party would tell you the same thing if they were honest
but they’re not so they tell big fat porkies circulate themselves and their supporters around as many sites as possible to try and confuse the issue, and doesn’t the state broadcaster and the print media love it
Gary 4.28
Its all very well prattling on about class,but if we exclude home owners from the independence movement it will be very difficult to get a majority for independence.Or have you got a new definition of “class” ?
I’m glad the SNP brought in legislation to try to tackle foul mouthed sectarian abuse at football matches.
Dr Jim
If one more person mentions Greens to me
They’re not a political party they’re a Fukcing protest group with Victor Meldrew economic policies for God sake
“Get a bike” There you are I’m Green see how easy that was have a go it’s a doddle
havers, even if the greens were were the fukcin’ fluffy party, it doesnt and wouldnt change the argument
1.the greens will not win the election, their policies are irrelevent
2. the argument is about replacing unionists with greens
do you think the red yellow and red tories are real political parties? would you prefer prof thomkin in glasgow rather than a green? he has already said that if elected he will only be a part time msp
Davy
Yes I am baffled by the questions on a second Indyref. I think the manifesto commitment is plain. Nicola will not waste a second and potentially last attempt for 20 or more years if there is no appetite for one. I can’t see it being any more straight forward than that.
The notion that she would hold one if it was clear that is what the people of Scotland want is somehow anti-democratic is beyond parody. Withholding what people want is anti-democratic.
If the Yoons were confident that they will always hold sway then Nicola’s commitment is that she will not waste people’s time on the matter yet they dribble on about it constantly. It would seem that what they really want is a second failed attempt at a time of their choosing. In order to do that they need to win an election. However, if they were to win an election I think they would desperately try to stuff the genie back in the bottle and not risk a “wrong answer”.
SNP’s Mhairi Black accuses rivals of ‘disingenuous’ vote split attempt
https://archive.is/JHWoQ
Buy the house before you move in the furniture.
SNP x 2.
The previous Holyrood election saw the SNP winning a list seat in NE Scotland, even when they won every constituency. It seems like SNP supporters should try to replicate that in every region.
I would prefer to see an SNP majority rather than a coalition if the SNP fall short. Personally, I think the Greens are anti-business, and could be a liability for the cause of independence.
It all sounds very nice saying we could have a more ‘diverse’ parliament, but a Green block would be *opposition* – raging against the SNP every time they built a new road, or refused to put up tax. They would be turning public opinion against the only party that can realistically deliver independence.
Do SNP supporters really want that ?
I don’t trust the Greens as a Party. I don’t doubt Finnie’s credentials on Indy when it comes to maybe voting Green on the list vote in H&I. I wont do it though as the Scottish Greens should have told Lucas and Bennett to go and wear it over certain issues but they didn’t. They lost any chance that I might have entertained voting for them then.
I think Harvie standing against SNP in Glasgow Kelvin is just being a spoiler. He has gone way down in my estimation since the Referendum. I see Greens standing in constituencies are just acting as spoilers. It makes their public pronouncements of vote SNP in constituency but Green on the list look and sound sleekit.
Maggie Chapman in NE is another one that grates on me. Every time I have seen her on Britannia TV Aberdeen I cringe as I grit my teeth.
Andy Wightman in Lothian I have soft spot for but I have said that before. Alison Johnston is another Green that grates on me though.
he has already said that if elected he will only be a part time msp
Having heard some of his recent utterances a blessing really
HandandShrimp
nicola is hedging her bets, wisely so
an electoral mandate will be sought for indyref2 if there is an eu out result at the 2017 local elections
thats why i argue for understanding between all indy parties,
for us to win all 32 councils in scotland, we will need this.
@ Muscleguy
Of course in a properly proportional system it should be necessary to get 50%+ of the vote for a majority.
What annoys me is that some people (not, I think, you) are arguing for tactical voting in order to deprive the unionists of the approximately 40% of the seats that their vote share should deliver.
I found it very amusing in 1997 when Scotland was a Tory-free zone and it would have been possible to walk from Land’s End to John o’Groats without passing through a Tory-held constituency. I found last year’s rout of the unionists equally entertaining. So I would probably also be amused by unionist under-representation this time (after all, only the unfortunate LibDems have a track record of supporting PR), but I know that wouldn’t be fair.
All the talk about wasted votes and tactics may be obscuring a huge effort by the smaller parties to attract votes from previous LibDem/Lab voters (and even maybe Tories); if so it would be entirely reasonable to have more of them and fewer unionists.
But I’m not seeing that; I’m seeing people attempting to game the system and using flawed arguments in support of that. I was also a scientist, and I found that I needed reliable data from which to draw conclusions. The required data are not available to a person standing in a polling station poised to mark a cross on their ballot paper. Your assumption that last year’s GE will be replicated in the constituencies (or nearly so) may turn out to be correct, but you will only know that after the event.
South of Scotland, where I live, includes all the seats which were won by Tories in 2011. I will be surprised if they lose them all, not surprised if they hold them all, and not very surprised if they gain one form Labour. So they could get anything between 0 and 4 of the 9 seats. I’m not prepared to guess that outcome to decide whether it’s safe or beneficial to vote for a smaller party on the list. 2011 was the first time I’d voted SNP on both ballots (I’m not a member and I don’t identify with them when asked by pollsters); when the Greens and the SSP both won seats here in 2003, they did so at the expense of the SNP, not the Tories or Labour. Since then, the boundaries of the region have changed (making things more difficult for the socialists) and of course so has the political context, but voting for them would not be a risk-free undertaking and as primarily an independence supporter, I’m not going to be taking that risk.
H&S
id prefer anyone rather than heeds girlfriend
this has to be the worst and most biased article on the net on this subject. The comparison should be between:
1. What would happen if people voted green in increased numbers (you have done this part)
with:
2. What would happen if they didn’t and all continued to vote SNP on the list. (you haven’t done this you’ve compared with 2011 results).
But well done as we can extrapolare what would happen if all continued to vote SNP on the list and Green got the same 4.4% or whatever it was. There would be 7 fewer greens and exactly the same number of SNP elected as in scenario 1 (which is the real comparison). So, tactical voting in your scenario increases the number of greens by 7. Interesting. thanks for that.
South of Scotland, where I live
the only tactical vote is
vote snp1&2
that includes solidarity, greens and rise
it works both ways
btw, the snp has campaign for years for PR elections, see tommy shepards maiden speech
Have you noticed that Labour and Tory voting intentions for constituency and list are more or less identical? You won’t catch the unionists splitting their vote!
Let’s have SNP 1&2. When we secure independence, then and only then can we have the luxury of indulging ideology.
Is that a hammer I see before me, pointing towards my post?
The paragraphs didn’t look that long in the preview box.
Is that a hammer I see before me, pointing towards my post?
The paragraphs didn’t look that long in the preview box.
Next time I’ll put each sentence in a separate one.
Maybe I don’t understand how this whole voting system works, but if I understand it correctly there is a bit of mix up in the Labour vote count when it comes to potentially allocating them a 3rd seat.
On the first example when it comes to the 3rd seat, the labour vote count should be 9,896, not 20K, (59,379 divisible by the two seats already allocated plus 1)
This Labour bias seems to be raised again every time we get to allocating their third seat.
Happy to be proved wrong, just thought it didn’t look right.
not one of your best stu
Can we have a article about Eurovision? #bothvotesboznia
@ schrodingers cat
I know the SNP have campaigned for PR. I was (unsuccessfully) trying not to be too verbose, so I did not specify that I was referring to unionist parties’ attachment to FPTP.
I realize you may not have been addressing me in that part of your post, though you were quoting me at the start of it.
Dr Jim says:
24 April, 2016 at 5:22 pm
I met one this morning and asked him about the Clyde still not answered except to sympathise with the workers but no warships should be built on the Clyde
Ruby replies
I wonder what would have happened to shipbuilding on the Clyde if there had been no tax payer funded contracts?
Would the situation have been better or worse today?
I’m thinking it might not have been such a good idea to have been reliant on only one customer.
I’m quite surprised that ‘Kevaverage’ is not on the Tory list.
Nice to see Kezia once again confirming her stance that she would refuse a mandate for a referendum should the Scottish people want one.
In the recent weeks, the last thing Kezia should be doing is digging further into that hole that her party have created. Seventeen schools are severely damaged (and god knows what else around Scotland) thanks to their business decisions that were done ‘on the cheap’.
Then she has the nerve to demand that the Tories stick to their promises over Scotstoun, when it was her party banging the drum that only voting ‘No’ would save these jobs. Seriously …WTF!
I hope Scottish Labour take an absolute tanking in the election. I hope she is absolutely leathered by the media. Time and gain on this site, she has been warned over her thinking and attitude; opening her mouth and regurgitating the first thing that her stomach believes to be the truth. I wonder at times if a very faint voice in her head goes ‘Noooo!’.
Well …we’ll soon find out soon enough.
crazycat
yeah it was a reply to you, i should have put your name, i get lazy sometimes, especially on a sunday afternoon 🙂
For God’s sake, are the BBC still wheeling out Margaret Curran?
Labour , The bag carriers of the Unionist Westminster Masters the legacy they have saddled us with is this f/n totally bonkers -Confusing – unmitigated failure of a voting system , and I don’t care what fancy name you attach to it to make it sound clever and a true reflection of voters wishes .And guess what ,We can’t change it alter or amend it , It takes a Westminster vote will we get that aye right should be around the time Brian Willson is appointed PM. So its have your Parlment to play in but Westminster sets the rules ,have fun fools fighting each other keep busy on that you will not cause us at Westminster any lost sleep ,Game set and f/n match Suckers .
Off course it has to be SNPx2. Nothing else will bring independence.
However, think about it from the Slab point of view. I suspect they are not so politically aware as the Inde supporters and many of them will give their second vote to a party other than labour. We may benefit from this but really it is a bit of a crap shoot on the list vote.
After Independence anything goes, but meanwhile, keep the eye on the prize.
JLT says:
24 April, 2016 at 6:15 pm
Nice to see Kezia once again confirming her stance that she would refuse a mandate for a referendum should the Scottish people want one.
Ruby replies
Yes it is nice! It’s good that the Scottish electorate can see her true colours!
Labour did make the promise that shipbuilding jobs would be safe if we voted NO.
I didn’t believe them. I’m pretty surprised that anyone did.
Do not take any chances MSM would have a field day it has to be SNP X 2 no other party can take us to where we want to be – don’t listen to anyone other than your party preference.
MC this morning Labour manifesto a ‘response to other manifesto’ in other words if snp say 100 (anything) we will say 200 ‘anything’ that is not policy it is desperation and it is also lying – you can afford to promise anything when you will not have to deliver.
@Greannach
The last three weekends, a nice little earner to supplement her HoC WM pension. 🙁
Missed all of her thoughts this weekend, did anybody at radio shortbread, since she was there, ask about her promise on the Clydebank?
Oh wait was it even discussed… I don’t recall it being mentioned good old auntie.
🙂
Heh, yeah.
You can see why Labour and the other two put this system in place. Give you a galactic level headache trying to figure workarounds.
Which of course, is entirely the point.
I’ll stick to voting my conscience and save on the paracetamol bill. 🙂
Thanks WOS, the figures you have estimated for Lothian show my plan to give the Greens my list vote is the best way not to waste my 2nd vote. Cheers DD.
Bookies are pretty clear on it. If it wasn’t so nail biting important, it could be very interesting
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/scottish-parliamentary-election/overall-majority
SNP clean sweep 8/1. Eek.
Gary Flamethrower: “The SNP are close to the most authoritarian party on these islands.”
That kind of fatuous remark is the bread and butter of people who have no politics and fewer scruples.
What islands is he talking about?
Another puerile Unionist deposits a pile of claptrap. If you don’t listen to him he’ll tell you the SNP have no left-wing policies… oh look. He’s done just that.
Yes, getting rid of Trident is a Stalinist policy.
Free prescriptions is a hard right-wing Tory policy.
Free higher education is definitely latent fascism.
This is a King Edward moment when you grab the runt by the scruff of his scrawny neck and toss the layabout clean out of the castle window.
http://wp.me/p4fd9j-63x
Full on anti referendum propaganda blast BBC Scotland teatime news there. That crew are working a bit SNP bad harder with their ongoing creepy cynical boosting for “smaller parties,” that says vote “smaller parties” for referendum a 2 sap. Its very BBC cynical but its shows just how dumb they think people are. Onwards it farts along, that BBC tumour in Scottish democracy, desperately trying to fcuk it all up.
@ schrodingers cat
Of course I wouldn’t like any Tories or Labour as the opposition but at least with them you know exactly who the enemy is and what they’re going to do, plus they’re Brits so that makes them predictable
Tomkins I’d happily stick my leg out in front of him, Oops sorry
You suggest that “And what we find is that a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in FIVE FEWER pro-independence MSPs on the list.” You can however only argue this by comparing 2011 to your hypothetical outcome for next month. In 2011, the SNP won 53 constituency seats as well as 16 regional list seats. However, on the basis of YOUR OWN PROJECTION, they would win 69 seats. Because of that increase in constituency members the SNP will be pushed harder to be able to win list seats. Its how the system works Stuart, and therefore you comparison is quite simply not valid. Moreover it is bogus to claim, as you seem to do that somehow this is the fault of people who have voted Green. In fact, what Curtice shows in his paper – and I would encourage you to look at table 3 – is that in Lothian, if 0.6% of the SNP list vote shifted to Green on the basis of Curtice’s figures, then the Greens would win the final seat and not Labour, as both you and he show.
Moreover, I would point out to you that on the basis of YOUR projection, the SNP would win 69 constituency seats and thus a majority on the basis of their constituency vote alone. The five list seats that you project would simply be a bonus. But Labour would remain the opposition with wee Kez wringing her hands and looking all concerned every week while Jackie Baillie goes round Holyrood looking for cats that have got out of their bag, while oor Wullie and Ruthie Tank Commander do the backing vocals. In other words another five years of same old, same old.
It is far too late to achieve the difficult task of giving SNP constituency voters a single option to vote for on the list, but had that been done, we might just have got to Jim Sillars’ “independence” parliament where the dialogue is no longer one of “if independence” with a wholly negative opposition, but of constructive engagement with an opposition whose focus is “how independence”. Do you really think that another five years of Kez (along with Anas – best not to forget – indeed she in particular should not forget him) and same old is going to do much for independence? Really?
One last point, to draw the the comparison that you have, and at the same time labelled people like me as not understanding how the system works and/ or arithmetically illiterate, is just a wee bit hypocritical.
