Sunday, April 24, 2016

One week on, have the Sunday Herald learned the lessons of their wildly inaccurate reporting on so-called "tactical voting on the list"?

The short answer to that question is "only partly".  As editor Neil Mackay hinted would probably be the case, they've gone big on the subject for a second Sunday in a row, with the lead story once again penned by Peter Swindon.  It's basically another propaganda piece that is pretty unsubtle in attempting to steer readers towards abandoning the SNP on the list, but Swindon has chosen his words somewhat more carefully this time, and in particular has ditched the pretence that John Curtice actually "advised" people to vote Green or RISE. He's also replaced all traces of the totally inappropriate word "predict" with the much more sound "project".  The problem, however, is that he mostly writes as if the two words are basically synonymous, ie. "[Curtice] projected that the SNP will win all but three constituencies". That means the impression conveyed is almost as misleading as last week - but a very hurried caveat of "if an average of recent polls are correct" at least ensures that the new article can technically be claimed not to be inaccurate.

To be fair, there are some contexts in which "project" can be used as if it means exactly the same thing as "predict" - an example would be "CNN projects that Bernie Sanders has won the Michigan primary", which is a call that is never made until it is felt there is near-certainty. But that's not the sort of thing we're talking about in this case. John Curtice's report collated the results of opinion polls which were conducted well before the election, and projected what the election result would be if : a) those polls were bang-on accurate, and b) no changes whatever in public opinion occurred between the dates on which they were conducted and polling day. That's more akin to taking the pre-election polls in Michigan and using them to "project that Hillary Clinton will win comfortably", without bothering with the irritating formality of counting any votes. Indeed, as regular readers of this blog know, that sort of projection was actually made, and it was utterly meaningless - Sanders defied polls giving Clinton a double-digit lead, and won by a whisker.

Do we live in a world where that magnitude of polling fiasco only occurs once in a blue moon? Och, don't be silly. Last year's UK general election was supposed to result in a nailed-on certain hung parliament - but the Tories won an overall majority. Just a few weeks earlier in Israel, everyone thought Benjamin Netanyahu was a dead man walking, but on election night he dismayed the world with a famous victory that bore no resemblance at all to the pre-election polls. And although the Liberals certainly looked set for a return to power in Canada last autumn, the polls offered Justin Trudeau little hope of an overall majority. Come election night, he won a comfortable majority of 30.

Now, perhaps you're on the brink of offering the familiar objection that the polls may have severely misled us in many contests around the world last year, but they did pretty well here in Scotland. OK, so let's take that observation to its logical conclusion. Presumably what you'd be getting at is that the polls can always be relied upon to give an accurate indication of election results in Scotland. That would explain, for example, why we all knew well in advance that the SNP were going to win an overall majority in 2011. Oh, wait. We didn't know that at all, did we? In fact, every single projection in 2011 based upon the pre-election polls put the SNP short of a majority. It was occasionally projected that there might be a slender pro-independence majority consisting of the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald, but even that was thought to be reasonably unlikely.

So, no, there is no Scottish exceptionalism that means we don't have to allow for the very significant possibility that the polls and seats projections based on polls are leading us astray. Professor Curtice knows that as well as anyone - he's repeatedly pointed out on his blog that polling on the list was significantly less accurate in 2011 than constituency polling (thus explaining why nobody saw the SNP majority coming), and also that the Greens have historically been substantially overestimated on the list. And that's exactly why he went out of his way in his report to indicate that his projection based on the polls was not a prediction of the election, or functionally indistinguishable from a prediction. He specifically entertained the possibilities that the polls may be understating or overstating the SNP's support, and noted that in either scenario, attempts by SNP supporters to vote "tactically" on the list could easily backfire. And that was absolutely not, as somebody tried to make out in a comment on this blog the other day, some kind of routine, going-through-the-motions "health warning" along the lines of "we all know that the polls will probably be broadly right, but we can't totally exclude the possibility that they won't be". He was deadly serious in what he said - nobody who read the report could be in any doubt that he regarded polling error as a significant risk. That was the whole basis for his verdict that pro-independence voters face a "dilemma" on the list ballot.

Last week, the Sunday Herald totally ignored that side of the Curtice report - they literally pretended it didn't exist. This week, they've belatedly acknowledged it, but are downplaying it for all they're worth. They have a direct quote from Curtice, which in terms of tone seems to offer some comfort to their original misrepresentation of the report, but a close reading confirms that his position hasn't changed one iota. Forgive my cynicism, but I'm inclined to suspect that they conducted quite a long interview with him, and cherry-picked the quote in which he happened to place the weakest emphasis on "risk" and "dilemma". Even so, those words are still very much present.

The other experts quoted in the article are Ipsos-Mori's Mark Diffley and Dr Craig McAngus from Aberdeen University. In contrast to Curtice, I don't have any suspicions that they've been quoted selectively, because what they say seems fairly clear-cut, although obviously it's impossible to know whether the Sunday Herald kept phoning around until they found experts who said exactly what they wanted to hear (perish the thought!). I just think Diffley and McAngus are plain wrong, and some of what they say doesn't actually make any logical sense. Diffley very unwisely uses Swindon-like language and says that Curtice's projection shows that the SNP "will" only get two regional seats. I'm sorry to have to make the obvious point here, but Ipsos-Mori were as wrong as every other pollster last year - a projection based on their final poll in May 2015, and couched in Diffley's choice of words today, would have read : "Ed Miliband will be Britain's new Prime Minister". I'm sure that would make a great alternative history novel, but it wasn't much cop as a prediction.

