Scottish Parliament election - 5th May 2016

[IceAgeComing]

Labour being statistically tied with the Tories in Scotland is concerning: as much as I'm not a huge fan of Scottish Labour them potentially finishing behind the Tories isn't a good thing at all for Scotland.  .  I might vote for them on the constituency vote if they stand a good candidate but I don't trust my local Labour party to do anything good while I like my local MSP so it'll probably be an SNP/Green vote again although I've gone off the SNP in recent months.

I think we have a real shot at finishing in fourth in the list vote and a wee chance at equalling the Lib Dems number of MSPs, or getting incredibly close at least.  The Greens are putting up good candidates as number 1 in the list at least: we have a habit of occasionally standing... odd candidates but we don't seem to be doing that for the important places on the list this time!

[IceAgeComing]

I don't think we can talk of terminal decline quite yet; every bold prediction I've seen in recent Scottish political history ("Losing the referendum will hurt the SNP!" + "The SNP will not win in 2011") were totally wrong, I don't . They're going to struggle sure especially as the SNP has taken most of the young talent and what remains is with the Greens in some places; and the Corbyn thing doesn't seem to have helped the grassroots in Scotland as it has elsewhere.  Labour could make a remarkable recovery a la the Canadian Liberals, although I don't see anyone in Scottish Labour who could be the Trudeau figure: it certainly isn't going to be Kezia.  Perhaps going all-in as a party of Unionism wasn't such a good idea after all...

20% seems like the right number for their floor: I also think that's the current ceiling for the Scottish Tories.  I don't see them winning many constituencies so losing out there wouldn't be too bad provided they hold up on the list: although it would be incredibly embarrassing.

[IceAgeComing]

There's also the fact that lots of current Labour voters - or those that switched in 2011 or 15 for that matter - wouldn't vote for a "Scottish Unionist Party" whatever it'd be called.  My Dad is as close to a Labour tribalist as you can get and if that happened he'd vote SNP because for him the independence issues matters less than standard political issues, and on those even the Centrist Populist SNP would be better than some weird right-Labour/Tory mix up party.  You'd get an alternative centre-left party formed that'd take lots of the Labour vote, the rest probably goes between the Greens, the SNP or simply not voting and so you'd have spent loads of time and money entrenching the position of the SNP.  Labour may not be very popular in Scotland at the moment but I'd still say that the dislike of the Conservative Party is a lot deeper - that's why the silly "Red Tories!!" line worked so well - and there's a sizeable number of unionists that'd probably vote SNP if the main alternative was this frankenstein party: they'd just keep voting No in any independence referendum.  Its not a proposal that anyone with any knowledge of Scottish politics deeper than the independence issue would come up with!

Its important to remember that its only been eighteen months since the bloody referendum and the new Scotland Act hasn't even passed yet and that's going to play a role in the next Parliament.  The SNP will likely increase their majority in May but past that who knows: who'd have guessed five years ago that Labour "winning" the independence referendum would lead to them being basically wiped out at Westminster and relying on list votes in Holyrood!  Sure, Scotland could end up as a dominant party system for a long time: or we could be like Quebec and have semi-regular government changes, just that rather than relatively small changes the whole country goes together and you end up with majorities or large minorities very regularly.  The fact that the parliament is PR makes total rule unlikely since they'd lose their majority at some point in time and at that point they'd have to deal with the other parties - they technically could all come together and defeat them at that point but I don't think it would happen, with how badly Labour were hurt after collaborating with the Tories in the independence referendum, god only knows how few seats they'd have if they went into coalition with them...

[IceAgeComing]

They'll benefit a load from STV; if we still had FPTP for Council elections then they'd be wiped out in large parts of the country while with STV they will probably retain at least one councillor in wards that they won in 2012.  In Glasgow the SNP will probably put up some impressive numbers but I don't see how they'll be able to get the votes required to elect all the councillors in any ward without some weird preference flows or lots of exhausted ballots.  If Labour manage to get one per ward then that'd give them 22 councillors which would be a terrible result (five less than the SNP got last time), but they'd at least have a base of support to build on for the future...

[IceAgeComing]

Yeah she managed to answer that question in the worst possible way, saying "no!" .  Its a hard question for a Labour leader to answer, she'd have been panned in the unionist press had she been seen to be soft on the issue.  Perhaps just saying "The Labour manifesto will rule out another independence referendum for the next five years" by itself might have helped avoid the question, U dunno.  I didn't actually watch the debate (the STV player decided to not work when it was on, and I honestly don't have the time to watch a three hour election debate unless its something special) and I'm inclined to distrust anything posted from Wings but it doesn't seem like they took that out of context at all. 