Ummm.
You are comparing List totals in 2011 where the SNP won 56 Constituency Seats with List totals for 2016 where the SNP are projecting 68 seats.
Saying that the SNP are -5 seats when they are actually UP SEVEN seats is a complete nonsense.
Under this projection, Pro-Indy parties GAIN EIGHT seats overall and the more Green votes, the better that gain becomes. The problem is that the idiots who will vote RISE and Solidarity will reduce the number of pro-Indy seats.
The real lesson for anyone who is Independence Fist and not an SNP die hard is vote SNP Constituency, Green List. No other vote maximises the non-Unionist bloc.
The fact that Nicola Sturgeon has stated that the the only way to ensure that the SNP get a majority is to vote SNP x 2, tells you all you need to know really.
It is essential that they get that majority, if not Scotland will be F’d in more ways than you can ever imagine.
Don’t make a mistake next Thursday that you may well regret for a very long time.
SNP x 2 is a must, anything else risks setting Scotland back 20 years, if not longer.
Slightly O/T
Lazy Sunday Afternoon
The wailing of the yoons has shattered my quiet Sunday, apparently our leader has been mentioning the Indy word again and it’s like pouring vinegar on the yoons open sores.
Not a call to battle (although embattled we are), with malice towards none, with fairness for all and with the firmness of being right…..how dare she.
Please choose from the following menu: Three cups of deceit or one cup of SNP.
Choices, choices, luckily I know what I like and like what I know.
Two Cups of SNP s’il vous plaît
Properly Brewed
It should be pointed out again and again the very clear Unionist propaganda over a SPlit vote is NOT about splitting the SNP vote. It is about splitting the Green vote.
That is why they say “another independence party” instead of “Green” because only a SNP/Green vote works on a tactical basis and if the Unionists can get half-wits to waste their alternative 2nd party vote for RISE or Solidarity, the Unionists win.
Vote SNP/SNP or SNP/Green. Your list vote has a realistic chance of counting in both these options. DO NOT vote for RISE or Solidarity if you want your vote to count.
Some great contributions on this thread. Thanks to HandandShrimp and crazycat in particular. The D’Hondt system was designed to confuse the voter and make it near impossible for the SNP to gain a majority. Thanks to Donald Dewar and Malcolm “God, I’m so bitter” Bruce.
We need to step back from gaming the system to remember what Macart said at 6.38pm.
Any reduction in the SNP vote will delay independence for years. I don’t have that time, like many people on here, I suspect. During the referendum I made many friends across the spectrum for Yes, people who worked their arse off and whom I respect. Once Independence has been achieved, we can all go rainbow and the SNP will inevitably wither as our nation grows into its bright new future.
For now, SNP x2 is the only game in town.
Telt ye yer chips where functioning exquisitely Tinto… 😉
Tinto, D’hondt really isn’t all that complex when the basic premise of the system is explained.
D’Hondt is designed to minimise “wasted” votes while remaining proportional. It does this using a reducing balance, so popular parties in the constituencies still have a chance of list seats while making it increasingly difficult for that to happen. On the flip side, it also makes it relatively easy for parties above the threshold (roughly 5.6%) to win a second seat.
In other words, (and being very rough with numbers), the SNP getting all constituencies in a region and 110,000 votes gives it a shot at 1 list seat, while the Greens getting no constituencies and 10,000 votes are likely to get a seat.
Where it really comes into play is when you move from 110k to 120k which cannot possibly provide a second list seat to the SNP, while moving from 10k to 20k for the Greens will is very likely to give them a second seat.
Grouse @6.56
Well said, and eloquent:)
SNP x 2
And as has been said by many, Green are at best luke warm on Independence. Don’t know why folk are hell bent on selling them as pro Indy.
Dair
I would agree that the splintering of the pro-Indy vote is an own goal especially over multiple parties using the D’Hondt system. How the hell do you second guess what everyone else is dong. At least with STV you can move your vote around.
I can understand the Greens who do have good support, particularly in the university centres of Edinburgh and Glasgow, wanting their members to vote Green and one would hope that they would support the SNP in the constituency vote where the Greens are not standing. I think the Greens stand a fair chance of picking up a few seats in these areas simply because their membership is strong there.
However, the media’s desire to over-emphasise the need to spread the list votes around looks suspicious. When did they ever give a damn about what is best for the pro-Indy camp? It smacks more of splitting with the hope of saving a few Labour and Tory list seats.
Somebody sent an alarming email to me today. If all the “maybe something else for list vote” were to vote SNP FPTP and Tory list vote it is likelier to wipe out Labour than any other choice.
SNP 1 and 2 is becoming more and more essential
Nicola Sturgeon has stated vote SNP x 2
quite right too
for the snp to do otherwise would bring down the wrath of the unionist media for trying to game the system
but i am not nicola, im schrodingers cat and i can say as i please
HandandShrimp
Yes it is suspicious and I am fairly certain it is purely an attempt to split the Green vote and not to split the SNP vote.
You don’t have to second guess, you use the polls to give you the required information and you leave it LATE, so any swings are taken into account. I won’t confirm my SNP/Green vote will the day before the election, to ensure that nothing strange is going on and to give the best chance of a second Green seat in Glasgow.
Unfortunately this will be unlikely because RISE and SOlidarity votes will probably leave the Greens a few hundred short of a second seat, letting Labour sneak am extra seat or possibly giving the Tories a second.
The core of my point though, is that if people with high profile pro-Indy blogs want to argue SNP/SNP then they should also be very clear that anyone not following their argument cannot vote for any other choice than Green on the list.
This is going to make my highly unpopular, but here goes.
You are absolutely right in your analysis, as always. Plus I don’t trust the Greens on independence, with individual exceptions (not including their leader, who I do not trust on the issue).
BUT in Glasgow you show the SNP getting no seats on the list. That is very probably correct.
IF SNP voters were to split their list vote between two other pro-Indy parties in Glasgow – lets say Solidarity and Rise – you would get three or probably four more pro-Indy MSPs at the expense of Labour and the Tory.
Exactly the same is true in NE Scotland, W of Scotland and elsewhere that you project nil list seats for SNP. Because by switching them they will not have any divider, those wasted votes could elect three or four other Indy MSPs.
If the SNP misses say one constituency in Glasgow, they could get it back on the list if everyone votes both votes SNP. But that is one seat set against three or four pro Indy MSPs if people switch on the list.
Sorry, but it is true. My interest is Independence, not a political party.
It’s getting really, really tedious listening to those go on and on about giving Greens a list vote.
In my area, Greens would like to halt new road building but we have had very little investment for 40+ years and desperately need infrastructure to let us bring in new jobs and people.
They seem to be big on cycling too, which is great, but with 15 miles to the nearest town, they won’t get any votes for that! 🙂
From the start the SNP has been good for us and they will be getting 1 and 2…
Total SNP vote of more than 50% is essential to keep the independence struggle on track.
Pro independence SNP supporters have only three choices:
SNP+SNP or SNP+SNP or SNP+SNP.
Craig,
Any vote for RISE or Solidarity is a wasted vote. ONLY a Green vote works as an alternative list vote ESPECIALLY in Glasgow where the Greens may end up just short of a second seat because of the couple of thousand voting for RISE and Solidarity combined.
Tactical voting does not work in huge numbers, it works at the margins, historically, you’ll seldom see more than 10% to 15% of a particular party’s vote showing signs of tactical voting. That means no “three or four” anywhere. It means one or two and the ONLY party which can collect those are the Greens.
They may only be luke warm on Indy. But they are replacing Tories, SLABbers and Fiberals who are ice cold on the issue.
I have been reading Wings for years (pre-ref) and contributed during the referendum period, but very rarely since but still believe this site is vital in achieving independence. This issue of tactical voting certainly seems to have split the Yes/indy camp into its political parts.
What made the Yes campaign work was the common goal of independence. Independence first, political aspirations second otherwise independence is a pipe dream and also the political aspirations of the smaller groups unlikely to be realised within the UK political set up.
It now appears that common goal is secondary and the aim of independence for some has died or their response to a second referendum is at best luke warm. To have come this far with the main goal in sight to potentially be thwarted by squabbling on how best to vote based on what the potential figures may be and the advice of the British MSM is very sad.
The yoons must be pissing themselves! Their greatest weapons were fear and doubt thus creating division (divide and rule) and they have played those cards again. All they ever had to do was create confusion and muddy the waters causing voters to become confused and switch off. Whether it is a winning hand remains to be seen.
I’m the first to admit my ignorance with regards to how the voting system works, even with the effort show in the many posts, however my goal is still to have an independent Scotland with a government that puts its people first. A government that is capable and trustworthy, a government that will fight Scotland’s corner. I don’t see any other groups or political parties, other than the SNP, achieving that so for me it is SNP 1 & 2, and I hope I’m right as the independence of our nation hangs in the balance!
Nice try, colonial media. But you will NOT split my vote. The election on May 5th is unfinished business.
I’ll be voting for the ONLY party whose priority is Scotland and not London.
SNP BOTH VOTES
Just SNP x 2. SNP x 2.
@ Dair
Twice now I’ve accidentally hit something and the post I was writing has vanished – the first time part of it then appeared and I double-posted. That may happen again now.
If not, what I was planning to say to you is:
Therein lies the problem (my emphasis).
A voter swithering between Green and SNP has to guess whether other voters have split 120/10 or 110/20.
There’s no way of knowing when a party has received “enough” votes for a particular outcome not only because the votes have not been counted, but also because subsequent voters can change the balance.
It was pointed out earlier that if Labour get no constituencies, once they get a list seat their vote is halved. The same applies to the Greens, whereas dividing a much larger number by 11 isn’t very different from dividing it by 10 (or 12).
Craig Murray,
“My interest is Independence, not a political party.”
Why did you then try to become an SNP MP and when they rejected you turned to attacking them at every opportunity like Jim Sillars?
You are doing a great job exposing the hypocrites of the world on your blog.
But on Scottish politics, your hatred of the SNP destroys your credibilty, as is the case with Jim Sillars.
Off topic – surely its time???
I’m still enjoying those south of our Borders dancing with temper at the ‘intervention’. Like when you have to make an intervention on a drunken relative at a wedding cos they are showing themselves up.
Shut up and Remain, ya bloody fool!!
The Australian is characterizing it as ‘Obama brings a gun to a knife fight’ over Brexit.
Bit near the knuckle, bit of black humour, but it made me smile. BoJo is on the ropes.
However, I think it might all just backfire on Hameron.
The ESTABLISHMENT is terrified of another referendum or the thought that the uppity jocks might just get to like deciding their own future. This is very evident when you see and hear the co-ordinated panic in their platoon commanders Davidson Dugdale & Wee Wullie all singing off a prepared song sheet and the EBC transmitting it loud and often. They are very very worried and therefor becoming very very DANGEROUS. God help us all if the SNP get an overall majority in this election they are panicking, a wounded animal is a dangerous adversary.
I think they are deluded that they can change anything by threats and nastiness. SNP X 2
“the reason there is a drop in the number of indy list msps is due to the increase in constituency msps”
Yes, of course that’s why there’s a drop in the number of *SNP* seats. Got any blinding revelations for us about the Pope’s religious inclinations?
@Rev Stu,“If you’re going to put your faith in numbers, it’s always worth doing your sums first.”
Ye ken fu weel Labour canna coont, the libDems tell arithmetical lies and the Tory lot are the ones wha inherited the D.Alexander calculator.
However, the media’s desire to over-emphasise the need to spread the list votes around looks suspicious. When did they ever give a damn about what is best for the pro-Indy camp? It smacks more of splitting with the hope of saving a few Labour and Tory list seats.
BBC Scotland endless going at ref 2 at us all probably aimed at hard core unionists too. Normal, or even worse, low unionist turn out May 5, against highly motivated YESers could favour SNP its so tight. BBC Project Fearing its own unionist viewers to get out the non existent ref 2, also very dirty BBC tricks. Or just straight forward political attack logic.
Pity about the Sunday Herald though.
How do you flip from full on backing for YES win 2014 to this weird flop back into unionist raw cunning, vote smaller parties for a better democracy in Scotland stuff? They can change their minds like everyone else I suppose.
Thanks, Dair: I see what you mean, but my point (poorly expressed) was that most voters haven’t a clue about the function of the “second vote”. Some see it as a consolation prize or as a wee flutter, like some Grand National punt.
To me the fact that MSM are pushing the vote Green/Rise/Solidarity button is a sure sign they are in the last ditch, and will do anything to stall the advance towards independence.
As I said elsewhere, if your left-wing or environmental convictions are your most important concern, vote that way.
Generally, If you wish to pave the way to independence, vote SNP twice.
K1: lost all my chips in The Corinthian last night!
😳
“And of course, why under a proportional system should the SNP have a majority without a majority of the vote? 50% is not a majority except under a FPTP multiparty constituency election.”
Er, no, but 50.1% is. What’s your point?
“Great, so what did it actually tell you?”
That even if the Green vote almost doubles – which is highly doubtful – it does precisely fuck-all to increase the number of pro-indy MSPs. All it does is replace some pro-indy MSPs with some different pro-indy MSPs.
I wasn’t really expecting to have to dumb this down.
What RISE and Solidarity need to ask themselves is this: “Do we want to be voting for RISE and Solidarity 25 or 30 years from now while still labouring under the frustration and disappointment heaped upon us by continuing Westminster rule, or should we waken up now to the importance of electing strong nationalist representation at Holyrood with the definite prospect of real representation in an independent Scotland for all parties which aim to serve the best interests of the people of Scotland?”
GET REAL – VOTE SNP X 2.
@ Tinto Chiel
Misunderstanding the function of the list vote (it’s a great pity the term “second” vote has gained currency) is a real problem – though I have no idea how widespread it is.
Anyone regarding it as a second preference will be susceptible to Labour’s telling them it’s illegal to vote for the same party twice (do they state that that only applies to the SNP, risking looking blatantly partisan, or do they generalize and risk losing their own list votes, which if they fail to win constituencies could come back to bite them?).
After the election I think there should be a concerted effort to inform people (they may not listen, of course), since I believe the electoral system is reserved even after the latest table-crumbs are distributed.
Perhaps you could show the result of what would happen if the results in the table 1 that you should were changed where the greens hit 10% at the expense of the SNP dropping to 44% in the list vote.
In the interests of fairness this should be shown to give people a better picture of the D’hondt system used.
Watching that Kezia Dugdale interview again from this morning. She goes round in circles trying to emphasise her loyalty to the Union.
