Scottish Parliament election - 5th May 2016

[joevsimp]

IIRC SLAB still have to decide the selection rules for list candidates....it will be fun..

will they run many of the now-unemployed former MPs or not do you think?

[joevsimp]

So the SNP gain an additional ten seats at the expense of Labour -where would these seats come from?

Labour hold 15 constitunecy seats, none of which can really be considered safe anymore, they could quite feasably lose all of them but gain an extra 5 list seats to bring them up to 27

[joevsimp]

was somebody supposedly putting around rumours and innuendos about her during the leadership campaign last year or am I misremembering something?

[joevsimp]

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.

UKIP - the party of British hedonism.....

going after those vital votes now that the Beer, Baccy and Crumpet party have disbanded


anyhoo, I appear to be in good company so far

Green - 46
SNP - 38
LAB - 37
LIB - 30
UKIP - -15
CON - -16

[joevsimp]

Oddly, the Cutbot calculator shows the Greens winning constituency seats in Glasgow and Edinburgh...

we really ought to start standing in constituency seats, if we're hitting 8 to 10% then we'll be saving enough deposits.  not in Wales yet though, maybe Cardiff and Ceredigion.

[joevsimp]

I think I've worked out where cutbot is getting the Greens winning Glasgow Kelvin and/or Edinburgh Central from. Latest poll says 6% for Others, but there is not really anyewher for that to go: 3 Greens, 6 TUSC candidates, 8 indies and 3 parties running one candidate each.  Then it's algorithm is assigning most of that to the Greens based on the regional vote.

Edit: it seems that I am completely wrong.  They are using the list vote from 2011 in the three seats we are contesting as a baseline and calculating the fptp vote by extrapolating it from the list vote

Come election night I think the Other vote for constituencies will drop much closer to the 1.1% that it was last time and Harvie will take a respectable second place

[joevsimp]

three regions declared so far, Tories comfortably ahead of Labour in Lothian and Mid/Fife, Greens safely ahead of Lib Dems and gaining a seat in each of those and holding our seats we had already in Glasgow and Lothian

[joevsimp]

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.

England and Wales Green party policy is generally in favour of STV, but I'm not actually sure that it would help us that much at Holyrood. Afaik the Scots Greens have no real appetite to change the voting system (except for Westminster) now that STV is bedded in for local govt and MMP gives reasonable results