Just before the debate the Greens announced their tax policies - basically it'd reduce income tax rates at the bottom and raise them significantly at the top, plus replacing the council tax with some other system of property tax which would lower rates at the bottom but significantly raise them at the top: plus apparently also implementing a system that would make it easier to introduce LVT in the future.  The Greens aren't very likely to be forming the government, but in the unlikely event that the SNP do badly and need to rely on Green votes on matters of supply they could shift SNP policy slightly to the left - although unfortunately I'm pretty sure they'd be just as likely to rely on Tory votes and concede some things to them...  It is interesting that they apparently admit that the 60p rate wouldn't actually increase revenue which suggests that they only put it in as a vote-getter: although the increased basic rate would probably increase revenue with people that would be less willing to leave (factoring in the first rate before it, people who earn over £26,000 would pay more, anyone under would pay less because of the lower rate).  I don't think that its important from the perspective of future Scottish government policy, it'll be interesting to see whether this helps them strip some of the more left-wing SNP support that might not like their less radical tax proposals...

[IceAgeComing]

means that a majority of scotland's major political parties have lgbt leaders, I'd be interested in hearing whether or not that's a world first.  its nice that I can say that without having to count UKIP Scotland as a major party: because they aren't!

I do think that its nice that a statement like that which a couple of years ago would be a headline making statement is instead hidden in an article that focuses on her status on independence (apparently she'd support independence if the UK left the EU provided that Scotland was guaranteed EU membership, at least that's my reading of what she said), its nice that we can talk about actual important issues and not what sort of people our major world leaders want to screw

e: actually that's probably slightly less important that the other thing covered in the interview - apparently kezia could support independence if the uk left the EU, provided that scotland was guaranteed EU membership

[IceAgeComing]

Yeah, Coburn is the only UKIP elected person in Scotland, I'm pretty sure that's the only reason that they haven't replaced him with someone else at this point because I can't see how anyone could be attracted to UKIP by him,

There's an outside chance that they might be able to elect a list MSP this year (probably from the Highlands, I think that's where UKIP have done "well" in the past), although most polls are still in the 3-4% threshold where they'd be shut out unless there's a really localised swing.  I don't know whether the overlap of the referendum campaign and the Parliament elections will help or hurt them; I think that it might actually cost them votes if they decide to focus on the referendum instead of the May elections

[IceAgeComing]

there'll only be the national coverage in June; I don't see why BBC Scotland would run their own for that referendum.  I never saw 2014 because I was in the pub all referendum night (despite the result it was fun, they had the results on but it was STV and on mute most of the time bar when something declared) but I thought that was a national BBC thing; at least they had Hew Edwards hosting the thing...

UKIP Scotland launched their manifesto today, its especially thin on the ground for actual policies on things that matter.  Basically; a tax cut for those earning over £46,000/year, repealing the public smoking ban in pubs, moving the drink drive limit up to what it was, and apparently pushing councils to provide free town centre parking.  I don't think that its a set of policies that will expand UKIP past their Scottish base.

[IceAgeComing]

I can't be arsed to do it again but when I did that I basically had three groups of two parties - the Greens and the SNP first, then Labour and the Lib Dems followed by the Tories and UKIP well behind (I'm pretty sure both got quite big negative numbers) which isn't too surprising: I'm left wing and vaguely pro-independence (voted Yes in the referendum, but its not an issue that I see as particularly important although I think that if the UK votes to leave the EU that will change) and

I'm definitely voting Green on the list because they need every vote that they can get to guarantee an MSP in the region; I'm still unsure for the constituency and really need to look into the local Labour candidate to see if she's a good egg or not; Bruce Crawford is definitely going to win so its not exactly going to change anything, but if Labour did better in seats where they stood more left-wing candidates it might send a message to the party.  Not likely to happen really, but oh well...

[IceAgeComing]

I think that the strategy this time seems to be sound: focus on the list except in the places where we have a shot of winning.  Those three seats are probably the best for the Greens in the country (Coatbridge only because of the candidate really; the other two are city seats with very large student votes: a good thing for the Greens).  I think that Pat comes close in Kelvin; there's lots of enthusiasm there and he's one of the more popular politicians in Scotland - probably the most popular outside of the SNP - and he's standing in a seat where the Greens should be able to pick up a decent number of votes.  I'm not willing to say about Edinburgh Central because I've not been there: in Coatbridge I think that third is probably the best that we'd manage: the SNP will win and Labour will finish second unless something odd happens.

It probably doesn't actually matter if we win a constituency in terms of our total representation: it might make it easier to get a second Glasgow seat on the list but I did the maths on that a while back and it was negligible (about half a percent I think).  It'd be of huge symbolic value though, and that's a good thing!

One thing that I'd like them to consider before they start standing constituency seats more often is whether people are sure about what both votes mean exactly: I've met people that think that you can't vote for the same party on both bits of the ballot paper and that the second vote is a second preference of some kind - although "Both Votes SNP" might help to shake this slightly.  I wouldn't want people to vote Green on the constituency ballot and think that they can't on the list, which is where we really need all the votes that we can...