It struck me how similar it was, in tone, to the stance that Ed Miliband took about not making any deals with the SNP.
From seeming like a person who could make pragmatic decisions based on the pasting her party took and the betrayal many ex Slab voters felt, she has gone full Yoon.
She and Ruth seem to be competing for the hard core Loyalist vote. It was incredibly frustrating watching her duck and dive to avoid any Indy sympathy whatsoever. Who advises these people?
I did feel a wee bit sorry for her a while ago but now, honestly she deserves everything coming to her. It is all a game to Slab.
Also can anyone explain why being a socialist stops you from being a nationalist – without invoking Godwin’s law?
Honestly, why does being a sovereign state stop you from expressing and giving support to other socialist nations?
Yes, of course that’s why there’s a drop in the number of *SNP* seats
the pope was catholic last time i looked
thing is stu, your figures proport to explain why voting snp1&2 everywhere makes sense when your figures show the complete opposite in 5 of the 8 region, where voting snp1&oip2 is the correct option
fife&mid
snp1&greens2
feel free to explain why not?
living at the arse end of an uncollapsed 11th dimensional quantum probability wave, help me understand basic arithmetic and the Holyrood electoral system.
Not sure Kezia has gone full Yoon. I think she has had a skelping not unlike poor Wendy got and has been told to re-define her position for the confused (but ever decreasing) Labour voters.
If there is Brexit and the EU, in a fit of pique, said our place is good to stay in then watch this space.
@crazycat:
Amen to all that, although I hope in the long term there is a move towards a true PR system, because most folk on the doorstep don’t have a clue about the voting system and this is being exploited by both right and left in the opposition parties.
Being optimistic, I hope we’ll be out of this infernal Union before the next SP elections.
In Mid-Scotland and Fife a SNP/Green vote has a very, very good chance of dethroning Willie Rennie.
For example, when the Greeks were being stitched up had Scotland been independent within Europe we could have expressed an albeit small voice of support to their case.
As it was any support the SG voiced was drowned out by the stance the UK government took.
shrodinger’s cat, The lie in the media is the one you repeat here, that SNp/OIP is a choice. It is not. There are two choices depending on your point of view.
SNP/SNP
SNP/Green
Any vote for RISE or Solidarity is a vote for Unionists.
That even if the Green vote almost doubles – which is highly doubtful – it does precisely fuck-all to increase the number of pro-indy MSPs. All it does is replace some pro-indy MSPs with some different pro-indy MSPs.
I wasn’t really expecting to have to dumb this down.
by your own figures, a 3k increase in fife&mid to greens means the tories/libdems lose the 7th seat to the greens
unionist gets replaced by greens, not the otherway round as you state
“In 2011, the SNP won 53 constituency seats as well as 16 regional list seats. However, on the basis of YOUR OWN PROJECTION, they would win 69 seats.”
“You are comparing List totals in 2011 where the SNP won 56 Constituency Seats with List totals for 2016 where the SNP are projecting 68 seats.”
If you two could learn to read (and one of you could learn to count) it’d be a real big help. See all those places in the article where it says “list”? Those all mean “list”. If I mean “constituency”, I say “constituency”.
I’m obviously going to have to spell it out because we clearly have some slow readers here:
THE POINT IS THAT WHERE THE GREENS TAKE LIST SEATS FROM A SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED VOTE, THEY TAKE THEM FROM THE SNP, NOT THE UNIONIST PARTIES. THE IDEA THAT IT CREATES EXTRA PRO-INDY MSPS IS BULL.
We stacked everything in the Greens’ favour. We gave the SNP more constituencies than they’ll probably win. We assumed a uniform vote share when in fact even on these numbers the Green vote will probably be concentrated in the urban areas and fall well short in the rest. We ignored the considerable likelihood that the polls are understating SNP list votes and overstating Green ones.
And still the Greens only got seats because the SNP – not the Unionist parties – lost them.
“In Mid-Scotland and Fife a SNP/Green vote has a very, very good chance of dethroning Willie Rennie.”
Er, yes. That’s what it says in the article.
“My fellow Scots, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
The next indyref will be called when a good 60% or more of the country is pro-independence.
Even if the SNP happened at that stage to be in a minority government, 60% of the country wanting indy could not be ignored.
THAT is what will give us indy — far more than a majority SNP government and the numbers still hanging around the 50% mark.
So how is this done? It is done, by YOU, reader. Get out canvassing or working the phone lines or whatever your local SNP branch gets up to.
It is not some “Nicola” or “SNP” who will magic up these numbers. It is pro-indy citizens talking and persuading their fellow citizens, using the right arguments.
So let’s put in the hours. If you need some motivation, just think of the joy of hearing of Jackie Bird’s resignation as she moves to England in a major strop just to avoid covering the Indy Party following a YES vote…
Becoming very clear after reading the above, plus Mhari Black in the Sunday Herald
We have to vote SNP 1 & 2
This is The message we have to get out to all Independence supporters.
Both The Sunday Herald and the National have done their best to diminish the SNP’s List vote.
Rev Stu, no they don’t.
You are talking like they are independent functions when one is very much dependent on the other. Both the SNP and the Greens take seats from Unionists. Hence the Unionist seat total (constituency and list) drops while the SNP/Green total rises by TWELVE seats.
Eleven of those Twelve seats come from Unionist parties (the twelth being that of the sadly departed Margo).
This piece is disappointing, you don’t specifically mention the constituency totals which is the sort of obfuscation you are so good at highlighting in the MSM.
“by your own figures, a 3k increase in fife&mid to greens means the tories/libdems lose the 7th seat to the greens”
What on Earth are you wittering about? On the figures above for MS&F the Greens are 12,000 votes short of taking the 7th seat, not 3000.
dair
im not a liar
i merely point out the case for voting green in fife/mid region, where i live
rise and solidarity are only unionists in an alternate universe inhabited by David Icke, shape-shifting reptilian aliens and various other fox hunting fraternities
“This piece is disappointing, you don’t specifically mention the constituency totals which is the sort of obfuscation you are so good at highlighting in the MSM.”
I’m going to run out of patience very soon now. You’re talking about an entirely different article you WISH I’d written, not the one I actually did. If you want that article written, write it yourself.
I very clearly point out how many constituencies the SNP are being predicted to get, and I point out that it’s a majority.
We have to bear in mind that this system is a bugger to game. It was intended to be a bugger to game. The architects set out with the intent of trying to ensure that an SNP majority was not possible.
The fact that the SNP broke the system in 2011 had them scurrying back to the drawing board.
If this whole thing is making your head ache just remember it was meant to make your head ache.
You misunderstand me, schrodinger.
It’s not you that is a liar, it is the MSM who are promoting “Other Independence Party” as if all choices are equal. The only viable alternative is Green. Another vote is wasted.
Voting RISE or Solidarity being a vote for Unionists is not because those parties are Unionist, it is because voting for them gives seats to the Tories, Labour and Fiberals.
“IF SNP voters were to split their list vote between two other pro-Indy parties in Glasgow – lets say Solidarity and Rise – you would get three or probably four more pro-Indy MSPs at the expense of Labour and the Tory.”
Yes. But the point is they’re not going to. There’s no point indulging in fantasies about parties currently registering <1% in the polls. That's why this article is specifically focused on what the polls tell us is actually at least fairly likely to happen.
🙂 Quiet Sunday!
BBC, Herald and the Other parties swing the fob watch on the chain… tick! tock!
Watch the watch…vote Rise or Solidarity or even Green…watch the watch! You will wake up in Yootopia when I snap my fingers.
If they say that it is for a reason. They are shitting themselves because Scotland moves a little bit further away from the UKOK.
Might even be a referendum and a way out of the asylum
SNP x 2 and a listen to Simon and Garfunkel.
We can sort it all out after independence.
“thing is stu, your figures proport to explain why voting snp1&2 everywhere makes sense”
Do they? You’re going to have to point me to where I say anything even remotely close to that.
I’m really, really at the end of my tether with people making up stuff I haven’t said and then telling me I did. Watch your step.
the Greens are 12,000 votes short of taking the 7th seat, not 3000.
your figures show the greens winning seat 4 with 20k votes, after which this number would be halved 10k
within touching distance of the tory vote in the region and the 7th seat
why would you argue and witter against something for no gain?
your figures accept that the snp will win no list msps in this region?
Dair says:
24 April, 2016 at 7:58 pm
Craig,
Any vote for RISE or Solidarity is a wasted vote. ONLY a Green vote works as an alternative list vote ESPECIALLY in Glasgow where the Greens may end up just short of a second seat because of the couple of thousand voting for RISE and Solidarity combined.
——-
When you look at the figures this is the harsh, brutal truth.
Perhaps if these two parties had got their act together, they might have a chance of scraping a couple of seats. But they didn’t, and they will pay the price for that mistake.
They point to the polls to persuade SNP supporters to lend them their list vote, but the same polls show they are nowhere in sight!! In reality, they will split the same 1-2% of the votes between them. All wasted votes if you support independence.
At least the Greens have a chance.
But I’ll be giving it SNPx2 because I don’t want to take any risks. That is what worked last time, and as an SNP supporter I don’t want to vote for the opposition.
IMO, The best path to independence is down the middle of the road – attracting support from ALL sides – not just the far left.
Greens were against the new Forth road bridge. Greens cost taxpayers tens of millions of pounds by holding up the Aberdeen bypass. They campaigned against the Andy Murray tennis centre using exaggerated outdated information. They are against attracting more international tourism to Scotland by air.
IMO, the SNP has a far more sensible and pragmatic balance between the environment, jobs and investment.
I appreciate you might well just ban me if we don’t agree, after all you did block me on twitter for a joke about football.
The only point I am making is that you are very clear about “losses” when in fact the numbers you present are a net gain of twelve seats (5 for the SNP, 7 for Greens) but exclude the Constituency numbers to get the desired result for the article.
This is exactly the thing you highlight in the MSM and makes this site so good. I don’t recall any piece you’ve ever done which appeared to do this before now.
While we are complaining about what the article doesn’t do can I point out that it didn’t make me a cup of tea.
I’ll get me coat.
“On the flip side, it also makes it relatively easy for parties above the threshold (roughly 5.6%) to win a second seat.
In other words, (and being very rough with numbers), the SNP getting all constituencies in a region and 110,000 votes gives it a shot at 1 list seat, while the Greens getting no constituencies and 10,000 votes are likely to get a seat.
Where it really comes into play is when you move from 110k to 120k which cannot possibly provide a second list seat to the SNP, while moving from 10k to 20k for the Greens will is very likely to give them a second seat.”
Fucksake. This couldn’t be more wrong if it tried.
D’Hondt makes it relatively easy for small parties to get ONE list seat. It makes it MUCH harder for them to get a SECOND one, because if a big party gets loads of constituencies but then gets a list seat too, their vote hardly goes down at all for the next round, whereas the Green vote gets cut in half the second they win their first one.
(This, I believe, is partly to incentivise parties to contest constituencies in the first place.)
“but exclude the Constituency numbers to get the desired result for the article”
Seriously, don’t push your luck. The constituency outcome is CLEARLY STATED in the article. Every region’s entry starts by noting the exact number of constituency seats won, and the closing section points out that the SNP get their majority from constituency seats. This, however, is an article about the LIST outcome.
That’s a warning.
We’re not going to go into it in depth, as James Kelly on Scot Goes Pop! has already had a close look and made a pretty fair assessment.
point to me where kelly has ever advocated anything other than snp1&2?
And what we find is that a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in FIVE FEWER pro-independence MSPs on the list.
a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in ONE more pro-independence MSP on the list in fife&mid
The SNP have asked us for both votes, it couldn’t be clearer
the UK the Media, both TV and Print are dying for the vote share of the SNP to go down and if it does they will pump it out on an hourly basis that the desire for Independence is diminishing
All these folks that are scrabbling around for votes for other entities are a distraction, it’s all about the amount of votes, not who the opposition is whether favourable to Indy or not
This idea being touted around about it’ll stop a Labour or a Tory or whoever is completely immaterial
This election for the SNP is like a mini ref and if the count is up it gives the SNP a base to start from
Most folk on here probably know I’ve no time for the Greens or any of the other parties so I’m not going to bang on about it here just to say that many people think the SNP is this big powerful machine and it is, but only in Scotland, compared to the Westminster army we’re kinda small and we’ve seen that in our MPs bad treatment down there
We all know when it comes to it, our political fight will be against all three of the UKs parties, not even counting the Scottish opposition, just the same as before and that’s an enormous battle
The other parties are only being used by the media to dilute the vote and nothing more, in political terms they don’t exist, the SNP have only just started to exist themselves and Westminster still believes they can be crushed
A vote for any other party will be seen as a vote against the SNP and Independence and used accordingly
I’m Bias, Partisan and all of those things towards the SNP but Independence is my main reason for saying this stuff
I don’t hate any of these other guys or anything, it’s just at the moment they’re irrelevant and in the way
Ooh-er, bit of a stushie, eh?
Never mind – every cloud has a silver proverbial: NCN is having an unexpected night-off because we’re doing his job for him.
“a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in ONE more pro-independence MSP on the list in fife&mid”
No, it doesn’t. They gain one and the SNP lose one, net result 0. Say that again without explaining it and it’s hammer time.
“point to me where kelly has ever advocated anything other than snp1&2?”
I don’t give a fuck what James Kelly’s said about voting. I was talking about his assessment of the Sunday Herald article. You accused ME of saying something I didn’t say and I’d prefer it if you retracted the falsehood.
The movement of seats from SNP to Green – rather than from unionist to Green – described in the projection above is what happened in practice at the only other Holyrood election where the smaller parties made an impact – 2003.
Of course that was in the context of a likely repeat of the Labour-LibDem coalition, and nobody was describing parties as pro- or anti-independence as their main characteristic.
People were either actively looking for greater diversity or just liked the policies of the Greens and SSP. But was the SNP, not Labour, whose MSPs they replaced. To some extent that was a consequence of the SNP being better-represented on the list than in the constituencies.
But it still shows, I think, what happens if you move votes from the SNP, rather than from Labour or the LibDems (who probably don’t have many left to lose). It has almost no effect on the number of unionist MSPs.
The only way to get rid of unionist MSPs is to convince people not to vote for them, so that the percentage of MSPs they are entitled to by virtue of their vote is drastically reduced. If they get down to LibDem levels, their support will be in the critical zone where they might not get any at all in some regions.
Not only is that more effective, it’s also more honest and noticeably not what the MSM are promoting.
@Ian Brotherhood
Ach! Commentators blight… 🙂
Mind it takes two to play tennis if anyone asks.
Anyhoo! Turned out nice again eh… eh…? 🙂
Clydebuilt,
“Both The Sunday Herald and the National have done their best to diminish the SNP’s List vote.”
They are unionist papers and they DO NOT support independence.
Their “pro independence” stand is simply window dressing to milk the more gullible independence supporters.
Don’t trust the Greens, RISE, The National or The Sunday Herald on independence.
For those of you that want to play with numbers, here’s the calculator on the d’hondt website:
http://www.dhondt.eu/php/
It will be appreciated by most people on here if you don’t post your random numbers results.
Just use it for your own small amusement – PLEASE.
i didnt say it
you did
snp won one list msp in the region in 2011, as you correctly point out with the snp (-1) in your article
but it is the 7th list seat that the snp are now fighting for but failing to win due to them winning 9/9 and not the 8/9 constituencies as per 2011
this is why the snp have lost I msp on the list
the 7th seat will go to the tories or wullie rennie unless the greens pick up more votes
I’ve been at a number of pro-indy events in Glasgow since September 2014 – BBC Bias rallies and various rallies in George Square. Tommy Sheridan has always appeared to be well received.
Serious question…
Does Tommy Sheridan have a large enough PERSONAL support in Glasgow to become the Joker in the woodpile and get in with a regional seat?
Are there enough Solidarity supporters in Glasgow to achieve this, or would it require supporters of other pro-indy parties to vote Solidarity in the regional vote?
Also, as others have pointed out,in the 2011 election, the SNP won every seat in the North East Scotland region and still managed to win the last regional seat.
If the Labour and Lib-Dem support is waning, why should the SNP not achieve that feat this time? The only reason I can think of is that some SNP supporters may be tempted to move their regional vote to the Greens.
As I’ve typed before, any reduction in the SNP voting totals would be seized upon by the Yoon media to prove that the desire for independence was dead.
Do we feel lucky?
schrodinger wrote And what we find is that a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in FIVE FEWER pro-independence MSPs on the list.
Yes. On the list. Which takes into account Constituencies.
Overall, the SNP GAIN 5 seats, the Greens GAIN 7 seats. Unionists LOSE 11 seats. The list is not separate from the constituencies, it is dependent on the constituency results.
apologies if i have given offense
none intended
i am simply arguing about arithmatic and the holyrood electoral system which i believe that the indy movement would gain by if people in fife&mid vote
snp1&green2
“the 7th seat will go to the tories or wullie rennie unless the greens pick up more votes”
For. Fuck’s. Sake.
This article is expressly and explicitly based on THE CURRENT POLLING. On the current polling it goes to the Tories. For the Greens to take it instead they’d need to get 1.8x their 2011 vote AND THEN ANOTHER 12,000 ON TOP.
On the current polling it’s a net neutral outcome for pro-indy MSPs. If you want to write an article about what happens if the Greens get a billion trillion votes everywhere, knock yourself out, but it’s not what this bloody one is about.
Brian wrote Does Tommy Sheridan have a large enough PERSONAL support in Glasgow to become the Joker in the woodpile and get in with a regional seat?
No, he doesn’t. Even combined, Solidarity and RISE will poll less than 3% in Glasgow and less than 2% in ALL other constituencies. Any vote for RISE or Solidarity is completely wasted. If you choose to split your vote, the only viable option is the Greens.
Why are people really concerned about wiping out the yoons, when it is clear that the yoons cannot be wiped out completely anyway? Surely the main objective, the only important objective at this stage, is to render them powerless and ensure Nicola Sturgeon is re-elected as FM of a SNP majority government?
Whilst wiping out the yoons seems a great idea, it is not necessary and far too risky.
“Why are people really concerned about wiping out the yoons, when it is clear that the yoons cannot be wiped out completely anyway?”
Well, indeed. We pointed this out in the last article on the subject:
http://wingsoverscotland.com/five-hard-facts-about-the-election/
“a very significant swing towards the Greens in the list vote actually results in ONE more pro-independence MSP on the list in fife&mid”
No, it doesn’t. They gain one and the SNP lose one, net result 0. Say that again without explaining it and it’s hammer time.
giving all 9 constituencies to the snp results in them loosing a seat and the greens gaining one, this would have happened in 2011 if the snp had won all 9 and not 8
im merely pointing out that an increase in the green vote this time would mean them picking up the 7th seat as well. this would be a gain however you calculate it
were the snp votes to rise significantly as well then this 7th seat would fall to them, but any rise to win the 7th seat would be divided by 10,
far less likely
There is only one game in town, which benefits everyone, and that is SNP x 2, getting that majority is the be all and end all, anything else is just narrow minded self interest.
This article is expressly and explicitly based on THE CURRENT POLLING.
correct
but plenty of comments below the line arguing for snp1&2 or other based on your article
why is this a problem?
“Why are people really concerned about wiping out the yoons, when it is clear that the yoons cannot be wiped out completely anyway?”
cant see anyone here saying they can wipe out the unionists completely, never happen,
cant see how this excludes people for arguing to try and remove one or 2 of them?
Never actually seen anyone killed with hammers…yet.
the reason i think rennie will win 7th seat
1. these figures are extrapolated from scotland wide polls, no poll has been conducted only in fife&mid
2. I live next to wullie rennie in this region
3. Rennie has spent a fortune here (probably the money gifted by the rowentree thingy) 9 leaflets, all posted by the royal mail, £1500 for each leaflet in the nef constituency alone.
4. i doubt the libdems have spent 1 brass penny in glasgow
@call me dave –
Funny you should mention tennis.
As it happens, I spent most of today watching a tennis tournament with my boy, and we witnessed one of the most blatant displays of cheating either of us has seen in over eight years of full-on involvement.
No names here, but anyone who was there saw what happened, and it was nasty stuff. The cheat used every trick in the book to unsettle the opponent – histrionics, distraction, verbal and physical intimidation, taunting spectators, contempt for the officials, blatantly outrageous line-calls…it was all there.
And guess what?
The cheat won by the narrowest possible margin.
We may not have perfect knowledge of whatever forces are working against the people of Scotland, but we can glean clues from viewing how the SNP is treated, and it ain’t pretty. The extent to which the ‘small’ parties have (unwittingly or not) become entangled in grander strategies will become visible after the results are in.
Only ten days to go. In the meantime, this bickering over ‘known unknowns’ is as tedious as it is pointless, and the ‘cheats’ are working full-time, unseen, unheard, unaccountable, with huge resources, to get the result they want.
SPLITTERS!
SNPX2 until we get independence. Then we can all vote for whoever we like. Eyes on the prize, people. Eyes on the prize.
Any doubts I had about SNPX2 were dispelled by a run-in I had with a notorious, SNP-hating, unionist troll on the Guardian forums. This guy claims to be a Green but only SLabbers HATE the SNP and independence as much as this guy does – about 200 posts a day, all of them rabid rants against “thoughtless SNP followers.” Oh, and he LOVES this place – “Wings Over Bath he hee-lariously calls it.
Anywho, this guy was SO determined that SNPX2 is a wasted vote, so insistent that us “thoughtless SNP followers” should vote for someone else, for anyone else, and was utterly, relentlessly obnoxious and needlessly confrontational about it, that he made me suspicious and all the more determined to vote SNPX2. Talk about self-defeating. They never learn, do they?
Labour knows that SNP supporters won’t be voting for them on the list, but they do seem to be absolutely determined that we vote for anyone else. Like someone else said, if the unionist press is cynically telling us not to vote SNPX2 then we should do the exact opposite!
Wiping out unionists, well yes but!
I am a democrat, and as such I don’t want to wipe out anymore, but I do wish to persuade and convert. It’s interesting to read America history after the war of independence, in forging a nation they didn’t wipe out the pro British, but assimilated them. For them resistance was futile.
Sorry came over all Borg there, my chip must be picking up some strange imperative.
SNP x 2 Ad infinitum, and beyond!
@ schrodingers cat
In 2011, the Lib Dems were reduced to 5 MSPs, losing all their representatives in 4 of the 8 regions because they were being punished for going into coalition with the Tories at Westminster and their vote-share plummeted, not because people got lucky voting tactically for the Greens.
To get the increase you want for Greens in MS&F, you have to convince a substantial number of people, who then have to carry out their intention.
It might work. Convincing people not to vote Lib/Lab/Con must work – if they don’t get the votes, they don’t get the seats, and it can’t back-fire because they can’t get more seats than their vote entitles them to, on the list. (If no-one’s voting for them, they can’t be over-represented via the constituencies, either.)
People I know in Rise, Solidarity and the Greens claim they are targeting unionist voters, but they are drowning that out with their calls for tactical votes, making much of their pro-indy credentials in some cases, which might not be the best way to attract those unionist voters.
Sorry, I meant to add: SLabour know that SNP supporters won’t vote for them on the list, but they are absolutely determined that they vote for ANYONE else cos that is their only hope now. That’s how utterly desperate they are. How devious, conniving and underhand. That’s how far the once mighty Labour party has fallen in Scotland. Pitiful. They really aren’t worth a piss.
We’re coming up to the big match day and Scotland have won all their games so far and whit happens
Sumdy wants tae change the team, how about bringin in a couple of players fae Third Lanark they’ve done well this season and deserve a chance
And once again Scotland loses by the odd goal because they didnae unite behind the team that wiz winnin
And the crowd went daft and wantit the manager sacked
The England players knew it wiz all over….Again
Scotland the comedy act..I’m done
@Andrew Maclean
History often repeats itself, those Americans who supported the British were called Tories; not all were assimilated, those that went to Canada became known as United Empire Loyalists.
Rev
Can you do the numbers for 54% constituency and 54% list by way of comparasion??
heedtracker says:
24 April, 2016 at 8:09 pm
However, the media’s desire to over-emphasise the need to spread the list votes around looks suspicious. When did they ever give a damn about what is best for the pro-Indy camp?
Ruby replies
Good question!
I am so glad that I have already made up my mind how I’m going to vote & I don’t have to give the voting system any further thought!
@Dr Jim –
This may be small consolation, but please haud yer horses until May 7th and the blood-letting begins.
It’ll last a good few months, but at the end of it the whole landscape will have changed again.
Heids are gonny roll…
“Does Tommy Sheridan have a large enough PERSONAL support in Glasgow to become the Joker in the woodpile and get in with a regional seat?”
I think he might have had a chance if it wasn’t for RISE competing for the same small slice of the ‘radical’ left vote.
As things stand, I have a feeling they will end up getting around 2-3% of the vote each in Glasgow.
That’s 6% of the vote completely wasted when it comes to electing a pro-indy MSP
The unionist parties would love it if RISE/Solidarity got 4-5% of the vote each in Glasgow, resulting in up to 10% wasted votes.
Greens do have a better chance, but that could just mean a Green MSP replacing the SNP for the final list seat. (I think that Patrick Harvie could split the vote in Kelvin, allowing Labour in)
Personally I would prefer another SNP politician rather than a Green.
Try a Greens multiplier of 3 or more and you will see that SNP1/Greens2 is the optimal voting option if you want to maximise the number of indy MSP’s AND avoid another unionist opposition; i.e. Greens become the opposition! After winning most of the constituencies, any SNP list vote is really a waste of a vote AND guarantees another unionist opposition.
Someone post something stupid below this line. I dare you.
——————————————————————————-
And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “I love you”
Here ye go.
Please, don’t mention it.
Nicole Kidman/Robbie Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiocpD2TVuI
Apparently Davidson has decided that giving the SNP a mandate to use there judgement to call another referendum or not doesn’t count. Something that might be more convincing if there’s a chance of claiming any SNP majority is the result of an attempt to gain electoral advantage through unfair means. God help us if there’s an SNP / Green coalition because of the same.
Add to that the doublethink of disclaiming any legitimacy the Greens would have when the HoL stomp on any attempts at reaching a state where Scotland might actually become an exporter of renewable or low carbon energy.
Finally I’m not sure there’s anything Holyrood can do I an excuse is found to overhaul it’s electoral system. Would we, or Holyrood, even get a say or a referendum or would it be changed by dictat?
We seriously need as close to or over 50% in both constituency and list votes for the SNP. Possibly a clear suspicion that the Green vote were pro independence in the main might help. Even should the elected MSPs be against independence when the time is right the tactic being attempted to get the votes that put them their means that is highly probable.
We also need as high a turn out as possible so the unionists can’t lay claim to uncast votes.
SNP x 2 in May
@Ruby –
🙂
We must be on the same wavelength.
Hmmmm…
*TWIRLS IMAGINARY MOUSTACHE*
What’s your star sign?
🙂
Ian Brotherhood says:
24 April, 2016 at 10:37 pm
@Ruby –
🙂
We must be on the same wavelength.
Hmmmm…
*TWIRLS IMAGINARY MOUSTACHE*
What’s your star sign?
🙂
Ruby replies
http://tinyurl.com/6lpvayo
For those of us that like a bit of music wi placards of where tae vote SNP x 2:
‘Jock’s Revenge’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6UabZV94is
😆
Kezia Dugdale
Ruby @ 10.32 Love it!
Dr Jim @ 8.57
Well said! Been arguing that myself – the more votes the SNP get the better.
SNP x 2 EU Remain.
PS Someone asked in the last thread if Lab were doing street stalls.
Was on the SNP stall in Clydebank yesterday: 3 each manning the Lab and Green stalls. We easily outnumbered them with at least 7 even when we had some off leafleting and a couple in the shop. Lab shop was closed. The Lab stall only had leaflets: we had balloons, windmills, key rings, pens, posters and NS for FM shopping bags which went down a treat.
I’ll sat it again:
SNP x 2 EU Remain.
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
24 April, 2016 at 10:29 pm
Someone post something stupid below this line. I dare you.
——————————————————————————-
Something stupid
Sorry Rev…..I couldn’t resist it!
I knew somebody would say something stupid! Och! 😉
Chin up Aberdeen can still win the league..
O/T Looking like job losses on the way from BHS, that includes Scotland, administration being talked about as soon as tomorrow 🙁
A wee OT story to remind everyone what being in this Union can mean for some Scots.
100 years ago on this day, my great uncle John Murphy, a ploughman from Muirkirk, died fighting the Turks in Egypt. Here’s his grave situated by the Suez Canal …
http://twgpp.org/information.php?id=2239616
He volunteered and joined the Ayr battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. They embarked for the Mediterranean from Liverpool on the Maurtania arriving at Mudros 29th May 1915. On 6th June they landed at Gallipoli. He survived a hellish battle of Achi Baba Nullah, 12-13 July.