[IceAgeComing]

I also think that UKIPs type of nationalism (the "British" part rather than the more ethnically focused approach; the latter is more present among grass-roots SNP people even though it isn't really among the leadership of the SNP) is not something that's ever going to work very well in Scotland, if only because for a majority of Scots the British identity is either a secondary one or non existent.  Add in UKIPs primary policy positions either not being very important for Scots voters (immigration) or unpopular (Brexit) and sprinkle in two unpopular leaders (especially Coburn who no one likes, not even UKIP members) and you get the reason why UKIP are polling at around 2% in Scotland while in the rest of Great Britain they are in the teens.

[IceAgeComing]

Results are very late for the Scottish Parliament elections; first one was 2am (all times BST, pretty sure the conversion is five hours for EDT but I don't know for certain) last time, can't imagine that it'll be any quicker this year.  The regional votes are even longer; I'm pretty sure Glasgow was the first at past 5am five years ago; the Highlands region is usually last and declares the next morning.  Probably longer if turnout is up much.  Apparently the reason for this is because they have to verify the constituency and list votes at the same time to make sure that they catch votes that have been put in the wrong box; and because of our brilliant way of counting the votes they can't start actually counting the votes until they've completed verification, separated the votes and mixed them both: they do that to prevent anyone from working out how any individual polling place voted, I'm pretty sure its something unique to the UK.

In terms of TV coverage; the UK wide stuff starts after question time at 11:45 on BBC1; Scotland and Wales have their own coverage (Scotland's is 10:30 on BBC 1 Scotland, I'm not sure about Wales), I don't think that NI does because they usually count the Assembly elections the day after since hand counting STV takes days anyway.  STV's political stuff has gotten a lot better recently (pre-referendum it was basically non-existent), they're doing election coverage as well and that might be worth keeping an eye on.  Sky have coverage from the close of the polls; but the first few hours of that won't have any major results to talk about, so I'd skip it.  I'm probably going to watch Question Time and switch to BBC Scotland after that, I'm happy skipping an hour of useless chit chat...

[IceAgeComing]

The Lib Dems will not gain Edinburgh West: they'll probably struggle to hold both of Orkney and Shetland

[IceAgeComing]

most of the Greens list vote will be from the SNP, some from Labour.  Although the Tories will probably lose a fair amount of constituency votes to UKIP

[IceAgeComing]

Possibly?  It could be that they are emphasising their "left wing" side to do better in the Central Belt and that doesn't play well in what was once Tory Scotland

There was an interesting bit of spin on BBC Scotland last night about Labour stressing that the Tories had not overtaken them, but they had undertaken the Tories.  Its got a bit of truth about it, but the Tory vote has gone up quite a bit; a 7% Lab-Con swing is pretty damn big.

Disappointed with a few of the list results; but six MSPs is a good number.  "Both Votes SNP" worked as expected in most regions!

[IceAgeComing]

Lol at the RISE hype party being beaten by Tommy Sheridan's Solidarity.

that's not the most pathetic bit

they got less votes that the scottish christian party

[IceAgeComing]

That's not particularly shocking, I'm pretty sure that he's mentioned that before.

I've done some maths; and I'm pretty sure we can credit at least two of the Green gains to the Lib Dems gaining a constituency seat.  Pat got in easy in Glasgow (I think the last seat was between Labour and the Greens, I haven't checked) as did Alison in Lothian; and John Finnie got back in the Highlands comfortably, although benefitting from two easy Lib Dem seats.  In Lothian had the SNP held Edinburgh Western the Lib Dems would have taken the last list seat by about 900 votes which would have denied Andy Wightman the last seat; while in Mid Scotland and Fife the Lib Dems would have taken the Mark Ruskell's list seat if Rennie hadn't gained North East Fife.  Also, I'm pretty sure that Jackie Bailie can be credited for getting Ross Greer into the Scottish Parliament; which certainly annoys a certain group of people.

This makes me think that its much harder for smaller parties like the Greens (and the Lib Dems in much of Scotland) to get representation on the list if one party sweeps an entire region; because the other major parties don't have their votes divided meaning that they'll take most of the list seats before their votes divide enough to let smaller parties have a shout at a seat.  Its the system working in the way that it should, but it does create a bit of a farcical situation where Green voters (or UKIP, or other smaller parties which don't really contest constituencies) should vote tactically for parties that they might totally disagree with since the effect isn't that party having more seats in parliament; but the Greens getting an extra seat.  I don't know if this is something that needs to be solved; perhaps it could be if you add a few more list seats or move to Sainte-Lague or something: although the latter makes it much more likely that odd parties with 2% of the vote get in and the former isn't something that's likely to be popular.  My position on this is certainly effected by my political leanings; so you probably shouldn't listen to me.