In January 1916 the Royal Scots Fusiliers were evacuated from Gallipoli to Egypt. On 2 March they took over section of the Suez Canal defences along the edge of the Sinai.
The small oasis of Dueidar was held by 156 men; 120 from the 1/5th Battalion. They were a long way from the farmlands, factories and coal mines of Ayrshire. On the morning of 23th April 1916 the Turks attacked in force. The Scots held off the assault until relieved by Australian Light Horse at 13:30. This action was part of the wider Battle of Katia. They sustained 55 casualties and John Murphy died of wounds received in battle next day on the 24th April 1916.
Onwards wrote Greens do have a better chance, but that could just mean a Green MSP replacing the SNP for the final list seat. (I think that Patrick Harvie could split the vote in Kelvin, allowing Labour in)
This is SNP propaganda as bad as anything the Unionists throw out.
Harvie will finish a strong second in Kelvin but still well behind the SNP. Labour are extinct in seats like Kelvin, any Urban seat with a heavy student vote will never see Labour do well again. Arguing that voting for Harvie is somehow detrimental to the SNP is utter nonsense.
Note this – the result of Kelvin will be SNP 48%, Green 23%, SLAB 16%, Tory 8%, Fiberal 5%.
This entire thread shows why, if you want to vote at all, vote for what you believe in, and vote for the government you want.
I believe in independence, and i want an SNP majority.
If I cannot get that voting SNP x 2, then it ain’t worth having.
Yawn, well I will just vote SNP x 2.
That is me sorted, no need to trawl through all this bickering stuff, simples.
@Ruby –
Soo-perb. 🙂
I remember that track well, I used to hum it all day whilst completing rudimentary tasks in nursery school…
I’m a Gemini, but I don’t know if that means I’m in the ‘Age of Aquarius’ or not. During my brief stay in Japan I was informed I was a ‘Rabbit’. Nowadays, here in Ayrshire I’m known locally as ‘yon fekking Weegie socialist daftie’.
Anyone remember the soul song (late 70’s?) where the singers declare their star-sign before giving it some sweet love-talkin’?…I’ve asked this before, and got the answer, but never kept the link.
‘Hi….I’m Norsewarrior…Leo…love to fight for love, and love to fight…’
That typa stuff…
Cuppa tea fadder. SNP 1 & 2. Oh aye an the BBC can stick their Tim Peake where the sun don’t shine…is it just me?
Willie Rennie got hammered ar the St Andrews hustings run by the Courier, and chaired by the Courier. No mention of the hustings in the Courier.
Willie Rennie cancels hustings in Strathmiglo and sends some unknown women.
Nicola Sturgeon visits the hub in Cupar on Friday past and recommends everyone canvassing and leafleting to push BothVotesSNP.
That’s good enough for me!
…. and, when I’m in historical mood, the Easter Rising took place today one 100 years ago today on 24th April 1916.
A different time, perhaps, but Scotland certainly does not want to repeat any of Ireland’s experiences!
I am sure we can do it democratically and peacefully.
“This is SNP propaganda as bad as anything the Unionists throw out.
Harvie will finish a strong second in Kelvin but still well behind the SNP. Labour are extinct in seats like Kelvin,”
The SNP won by just 882 votes in 2011. If Harvie takes a few thousand votes they’ll mostly come from the SNP, and if Tories and Lib Dems vote tactically for Labour it’s ABSOLUTELY possible that the Nats could lose the seat as a result. (Especially as Sandra White’s been involved in some controversy.)
Ruby says:
24 April, 2016 at 10:24 pm
heedtracker says:
24 April, 2016 at 8:09 pm
Tory britnat BBC boosting tiny far left groups in their non existent Scotland region is really dirty but exat same crew of shysters managed to get hand us a Scottish UKIP MEP. BBC tv massive boosterising for Farage and co reached hysteria for last EU elections clearly to break into their Scotland region and their doing it with RISE.
Its hard to forget the excitement and thrill of Jim Naughty as Coburn’s win came in via r4 EU election night coverage. So here we go again. Its likely Coburn didn’t even live in Scotland, UKIP’s a far right English nationalist outfit so fcuk knows what the EU must have thought when Coburn turned up in Brussels, with his kilt and brilliant mind.
Coburn turning up in Brussels is like Rangers fans getting into Europe. We cover our eyes and hope they don’t shame us. But they always do.
Rev Stu, I gave my prediction, I am very, very confident that it will be right. There is no danger of the SNP losing Kelvin and no danger of Harvie not coming second.
This is not 2011. Turnout will be around 32k with Greens on 7k, Labour on 5k, SNP on 15k
Ian Brotherhood
As in Hi, I’m Ruth and I’m Taurus the bull – the Floaters ‘ float on ‘
By the way, at the roundabout heading onto the A9 at Dunblane, could whoever put the signs up for ‘ Ruth Davidson for a strong opposition’ could you make them slightly bigger? Not sure that guy in space can quite see them.
Very off putting for drivers to see that looming up in the dark although pretty sure Ruthies not standing for election in Stirling or anywhere near there .
…FFS, this is total brain-fuck stuff…
Can anyone please tell us, straight-up, nae shite…
…Is Willie Rennie still gonny be there for the next four years?
Can anyone just tell us the truth?
Please?
@Molly –
🙂
Soo-perb.
Cheers aplenty, and here it is:
The Floaters, ‘Float On’ –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZklwTGZutc
https://caltonjock.com/2016/04/24/homeland-security-uk-style-counter-terrorism-strategy-information-is-widely-available-get-reading/
Red A-Dair: “This is SNP propaganda as bad as anything the Unionists throw out.”
What does that mean? It’s not up to their standard? Is it propaganda as information, or propaganda calculated to mislead? Is it propaganda at all? Do Unionists ‘throw’ out propaganda? Or do they target their quarry with precision?
It’s all too much of a conundrum on a Sunday night.
@Dr Jim
Gaun yersel! Couldn’t agree more with your posts. Don’t see any other party in Scotland whose founding principle is independence. Without it no meaningful change can happen.
As for the post re SNP being centre right, what complete tosh. Apart from the things listed by others, the SNP have mitigated the worst of Tory policies eg bedroom tax while labour voted through some appalling welfare changes or else sat on their hands. Gie’s a brek!!
He claimed that Harvie could split the vote in Kelvin and let Labour win it. Labour who will get 16% of the vote. Somehow splitting the near 50% vote of the SNP to let Labour win.
It’s a nonsense and could only come from the ill informed, the half-witted or from party propaganda.
@Ian I think the song is Float on…by the Floaters!
Oh Rev what controversy is she involved in, systematic child abuse covered up by the state propagandists, decades long misappropriation of tax receipts, sticking her cock into a dead pigs mouth? Actually scrub the last one, more properly as a female having sex with the corpse of a dead animal? No, what about lying when a government minister, to discredit the leader of a devolved government, saying you’re against student fees, then when in government liking the state car better? Or just having a fucking laugh when contractors build schools that are so badly built, it’s a miracle no children were murderd by labour?
Just asking!
old dearie wrote Gaun yersel! Couldn’t agree more with your posts. Don’t see any other party in Scotland whose founding principle is independence. Without it no meaningful change can happen.
While I am still fairly sure the SNP are the best method of Independence, we should be fairly sure that they have FAILED the Independence movement by their refusal to require an Independence Referendum in the next parliament.
Why? Why would they do this. Because the Yoons says “if you lose a second referendum you will not get another”. They said that BEFORE THE FIRST. The Second Referendum should have been guaranteed by the SNP – their failure to do so is a huge disappointment.
@Cherry –
Hoots indeed, we got it.
🙂
Sorry Ian just realised you found it…was catching up on the thread should’ve read to the end first before commenting.
If you’re going to give away your second vote to rise ssp solidarity or greens, you might as well vote labour tory liberal or ukip as your second vote. Or wipe the keech aff yer erse with it.
Any other vote on second ballot by anyone interested in Independence for anyone except the SNP is a wasted vote.
SNPx2.
Stephen.
Red A-Dair: “we should be fairly sure that they have FAILED the Independence movement by their refusal to require an Independence Referendum in the next parliament.”
Wings seems to have attracted people of late who cannot string two coherent thoughts together, yet somehow are keen to parade their lack of political nous for all to see. Paint drying has greater intellectual stimulation.
Dont know why everybody is worried about any of this the impression i get is that the indy vote is going to come out of the corner at the bell with a big right hook and it will be tweet tweet time for the yoons,oh and that a lot of indy folk dont trust polls or reply to them,and i have to admit i am guilty of that as well kind of got fed up with loaded questions and what do you think now and now and now… jeez gie it a break.
All this is the yoons bricking it because they know its coming and are trying,desperatly i might add,to split the vote.
Isnt going to work.
Every vote we take is a vote for independence and will be until we are free,this is the neverendum SNPx2.
GrouseBeater, the only reason that Quebec is not a free, independent country today is the failure of the Parti Quebecois to deliver a third Independence referendum in 1999 when they had the power to do so.
They lost the belief of the people that they were the vehicle for Independence and split the Independence vote in an electoral system which is very harsh on any party which loses the support.
The SNP have kow towed to the Unionists. They should demand an Independence referendum in Every. Single. Term. they are elected to government in Scotland. Their failure to do so smacks of the Irish Parliamentary Party and its utter failure to deliver Irish Independence for 40 years till it was replaced by Sinn Fein.
Hi K1.
I quite like “Jock’s revenge” but it is not original – it’s a reinterpretation of “Music For A Found Harmonium” by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hXH0NPi5iU
@Cherry –
Nae worries…
All helps ease the tension, eh?
😉
Red A-Dair: “The SNP have kow towed to the Unionists”
Stop it at once! You’ll only contract acne.
@ Dair
Why are you so keen on the Greens, then, who aren’t “requiring” a referendum either, and who have in some cases explicitly said the union would be ok if Westminster were greener?
Isn’t it the case that both the SNP and the Greens have left room for a referendum under certain circumstances, and only Rise and Solidarity, for whom a vote is always wasted, are determined to hold another in the next 5 years. (Sometimes Rise seem to qualify that with some reference to its being winnable; sometimes they don’t.)
I’m not keen on the Greens (although Citizens Income is a brilliant and needed policy, even though it is very, very right wing). What I am against is slaughtering the Unionist voice. They should have a voice related to their support.
Instead they have a voice based on three parties which are considered “major” by the media. In reality they have three minor parties which should be treated as such. Even better, replace the Fiberals by a party which, while not hugely convinced by Independence, will not be vehemently opposed.
Replacing 11 Unionists with 12 Greens and SNP will be the best thing to happen this year. And it should be a goal EVERYONE is fighting for. And the first step is recognising that Green List votes work and that RISE and Solidarity need to be IGNORED.
Thanks Brian, didn’t know that…I wasn’t aware you could do a cover of someone else’s work and change the title of the track? Is that some sort of plagiary?
@ Dair
Eh?
You’re against slaughtering the unionist voice (fair enough; I argued above that they should not be cheated out of the seats their vote share deserves, but that we should rather be trying to reduce that share) but you want to replace 11 of them with Greens and SNP?
Is that some sort of semi-slaughter from which they will arise as phoenixes in your preferred form as minor parties?
Or are you in fact really only complaining about the way the MSM portray all the various parties, which won’t automatically change if Labour collapse – they’re still bigging them up after last year’s debacle?
Hi K1.
CHAPS! “Reinterpretation” has being going on for decades. Try these two. (Apologies for the JK but he did have his finger on the music pulse, when it wasn’t elsewhere.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syk4q1tlPcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6ynrjxxurU
Apologies for straying O/T – ‘Oh what a tangled thread we weave, than first we set out to conceive.’
@ galamcennalath at 11.07pm
A poignant reminder and one that resonates with me.
My great-grandfather’s wee brother was also with the 1/4th RSF.
Volunteered August 1914 in Ayr,trained at Stirling and shipped out to Helles from Liverpool just before the rail disaster at Quintinshill ( involving the 1/7th Leith and Edinburgh).
As far as I can find out the assault on Achi Baba on the 12th of July was carried out by the KOSB with the 1/4th RSF as reserve (the 1/4th had prior to this been involved in heavy fighting. Hence moved back to the reserve for respite)
It seems that the KOSB were successful in their objective overrunning two Turkish trenches and then wentlooking for the third trench,which they had been told was crucial ( of course there was NO third Turkish trench, that was just an oversight,a breakdown of military intelligence ‘tho I doubt Churchill cared at all). At this point the KOSB came under heavy bombardment from French and British Naval barrage and were decimated. (“Friendly Fire”? Is the term they use nowadays)
The Turks counter-attacked and in order to stem this breach the 1/4th were moved up to defend what had been gained at Achi Baba (a road?) With again heavy losses.
Among them Davie Scobie (my great-grandfather’s wee brother) of the 1/4th Royal Highland Fusiliers.
Killed at Gallipoli, 12th day of July 1915. He was just 20 years old, too young to even have the vote!
Apologies for the length of this post, but just a reminder,that we do have the vote and we should use it wisely, lest we condemn our children and our children’s children to Westminster’s perpetual war.
Cogadh no Sìth?
@Dair says:
25 April, 2016 at 12:09 am
He claimed that Harvie could split the vote in Kelvin and let Labour win it. Labour who will get 16% of the vote. Somehow splitting the near 50% vote of the SNP to let Labour win.
It’s a nonsense and could only come from the ill informed, the half-witted or from party propaganda.
—-
Why is Patrick Harvie standing for the constituency there if he didn’t think he had a chance ?
His profile has increased hugely due to the referendum, and the Greens will be putting a huge amount of effort into that seat to get their party leader directly elected.
We also don’t know what last minute bribes are going to be in the Labour manifesto.
Yes you’re right of course Brian they change movie titles as well. Yes that JK one was a bit ‘eek’…but I get your point. I like the peguin cafe version but I love the oomph of Whiskey Kiss’s ‘interpretation’.
Dair says:
25 April, 2016 at 12:13 am
While I am still fairly sure the SNP are the best method of Independence, we should be fairly sure that they have FAILED the Independence movement by their refusal to require an Independence Referendum in the next parliament.
Why? Why would they do this. Because the Yoons says “if you lose a second referendum you will not get another”. They said that BEFORE THE FIRST. The Second Referendum should have been guaranteed by the SNP – their failure to do so is a huge disappointment.
———
It’s not rocket science.
They are trying to get another majority first, with votes from everyone. Including those who voted No in 2014.
Promising a quick second referendum could result in a backlash. All the ‘NO means NO, Once in a generation’ stuff..
And they actually want to win it next time. That will be easier when the current deficit comes down a bit and the onshore economy makes up for lost oil income. A few more years of younger voters coming through won’t hurt either.
Lower North Sea revenues could actually make it easier to win IndyRef 2. The unionists can’t play the ‘all your eggs in one basket’ card.
Rev, imagine some of these posters in the pub. Methinks you’d do what I’d do, move to the other end of the bar.
@Kenny
Even if the SNP happened at that stage to be in a minority government, 60% of the country wanting indy could not be ignored.
Of course it could. Most of the country voted for devolution in 1979 in an actual referendum, not just a poll, and that was ignored.
Greetings from Malaysia. It has been interesting reading about tactically voting since the GE and contrasting it with this election.
What I can say as an observer outwith of Scotland is two things. Independence is the goal. Everything else is a distraction. As cliche as it sounds, this all can be sorted after independence. Scotland is running out of time. The UK government is asset stripping Scotland faster than you can say Scotland free or a desert. The second referendum cannot be waited for, it must be engineered. By 2021 Scotland must be independent. If not this issue will definitely be kicked into the long grass.
Secondly, only by voting the SNP twice we can ensure a majority government that is committed to independence. The rest is a distraction. I do not want an SNP government restrained by other parties in any form. This is because if a referendum is to be called, the government can do so unfettered.
That being said, I cannot vote in Scotland and always vote the parties you believe in.
Good exercise.
I think a lot of people from all the pro-indy parties have been afraid to do this before, in case it’s used by “the other side”, to either push tactical voting, or condemn it.
OK. My speadsheet shows Orkney going SNP on those poll of polls, but what’s gained on the constituency is lost on the list. But West of Scotland I have Eastwood going Con by 4% from SNP, so 9 constituency seats, not 10. Same overall total, 69. On this average poll. Current opinion poll though is more like 50% than 54%, giving 66 constituency seats and a possibility of going 1 or 2 LESS.
Note: Ayr is just SNP from Con, Dumfriesshire just Con from SNP and Galloway and West Dumfries just SNP from Con – 0.3%, 0.6% and 0.8% in it. Could be 2 less constituency, and more needed from the list.
List
Central – same as yours
Glasgow – same
H&I – 1 less on list 1 more for Lib, because of difference in Orkney constituency
Lothian – I have 1 less Lab, 1 more Lib
Mid Scot & Fife – I have 1 less Lab, 1 more Lib
NE Scotland – same
South Scotland – I have 1 less SNP, 1 more Lib
West Scotland – I have Lab 1 more, Con 1 less
Overall list totals
SNP 3, Lab 23. Con 16, Lib 5, Grn 9
—————–
My speadsheet goes to 2 decimal places on the percentages for the list seat allocation and some of the 7th list seats depend on that second decimal place. However, from the opinion polls as headlined, and even from the data tables, using 2 decimal places would be totally ridiculed by a mathmetican and statistican (I was both), and any scientist worth their NaCl.
Considering that the same poll data gives me a different result from the Revs by 2 list SNP MSPs this all proves one thing, on top of what the Rev says.
Opionion polls are not accurate enough to risk really sensible predictions, particularly on the list.
Projections as the Rev says, yes, good stuff, but for fun only, not for serious business.
Now I’m off to my pit, emergency call from son to help with differentiating and integrating flaming logarithmic and exponential implied functions for an assignment. Oh God, my head hurts, partly from baning head i attic blowing dust off old books. ‘tinternet did it in the end.
Hey, wow, never seen that before. Sitting about to cut it shorter, make some format changes it decided to submit itself. Coooool. It must have got bored. Yawn! Nighty.
Oh by the way, the Greens aren’t near getting another list seat, even to 1 decimal place. In fact the SNP are not far off getting the 7th South of Scotland list seat instead of Green, on my “projections”.
Gallamcennalath @ 11.07pm
Your great uncle John Murphy, a ploughman of Muirkirk, who died of wounds defending the oasis of Duiedar, near the Suez Canal, on 24th April 1916, is now known by us all.
That grave yard is vast.
And so we build the history of our nation.
Always remember the gift the Empire gave the World…Divide and Rule. It enables the destruction of ideas by fostering internal splits.
“…So America’s strategy is the same strategy as that which was used in the past by the colonial powers: divide and conquer. She plays one Negro leader against the other. She plays one Negro organization against the other. She makes us think we have different objectives, different goals. As soon as one Negro says something, she runs to this Negro and asks him, “What do you think about what he said?” Why, anybody can see through that today–except some of the Negro leaders.”
SOURCE: X, Malcolm. “The Black Revolution.” Militant Labor Forum. Palm Gardens, New York. 8 April 1964.
Half a century on and it still works. Get them to fight each other. Get them to argue their differences…instead of fighting you!
Why is this even being discussed. SNP x 2 gets rid of the Unionists/Greens.
Do you want Scotland to be the most prosperous country in the world or not? SNP x 2.
FFA/Independence will do. Then nothing can hold Scotland back.
https://fionamoraggrahame.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/libdem-pupil-premium-one-size-does-not-fit-all/
http://indyref2.scot/no-dilemma
Exclusive: Nicola Sturgeon pledges to help struggling offshore sector by securing renewables deal
http://archive.is/fTK5Y
https://twitter.com/ScottishTUC/status/723920178535387136
There is a very logical truth in voting SNP X2 and it leads to the very logical truth of Indyref2.
O/T links
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/whittingdale-expense-probe-shames-press.html
Dangerous TTIP
http://waronwant.org/death-on-a-plate
http://evolvepolitics.com/british-company-hires-former-child-soldiers/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraq-invasion-anniversary-of-the-biggest-terrorist-attack-in-modern-history/5517037
Latest polls suggest election has already been decided
http://www.originalfm.com/22910-2/
Before you give your 2nd vote to the Greens consider this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdXP0aAWwAANk7T.jpg
In thier manifesto they say they want an outright ban, does this look such a good idea?
“Can anyone please tell us, straight-up, nae shite…
…Is Willie Rennie still gonny be there for the next four years?
Can anyone just tell us the truth?”
The truth is that it’s touch and go. If I was betting on it I’d bet on him sneaking in, but it’ll be tight.
Psst… wanna watch some blatant propaganda on the BBC right now??
Tune into BBC2 ‘Scotland’ right now, and you can watch a proper propaganda piece rivalled only by the state broadcaster in North Korea, about why and how much ‘we Scots love the Queen’.
To give you a taster, every ‘person’ they interviewed in Glasgow, absolutely loved her and her family, and one guy even had her picture on his phone for her Birthday.
Unbelievable, on every level. They have even dragged in the Dunblane massacre to explain how lovely she is to Scotland, FFS.
Shameful.
As regards the article above, it isn’t rocket science, both votes SNP, or else you seriously DO risk no chance of a referendum, a powerless minority SNP Government, and high fives all round in Westminster, and the Orange lodge on the day after the vote.
O/T
Nicola Sturgeon on phone in with Kaye Adams at 9.00.
Wonder who’ll get through today?
A combination of a concocted controversy against the SNP candidate, the alleged glamour of a candidate being a party leader and a tactical vote from unionist supporters may very well see Patrick Harvey win the seat.
Despite the electoral suicide that a line about not building warships might be there’s always a chance of Labour voters switching to Green as a less committed to Indy alternative. For instance pointing out that an independent Scotland would still need a dual role coastguard and maritime protection fleet might not go amiss.
A definite chance at 2 or even 3 Green seats providing an excuse to run the headline “The dear Green Place”. Probably not in the Record though.
Seems to be a lot of jitters about whether the SNP will win an outright majority, and lets hope it’s nothing more than jitters.
There is however one racing certainty this election, and that’s the BBC Psy-ops department will find some way to make it look like bad news for the SNP. If the SNP wins a second majority, it will savage any slip in share of the vote or lesser percentage. If there’s no such thing, it will pile into some MSP’s alleged misdemeanour and trumpet that to the masses. If the SNP fails to get an outright majority, it will make hay from it like there is no tomorrow.
Anyone spot the common denominator?
The Unionist media’s flagrant sedition; and yes I mean sedition, defined as insurrection against the established order. That is what it means to undermine our democratically elected government. Sedition.
If the worst happens, and I don’t think it will, but should the SNP fall short of an outright majority, we should not paint this as the coup de grace for a second referendum. That would be a mistake, and it is playing right into the hands of the media and provides them with any number of quotes to revel in.
Yes, of course we all want Independence, but that is the main event, and meantime, to continue that journey we have a nasty skirmish with the Unionist propaganda factory which we have to win. They will harry our progress at every step, nipping our heels and howling like dogs to make us lose sleep. They will wear us down and test our resolve.
If the SNP has no policy to counteract this propaganda, then it needs a policy to contain the damage it does to our cause. To do neither is poses a much more definite threat to our liberty than disappointment at the polls. IF the SNP stumbles, and let’s hope it doesn’t, we know the result is compromised by our bizarre political news bias. If things go badly, that might be a “get out of jail free” card for some people in the short term, but this political bias is not a short term situation is It? It’s here to stay until we do something about it.
If Scotland was an Independent country, it wouldn’t all be sunshine and roses. We’d have bad days. Periods when we felt isolated. We’d have nobody to defend ourselves but ourselves. On every issue, at home and abroad, we would ultimately stand on our own two feet and decide our actions ourselves. If that meant Scotland had a counter terrorism agency, it would be Scottish unit serving one master. If that Scotland was exposed to hostile propaganda, hostile psy-ops, induced coup attempts or regime change, then it would be an issue of internal security or a foreign intervention to be resisted. In our present devolved constitutional circumstance, we have no uniquely Scottish instrument or agency to defend our internal security or protect us from foreign intervention. It isn’t really a police matter, but maybe it should be if that’s all we have in lieu of a fully fledged Scottish security and counter terrorism service.
Rather than seeing these elections as a watershed for Indyref 2, I would much more comfortable if we observed a similar watershed to mark the end of our tolerance for this media based arbitrary dictatorship. Just as the BBC and newspapers probably have their headlines already written, we should be filled with our own resolve to see them punished for any illegitimate interference or manipulation. We all know it’s going to happen. Please, let us be ready. Let’s have the injunctions/writs/legal ordinance primed and ready to serve on every breach of purdah or inappropriate bias. Let them be afraid of Scotland’s tenacity in self defence and scrupulous propriety.
Let’s set a trap for them. Lets bind their misconduct and manipulation to a compromised result. And while we are at it, let us also mark the cards of the feckless Electoral Commission.
Wings: Rennie: I’d bet on him sneaking in, but it’ll be tight.
Exactly as I said – his role in life is to repeat “Mind the gap”.
Liz Rannoch @ 08:32
Hmmmmm
1. Angry Aggie – from Alloa
2. Disappointed Derek – from Duntocher
3. Wailing Walter – from Wick
4. Neutral Norman – from Nowhere
5. Angry Andy – from Aberdeen
6. Angry Ali – from Ardesier
#youcouldn’tmakeitup
This is interesting!..
Jefferson’s conclusion is stark: “Put bluntly, the standard claim that the world has proved conventional oil reserves of nearly 1.7 trillion barrels is overstated by about 875 billion barrels…”
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/former-shell-oil-chief-says-global-oil-reserves-overstated-half-1901398787
Martin says that named person makes SNP Nazi’s of course he is cut off and Kaye moves to next caller. In fact no, lets listen to martin for a bit longer shameful.
I wonder what others think. It appears to me that opinion polls are now steering the ship rather than recording the course. Further they seem to accept that the MSM publish figures as though they were precise, not within error bands. What one sees in the ups and downs may just be noise in the recording system.
So if one were to phone me, though I’d be tempted to suggest they go forth and multiply, I’d probably adopt a spurious voting intention, just because.
Willie Rennie getting back in is ‘touch and go’?
In that case, bugger the polls and all the fiddly analysis. Let’s dig out the rosary beads, chicken-bones and whatever other lucky mascots/idols we can find and start doing some full-on hard-core old-fashioned praying.
Lady phoning in about elderly care, obviously reading prewritten question about awful, appalling Health Service!
Not sure I can stomach much more!
She will break down soon.
Margaret from Mars , whats your perfectly scripted question for Nicola? Why cant the Scottish Goverment who has been in charge for the last 1000 years wipe my bottom? I blame them for my dangleberries. Nazi swines.
Sturgeon doing OK on her inquisition, notice the difference anyone on the difference from the other leader interviews. 🙂
Exploited ambushers and bushwhackers all lined up.
Some folk think that we need to know the history of their personal woes, sad as they are and no mistake, and blame the SG live on air, good old auntie doesn’t care about exploiting them!
These folk have been carefully selected by auntie for the day and as long as we know that we can make allowances.
Each call taking a long long time so we can get the message and feel their pain, which I do.
SNP bad! 🙁
I’m off to the cafe to collect my ‘Scottish Champion’ which some kind punter leaves behind. I leave ‘The National’ in exchange.
Oh wait a supporter gets hassled by Kaye immediately
“Pete we need the question…Pete PETE… the question”
and I’ll bet he gets hustled off inside a minute.
I told you… “we are under pressure to crack on” says Kaye
It’s blatent folks they will close us down if they could.
Well done Pete who I suspect told a lie and then slipped in his question.
I’ll catch up later. 🙂
Didn’t take long for some phone troll to use the SNP Nazi line.
A peaceful democratic party likened to genocidal mass murderers and no one in the press thinks there’s a problem with the narrative they and their political chain tuggers created?
Their narrative is that the independence movement causes bitter division within society you know, but not likening people to a movement responsible for mass slaughter and untold suffering then?
And they wonder why they’re held in contempt. (shrugs)
FFS. Three anti SNP / FM calls allowed to speak at length and at will and the first pro SNP / FM caller is verbally jostled and curtailed by Adams.
Question, when did a commercial pilots course become free?
I remember years ago talking to guy who was setting out to be a commercial pilot and he said he had to save £20K I think it was Prestwick?
Sounds like the entire membership of Scotland in Yoon and Labour Celts is phoning in to Kaye Adams today. Top class frothing and indignation.
Notice wee digs about not giving their ‘second ‘ vote as well.
“Post something stupid below this line, I dare you”
—————————————————
Then I go on and spoil it all by saying something stoopid like I love you!
And actually I do.
It’s a simple choice. Do you want your country run by a branch manager backed by the BBC or by a leader backed by the people?
SNP x 2
ps. Message to the BBC, phone ins? discussions in front of “neutral audiences”? You are fooling no one. The more you keep it up the more pathetic it looks. The danger? Complete lack of trust in anything you do, although you’ve already crossed that line for many of us.
Good morning one and all. I hope today, that we have a better day than yesterday, all that argy bargy about polls wid fair burst yer heid. I must say Dair did his job well ie some of you, and it worked. All the back and forth of OPINION polls, ( and that’s all they are, opinions, dependending on how question is asked) and how to split the vote or not, vote green, vote slab, vote fur the purple guy wi the pink polka dots. The yoons must have been laughing their socks off. Ah got them at each others throats haha.
Fur goad’s sake gie it a rest.
It’s a beautiful sunny morning, or saltire is fluttering proudly in the breeze and makes you feel proud.Only one poll counts, and it’s ten days away yet. I’m not having any problems about how I’ll vote, as I want independence it will be SNP x 2. Nae ands, ifs, or buts. SNP x 2 and if you don’t agree with that, then tough. I can vote for who I want, no whit anybudy else trys tae tell me.
The mistake is ever to listen to Radio Scotland. It’s now the remnants of Better Together whining to each other.
Good for Peter. Giving Nicola credit for steel works saving.
Kaye doing her best to disrupt and digress but Nicola pretty fir for her. Just told her to be quiet and let her answer the question …. if she didn’t mind! Wonderful.
Did Kaye just have a dig at NS for being childless?
‘After the news we’ll be discussing whether or not children should be taken out of school to go on holidays. I won’t be asking the First Minister that question’ (paraphrase)
I will continue to ignore those who call for me to split my vote and support the smaller pro indy parties.
I will continue give both my votes the SNP.
Because I remember the consequences in 2003 when an independent Cllr stood on the list vote in mid Scotland and Fife Constituency, he received 10,000 votes, the number of votes that the SNP were behind to Labour in the Glenrothes seat.
In 2007 when the independent didn’t stand we won the Glenrothes seat.
…one day we will have a radio Scotland.
Banging head off desk at this point.
I really shouldn’t have expected anything else (sigh).
Off topic, but I know some will be interested in the global view.
Obama’s manoeuvring becomes clear. American commentators have opined that Obama has a fear that Scotland will become Independent under Brexit, and we know he intervened in our referendum.
All of this independence nonsense, and the SNP Trident platform is putting a wrinkle in their plans.
I believe independence soonest (SNPx2) is not only needed due to the speed of asset stripping, but also THIS – Trident.
I want this fking target off our back.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-requests-eu-support-for-possible-war-against-russia/5521560
Ian brotherhood 9:58 am
Yep Ian you heard it correct. Kaye ignorant nasty loudmouth, she sniped away all through the show and obviously was very selective with her callers barring a couple who slipped through the net.
As for Nicola a star performance under the circumstances and managed to put Kaye in her place more than once. EBC standard SNP BAAAD!
one day indeed we will have radio SCOTLAND not radio UK/OK. Kaye Adams a disgrace -jumping in with interruptions when anything good being said about snp and allowing endless griping when snp baad. I do not object to criticism of snp I just object to different ways party leaders are treated. I counted 12 interruptions by KA most of them when anything good was being said about snp. Impartial, objective – not on radio UK/OK and certainly not by Kaye Adams. The difference in tone between last week Kez and today, Kez was allowed to ramble on without interruption and actually fed lines when she dried up -‘that will be your tax proposals’ says Kaye. BBC should be ashamed.
Andrew McLean says:
25 April, 2016 at 9:44 am
Question, when did a commercial pilots course become free?
I remember years ago talking to guy who was setting out to be a commercial pilot and he said he had to save £20K I think it was Prestwick?
It is free. Join the RAF or airlines like British Airways. That bizarre dude moaning about not getting what could be over £130k training fee from taxpayer, is all over SNP on Facebook furious at SNP for not coughing up.
Its very mad, as anyone who wants to become a pilot knows full well how to do it and if the RAF are full up…
The programme was awful. Another insult to any of the listeners left. I listened cause Nicola was on. It was like the duty room in a social work office, not a serious political programme. I’m a carer, help me. I’m in crisis here, help me, I don’t want my (son, daughter, grandson, grand daughter) subjected to Named Person legislation, help me.No editorial control. Oh, wait!
I can’t compare with the other leaders as I don’t bother with it.
Ach well, roll on 5th May.
Yeah, we have Union Kaye manipulating the call in again, their chosen complainers allowed free reign, encouraging comments for them by Kate.
Any SNP positives that slipped through were met with ok, thanks for calling but we really need to crack on. Thus muting the caller. An every day tactic by Kaye, who according to her, she gets told to move on quickly via ear piece.
Totally propaganda orientated, why do we put up with this shite, high time the SNP and supporters started giving the BBC a much harder time.
SNP are polling 52%. So the numbers should be 50/50 on calls to BBC yet they are 80/20 in favour of the Yoons. This reflects badly on the BBC for two reasons.
Firstly it looks like the calls have been staged,or stacked in favour of the Yoons. Secondly if they haven’t, then it reflects the audience that the BBC now have. They represent the minority in Scotland. In other words only about 20% of the Scottish population listen to BBC Scotland.
Why do I let it get me so angry? Kay with an E feckin Adams. Should have turned it to smooth radio to lower the blood pressure. Another, disgraceful attempt to not question but demean the first minister and the SNP. However, it didn’t work. Ms Sturgeon was on good form though I could feel some justified anger as we moved towards the end of the “grilling”
They, the ‘Meeja’ and in particular the British Biased Corporation hate the SNP.
As for the opposition parties, Ms Dugadale spends her time talkin to weans in nurseries, Ms Davidson appears to mount anything if it gets her photo in the papers and as for that wee nyaff Rennie he’d be as well sliding down that chute all day long bleating Police Scotland, Police Scotland.
SNPX 2 there is no other way.
I have now completed seventeen decades of the rosary, consulted the I-Ching, the Tarot, and peered into my crystal ball…
Strange sonorous voices in my heid are saying ‘Rennie will fall…’
Hopefully the next set of polls will confirm the wobbliness of his situation.
I have long advocated a collective response by all Indy supporting blogs and websites to the state propagandist and UKOK media.
Imagine the number of collective followers of all of these. It would be an excellent way to get the message out. So why not all hold a meeting and forget differences for the greater good and create a policy by agreement to act in unison to counter Ukok propaganda from any source it comes from. Including all social media outlets.
If we are as serious about Indy as we all say, coordinated action like this would help balance things, at least much better than we do at present. This could become our most effective weapon against the deluge of propaganda we suffer. We just need to get everyone to lay down the claymores and work together.
Dear Kaye,
the day is coming when we the people of Scotland will gain the means to hold the BBC properly to account.
“My soul is prepared, Ms Adams. Is yours?”
Well I did listen to call Kay with an e but only as an experiment.
I agree with the comments above about the selective calls, cutting short the two supportive calls which slipped through the net, allowing complainers to ramble on. But I thought Nicola dealt with it expertly.
I read that questions about the Edinburgh PFI fiasco were avoided during Kezia’s stint on the grounds that we are in a purdah period. Can anyone confirm?
Looking forward to John Robertson’s analysis.
Greannach says:
“Radio Scotland … now the remnants of Better Together whining to each other.”
It has now reached the situation where the half of Scots not represented by BT no longer listen to politics/current affairs on RS, nor consider it worth contributing because of the assumed bias.
The BBC is now in a downward spiral, a positive feedback loop – the more biased they are, the more biased they become. They have put themselves beyond recovery.
Summary of the Adams show?
* “Its the Council in Glasgow that’s in charge, but its the SNPs fault”
* “My son comes from a wealthy family and we support Tory
candidates (see twitter), but we want to leach off
the Scots public to get him a place on a course that will
continue his status as a wealthy Tory supporter. Its the
SNPs fault that we have to shelve out to support him”
* “The SNP’s are Nazis because they are trying to ensure
kids are looked after Its the SNPs fault”
* “My Uncle was maltreated by care workers and it’s the
SNPs fault”
* “I’d like to congratulate the FM on the Scots Govt
saving….” (Adams interrupts)”That’s enough from that caller, we have many others to hear from”.
Did I say it was the SNPs fault?
Maybe it’s me, but airline pilot? Oh well!
I gave up early on, mostly because I have better things to do than listening to the OAP rantathon that is GMS. I would guess most SNP support was hard at work, unlike Mrs and Mr Yooon still in pish stained PJ’s waiting for the post office to open.
Anyhow enough BBC, it should come with a health warning.
As for splitting my vote, I would one day in an independent Scotland vote for Tommy if only to annoy the hell out of Mr angry from younivill street.
Another thing why’s Tommy’s alleged thresome bad when the celebrity thresome gets protection?
Connections in high places perhaps, I wonder if Tommy and the celebrity have anything in common?
BBC Scotland is run by Slabour. They will not change, no matter how bad the listening figures get. They got shot of Jim Spence & Derek Bateman because they were off message.
Ultimately the BBC are operated from London so they decide the direction and management. London can do what it wants while the BBC in Scotland is not independent. Forget changing this. We would just be swapping deck chairs on the titanic.
Digital TV, Social Media and other forms of communication have already replaced the BBC. Like Slabour they cannot change. It’s like the film terminator. They cannot and will not stop until armageddon.
There is a very easy, powerful method to counter the frothing proBritNat extremist & harridan Kay(e) Adams on BBS Radio Shortbread; stop paying the BBC License Fee (still an optional TV Tax) & don’t tune in.
A staunch pro Royalist, English neighbour of mine surprised me last week when she admitted that she considered the BBC a barely disguised propaganda mouthpiece for the British government.
This anecdotal revelation in itself is meaningless but might suggest that the only people who are likely to actually call Kay(e) Adams are equally sympathetic, proBritNat extremists.
Meanwhile, there are many more productive & satisfying alternatives to handing over your hard earned money to Britain’s state propaganda channel.
Tory Landowners in Moray plastering their fields with placards promoting their candidates (Ross and Mountain) which remain un-assailed.
2 Placards promoting Lochhead go up for a few days and then disappears overnight.
I found them stuck behind a hedge half a mile away.
Be interesting to see whose fingerprints are on them.
Desperate.
Even if the whole of Scotland stopped paying the TV tax, London State Broadcasting would pay for it.
BBC in Scotland propaganda is too important.
We will only get rid of this state propaganda after Independence
A quote from Ruthie in Buzzfeed …
“I thought they [SNP] would want in some way to bring the country back together; it’s clear actually that they don’t. The way in which they’ve approached this, saying things like they’ll launch another campaign for independence this summer, has been wholly cynical.”
Just political rhetoric, of course. However, what probably terrifies RD is that the upcoming SNP campaign IS actually intended to bring the country together!
RD says “back together” ie the way things were. The Tories, party and voters, just want everything put back the way it was in cosy UKOK certainty for them.
“Bring together”, “uniting”, “achieving consensus” , is the way to move forward, but don’t the Yoons just hate it!
Never listen to nasal kaye but regarding pilot training? There are no free pilot training courses anymore. BA ended total sponsorship years ago. It involves a rather large loan of more than 100k these days and is self funded. Only the Emirati cadets to my knowledge get their training paid for them – by uAE gov.
Not sure the person phoned in was genuine flight crew or they would know how ridiculous this was.
I still can’t get over that they deliberately delayed Outlander! Who’s call was that. Talk about state controled media.
If anyone listened to Shareen on Saturday, they would know what I mean. When the subject of the Queens birthday came up for review. The one female panelist on the show, who was clearly not a royalist. Did not review the event. Yet every other presenter did and she had reviewed every other subject on the show? Who do they think they are fooling. She was obviously going to say something provocative and the BBC couldn’t risk letting her speak!
Yes ths is North Korean style media!
A personal thing as well. No disrespect to Victoria Wood. But she was an absolutely awful comedian…just awful.
Used to listen to Radio Scotland religiously.
It was always on in the car travelling to and from work.
Would listen to Call Kay with an E, Vic Galloway, Ian Anderson, Off The Ball and even to Take the Floor.
Would also tune in to football chat on a Saturday or the programmes on a Saturday morning and took everything they said as pretty much being reliable and trustworthy.
No more.
Not listened to any of it since long before the 1st Referendum and will not listen to it ever again.
The sooner it is closed down the better and live for the day we see the end of Pacific Quay.
Call Kaye Anything You Like, It’s Just Her Shtick.
“Our first hour will be given over to a free-for-all, crocodile tears, telephone debate with the leader of the SNP, no holds barred, but let gravitas be your watchword.
This being a serious political show that would not want to devalue Nicola Sturgeon’s contribution in an unintentional way, the second hour will be devoted to Kylie Minogue’s new hairstyle.”
GB serious comment:
BBC Radio Scotland was landed with the all-things-to-all listeners brief. Irish Radio has one station devoted to serious issues including politics, another to lightweight material. Scotland’s serious topic station is BBC Radio4 which as we understand and recognize as BBC Radio English-Issues. Or as the BBC presenter might say, “Scotland has it’s own devolved issues.”
Regarding people advocating casting their List Vote to the Scottish Greens,may I mention that the Constitution is SEVENTH in their 2016 Manifesto.
SEVENTH!! 🙁
Move over Scottish Greens,it’s SNPx2 for me. 🙂
BBC. Archived:-http://archive.is/NkvR0
I missed the last half of Sturgeon’s inquisition on ‘Your call’ but I suspect many will have seen/heard through the travesty of an independent auntie allowing callers of all shades asking a question.
Sturgeon will be off to listen to more Clydebank pleaders later on about the ships and that vow because that’s what she does.
I heard the trade union guy on this morning calling foul and betrayal and what’s the UK and SG going to do about it.
Threatening to maybe stop work on the hand over of the aircraft carriers and all that. Some ships only 5 from the promised 13 maybe a year late and possible moves to build them darn Sarf.
Aye she’s got her plate full the ‘nippie sweetie’ but she’s the best we all have and good luck to her.
Scotland as a whole should have voted YES… the Tories got a shock and are moving out the furniture and caving in our roofs like the old days but still some folk cant see it.
PS:
David Cameron said he did not care.
Scotland was ‘Labour’s problem’ after the independence referendum.
https://archive.is/RZTIX#selection-901.0-901.34
Postie has been, Kez “nyooz yer powers” sez both votes labour, UKIP sez shake up Holyrood vote UKIP. Mwahahaha. Cheered me up no end. Breakfast for the shredder.
SNP x 2
And another thing, the time will come when Kay with anE Union Adams will move ‘Dan Souf’ and take over that awful programme Loose Women, (no comment). We will be well rid. She could put a mention in for her good buddy Jakey Burd. In fact why the feck don’t they all head ‘souf’ ‘I’m John Mcaye, Gordon I’ll only interrupt if your SNP Brewer, Glen (should be ashamed with a name like that) Campbell oh aye and how could I forget, Toddle oooo the noooooo.
SNP x2
Torrance: How Scottish Labour sowed the seeds of its own demise.
https://archive.is/5IoAQ
Can’t listen to Kay(e) as it does my head in but if she really made a sarky comment about children to Nicola she is a shameless disgusting harridan.
Still have the license fee in our house as the other half won’t cancel it.
However I have been dropping subtle hints about distortion of facts and some of it is getting through.
Watched 2 drama progs and listen to one yesterday and each of them dropped in that ‘England was is an island’.
Obama said similar during the week.
The long term brainwashing is that we all belong together on the island of England.
If the BBC was representative of the population.50% of presenters on BBC Scotland should be pro independence and even more pro SNP. While they would not be expected to show their allegiences. The makeup of the staff should represent the general population. I reckon BBC Scot is 905 pro union – 90% pro Slabour. Yet Slabour only poll 20% of the popular vote.
Their audience reflects the Yoons talking to other Yoons.
The truth comes out. We all wonder how these Yoomers get selected to spill forth their frothing yoonie bile on Call Kay with an ‘e’. Turns out there’s a guy called Jim Murphy manning the phones and filtering the calls. I’d wondered where he’d got to.
That wee Tory boy that got his mum to phone in for free pilot training is obviously not proper Tory material.
Flower of Scotland says:
Even if the whole of Scotland stopped paying the TV tax, London State Broadcasting would pay for it.
I wonder how many actually do pay the licence in scotland?, i seem to remember a FOI request about this being refused
i burnt my licence on septh 19th 2014, havent paid it since and wont ever do so again
Ignore UKayeadams!
Ignore all the numbers in this thread!
There are only two numbers that matter.
I was 64 yesterday.
Vote SNP2.
General election 2015 Scotland wide vote break down
SNP 49.8%
Lab 24.9%
Tory 14.9%
Lib 22885 7%
Genreal election 2015 fife and mid scotland vote break down
*the 7 GE constituencies cover the exact same area as the 9 HE constituencies
365932 total votes ~74% turnout
SNP 180488 49.3%
Lab 87604 24%
Tory 64680 17.7%
Lib 22885 6.3%
using current scotland wide poll assuming
365932 total votes ~74% turnout
Holyrood 2016 Fife & Mid scotland region Constituency break down
SNP 197630 54%
Lab 73186 20%
Tory 54890 15%
Lib 21955 6%
Holyrood 2016 Fife & Mid scotland region List break down
SNP 168329 46% (16,829)
Lab 69527 19%
Tory 58549 16%
Lib 21955 6%
Green 29275 8%
List seat break down
Assumption: SNP 9 constituency seats
SEAT 1
Lab (70K)
SEAT 2
Con (58K)
SEAT 3
Lab (35K)
SEAT 4
Grn (29,275) (my one vote wins this 🙂 )
SEAT 5
Con (29, 274.5)
SEAT 6
Lib (22K)
SEAT 7
Lab (17.5K)
RESULT
Lab 3 (-)
Con 2 (-)
Grn 1 (+1)
SNP 0 (-1) due to winning 9/9 constituencies
Lib 1 (-)
2011 pro-indy list seats: 1
2016 pro-indy list seats: 1
NET PRO-INDY GAIN: 0
green increase 5k, wins 7th seat
snp increase 7k wins 7th seat (10 x the actual number required)
nb,
Torys poll higher in this region (~3%) than Scottish average
Labour & Libdems poll lower in this region(~1%) than Scottish average
Many tories and labour voters voted tactically for Lib Dems in NEF in 2015 (2+2=~4K)
lib dems are holding off the greens for 7th seat by a very small margin
Mundell bumping his gums, making reassuring noises about shipbuilding…
A wee reminder of what this guy is capable of –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcJWcjwYMfc
The BBC continually invite comment from ‘think tanks’. Usually the chosen ones have Unionist connections, which are never disclosed.
Why do they never take input from Nordic Horizons?
http://www.nordichorizons.org
Oh, wait a minute. Sponsored by the Scottish Govenment. That is why they are ignored by the BBC. They might have something novel and positive to say, heaven forbid.
@Gary: “Indeed, it was Nationalist strongholds that let us down in the referendum. ”
That’s because just about the whole of Scotland is a Nationalist stronghold.
Anyway, only one more Sunday Herald before the Election to publish misinformation and try to split the vote on behalf of the Unionist party, while pretending it’s still supporting Independence for Scotland, rather than an open plus sneaky anti-SNP agenda.
@ galamcennalath, thanks for the mention of John Murphy, there is some corner of a foreign……….
A strange occurence this morning when cutting through my local cemetery, I came across a large area, obviously well planted with graves judging by the undulations but devoid of gravestones. Most probably paupers graves from the bad auld days, Barnhill Poors Hoose being not that far away. I say devoid of stones but there’s one, a small white marble wedge and being a nosey bastard I walked over for a look.
It bears the legend “Podmore R.I.P.” It’s the truth I’m tellin ye this time, quite apart from a paupers grave having a stone and the dearth of Podmore’s in Glasgow, how spooky is that peeps?
OT
From The National (don’t give up on it yet):
“STEWART Hosie will head a summer initiative targetting No voters across the country in a major drive to put the case for Scottish independence to the electorate.”
Personally I’d also like to see Angela Constance put in charge of an initiative to reunite the YES movement, I don’t think there’s much damage after the Election is over, but it would be a good idea to re-cement old non-political ties, and in her pitch for deputy leader, she was the strongest for the cross-party YES alliance idea (which was really a non-starter as we see !!!!).
Also from The National: “But Brexit would only push support for Scottish independence up slightly – from 47 per cent to 50 per cent – leaving the country split down the middle, according to a Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times and Heart FM.”
The current average is 48.5% YES, so if we take that 3 point difference as representative, that would make it with Brexit, 51.5% YES. Which is Devolution Referendum 1 result support level.
Some day Kaye Adams will bite her tongue & poison herself!
dissapointed that only 22k wee black books claimed so far, i was hoping for far more
we could have done a doorstep drop in this constituency, (50k) no problem but we decided that 1000 would be a better start, and maybe a doorstep drop after the may election.
however, even though the cost for the books is very very reasonable, the yes group here doesnt have that sort of money. were I very rich, i would buy them myself, but im not, i just cant afford them. sorry.
£1000=2500
£100,000 = 250,000
i think 250k was about the number of wee blue books printed
anyone know anyone who has won the pools recently?
One more time, If Kay, (getting fed up adding with an E) is so pissed off with Scotland and moves Souf, she will have to pay for her prescriptions, probably have to wait longer in hospital A&E. Oh aye and she will have to pay for her 2 kids university fees. Or maybe she will move back to an Independent Scotland for that.
“however, even though the cost for the books is very very reasonable, the yes group here doesnt have that sort of money. were I very rich, i would buy them myself, but im not, i just cant afford them. sorry.
£1000=2500”
2500 copies is £815, not £1000. But we’re working on having at least a couple of hubs where people can collect them rather than have them posted, which will cut that to under £500.
We’ve got money in the Wings Fighting Fund and could print vast quantities of them, but the problem is that there’s not a referendum on and it’s just not a smart use of our resources to spend all the cash on something that, though worthwhile, has no tangible goal. A second indyref could arrive at very short notice and we need to have a kitty ready if it does.
“Try a Greens multiplier of 3 or more and you will see that SNP1/Greens2 is the optimal voting option”
And if you give them a multiplier of 50 they’ll win every seat. But this is an article about the outcomes ON CURRENT POLLING FIGURES. Sheesh.
Caught up on all the comments, wow.
I have to agree even with the Rev’s comments below the line, and I’m normally a very disagreeable person. Quote of the decade, though I’ve had to do similar more times than I’ve had hot breakfasts:
“I’m really, really at the end of my tether with people making up stuff I haven’t said and then telling me I did. Watch your step.“
it’s just not a smart use of our resources to spend all the cash on something that, though worthwhile, has no tangible goal. A second indyref could arrive at very short notice and we need to have a kitty ready if it does.
fair enough
a campaign fund will be necessary
The answer to the bbc bias is simple refuse to take part in any of their programes let them talk to theirselves
Why would I want to split my support?
I don’t go to a football match and support, say, Morton for the first half, then support the other team in the second half.
You can’t have your cake and eat it in football or politics!
If you split your vote, your team is not going to win. Your team is going to lose.
Holyrood voters are being played by the Yoon media, the Yoon parties, the ambivalent Greens and especially RISE.
People will be very angry with RISE if their naked self-interest, places Holyrood back in thrall to incompetent Yoondom.
RISE will then sink like stones; deservedly.
RISE have learnt well from SLAB, party before people, is their code.
Having caught up with the comments on this thread, is it just me or are others getting just as tired and fed up with this demand for SNP supporters List votes?
Now that the demands are coming from the BBC/MSM I KNOW that it should be ignored and have now switched off wherever I find mention of it. They have all gone way over the top and I hope this now so obvious attempt at divide and conquer backfires badly on them with a truly huge mandate for the SNP.
Not a member but SNPx2 anyway. Only Party I want to vote for.
Arguably enough Labour supporters could vote for the Greens in Kelvin to win them the seat. If they then vote Labour on the list and just enough SNP voters try a tactical vote then there might be a chance of 6 list seats going to Labour. There’s more chance the further along that route the tactical vote for the Greens goes. It works by accepting you have no chance at winning the seat and removing a contender from the list.
Some anger on here at Call Kaye and the BBC. Having complained after the hand-holding of Kez last week, with the BBC Scotland call screening creating an almost impenetrable shield around the labour leader, I coincidentally received a reply today:
“Dear Mr Jardine
Reference CAS-3796468-RRT4XK
Thank you for your comments about the Kaye Adams programme on 19 April 2016.
As you are aware, the programme is a phone-in and, throughout the programme, we made sure that the callers put on air were reflective of the correspondence coming through to the programme. This is the same consistent approach we have used for the leaders who have appeared on the programme so far, and will use for the remaining leaders’ phone in still to come.
We are satisfied all the leaders have been challenged appropriately by the presenter of the programme on that day, while allowing them to get their points across.
Please be assured that bias plays no part in our reporting. We place the highest value on accuracy and impartiality within our own journalism and rigorous editorial standards are applied across all of our output.
Thank you, once again, for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
Brian Morgan
BBC Complaints”
So we are being asked to accept the treatment of last Tuesday and today by Kaye and her team is the same, that their approach is consistent and impartial.
Slab now are simply a pathetic hollowed out shell of a political party, to be pitied or ridiculed. The BBC on the other hand are a fucking plague- the arrogance of this guy, Morgan is staggering telling me black is white and white is black.
We need to erase all trace of this organisation from our public life on independence. No reform. A completely new broadcaster – a public broadcaster own by the public, accountable to the public.
Pissing on the public and telling us it is raining is growing pretty old.
simple MATH SNP X2 = 🙂
Who cares about the list vote, SNP IN CHARGE MAKES SCOTLAND WORK !
Tam Jardine @ 8.11
I gave up complaning to the bpc (the british paedophile corporation) after the referendum.
I stopped watching their propaganda output at the same time. Every reply was the same old
shite.
It took a year and a half for me to stop paying their paedo tax and I am now 5 months clean.
Nothing they ever did or will do was for the benefit of Scotland or the people of Scotland.
Every thing they did and do is for the benefit of their London paymasters and their own agrandisment.
That organisation and the people that work in it are nothing but a cancer, a cancer that has to
be eradicated.
On Topic. (And not directed at you Tam)
If the enemies of Scottish self determination are telling me to split my vote, and the Leader
of the SNP, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is saying both votes SNP, then I have
to ask myself a question: who do I trust?
It is the easiest answer possible,
BOTH VOTES SNP.
neil bruce
Aye- it is a pointless process but I do get some weird satisfaction in seeing someone defend the indefensible through their ‘complaints process’. Their demise in Scotland will be part of a kind of national renewal and cannot come soon enough.
On topic: I will be voting SNP x2 as well. The model the Rev puts forward above would give the SNP a clear and strong majority with a decent contingent of Scottish Green MSPs too which I would be quite happy with. Under the scenario the Rev puts forward in lothian my list vote WOULD be wasted and would return nothing, along with 110,000 other SNP list voters.
Thing is- who knows how many constituencies are going to be won? If we don’t win 9 constituencies in lothian then our chances of gaining a list seat increase. The list, for the SNP is an insurance policy to protect against possible failures on the constituency vote.
So my list vote might be wasted or it might be the difference between retaining a majority or losing a majority.
@Crazy Cat
But I will know that barring the Greens taking a constituency or several here in the NE, that my vote on the list will be worth one full vote. IF you vote SNP on the list, especially here, your vote could well be worth 1/10 of a vote in terms of electing someone.
So, you need the SNP list vote to be 80%+ to beat the Greens to a list seat.
Do you consider that?
And note the Greens are not standing in constituencies, so it is an absolute certainty my Green vote will be a full value vote for a Yes candidate.
You cannot know that.
Tam Jardine said at 8:11pm last night.
“Dear Mr Jardine
Reference CAS-3796468-RRT4XK
Thank you for your comments about the Kaye Adams programme on 19 April 2016.
As you are aware, the programme is a phone-in and, throughout the programme, we made sure that the callers put on air were reflective of the correspondence coming through to the programme.————————”
They seem to be awfy sure o themselves—do they get BBC Scotland in Darlington!?
Their address:– BBC Complaints, PO Box 1922, Darlington, DL3 0UR.
There is only one constituency held in the Borders by the Tories. Galloway isn’t in the “Borders” and we’re sensitive about it.
Wait – doesn’t this underline that the problem is that not enough people will switch their second vote from the SNP? The reason the SNP list representation is going down is BECAUSE their FPTP representation is going up. To say that this tactical* voting forces the SNP to win every constituency seat is arse about tit. If they don’t win every constituency seat then their co-efficient in the list vote will be lower, allowing them to pick up more regional seats.
If more SNP voters switched to Green then there would be a net gain for Pro-Indy. A list vote for SNP is worth only one tenth of a list vote for the Greens.
* – I say tactical. In all honesty, I would prefer the Green party to be the ones with 50% of the popular vote, but am prepared to lend my constituency vote to the SNP for the good of the country.