McAngus, meanwhile, makes the extraordinary statement that "To vote for another party other than the SNP on the list as a pro-independence voter is a rational thing to do. I mean, the way that the numbers stack up, the SNP are not going to win a lot of seats on the list." I can only conclude that he actually hasn't thought this through for more than five seconds, because what all the polls are unanimous on is that the SNP are on course to win some list seats, and that both RISE and Solidarity are light-years away from winning even one list seat. So yes, let's talk about rationality - is McAngus seriously saying that it's more rational to cast a "tactical" vote that seems guaranteed to be wasted than it is to stick with the SNP and at least have a chance of contributing towards the election of a pro-independence MSP on the list? Perhaps we could be charitable and assume that "another party other than the SNP on the list" is code for the Greens, and definitely not for RISE or Solidarity - but a) that's not my impression of what he's saying, and b) even if that is what he means, it's deeply irresponsible of him not to spell it out. It would, in any case, still be a very weak argument, because while the polls offer grounds for optimism that list votes for the Greens will not be wasted in at least some regions, they fall well short of providing conclusive evidence that the Greens are set to win more list seats than the SNP.

I'm also a tad bemused by the article's suggestion that Diffley and McAngus have "backed" Curtice's projection. As the projection simply takes the raw poll numbers and directly converts them into a hypothetical number of seats, "backing" the projection amounts to no more than agreeing that Curtice is adept at using a calculator. In that sense, I'm more than happy to "back" the projection as well, but I'm not sure what that's supposed to tell us in concrete terms.

Finally (and this has nothing to do with the Sunday Herald piece), I want to tackle a line of argument that Tommy Sheridan used in the debate I had with him, and that seems to be taking root in some other quarters as well. Basically he claimed that if the SNP win all nine constituency seats in Glasgow, the d'Hondt formula will ensure that "nine out of every ten SNP list votes will be wasted, and that only one in ten will actually count". This is complete garbage, because it wrongly implies that d'Hondt literally throws away a certain number of votes, which are then not taken into account at any point during the distribution of list seats. In fact, the d'Hondt calculation is made afresh for every individual list seat, and is always based on the actual number of votes cast. The following hypothetical example in which only two parties are involved will hopefully illustrate what I mean.

Actual list vote :

SNP 99,950 votes
Solidarity 10,000 votes

Because the SNP won all nine constituency seats in the region, the d'Hondt formula divides their raw list vote by ten (nine plus one) in the count for the first list seat. Because Solidarity didn't win any constituency seats, their raw vote remains unaltered.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for first list seat :

Solidarity 10,000 votes
SNP 9,995 votes

So Solidarity take the first list seat, and on the face of it the SNP's advantage in terms of votes has been completely wiped out. If you believe Tommy Sheridan's notion about 90% of the SNP's original list votes being literally thrown away, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the two parties are now on an equal footing as far as the distribution of the remaining six list seats are concerned, and perhaps will win three apiece. But that isn't the case at all, because for each remaining seat, the d'Hondt formula refers back to each party's actual number of votes. For the second list seat, Solidarity's original vote is divided by two (one plus one), because they now have one seat under their belt. The SNP's vote remains divided by ten.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for second list seat :

SNP 9,995 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

For the third list seat, the SNP's original vote is divided by eleven (ten plus one), because they now have ten seats. Solidarity's vote remains divided by two.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for third list seat :

SNP 9,086 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

For the fourth list seat, the SNP's original vote is divided by twelve (eleven plus one), because they now have eleven seats. Solidarity's vote remains divided by two.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for fourth list seat :

SNP 8,329 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

For the fifth list seat, the SNP's original vote is divided by thirteen (twelve plus one), because they now have twelve seats. Solidarity's vote remains divided by two.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for fifth list seat :

SNP 7,688 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

For the sixth list seat, the SNP's original vote is divided by fourteen (thirteen plus one), because they now have thirteen seats. Solidarity's vote remains divided by two.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for sixth list seat :

SNP 7,139 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

For the seventh and final list seat, the SNP's original vote is divided by fifteen (fourteen plus one), because they now have fourteen seats. Solidarity's vote remains divided by two.

D'Hondt-adjusted count for seventh list seat :

SNP 6,663 votes
Solidarity 5,000 votes

As you can see, and entirely contrary to Sheridan's claim, the fact that the SNP has ten times as many list votes as Solidarity matters enormously. It ensures that after the initial big hit on the first count, the SNP's vote only comes down very, very gradually in subsequent counts. By contrast, Solidarity never recover from having their vote cut in half on the second count, and they lose ALL SIX remaining list seats to the SNP. Final number of list seats in this hypothetical scenario : SNP 6, Solidarity 1.  So much for nine-tenths of those SNP list votes "not counting", eh?

34 comments:

  1. That last example is same with greens in most regions. Once they've gotten their first list seat they get hammered. That's why a big vote for snpx2 is a safer bet going by 2011 results and with a big vote they can pick up more than one list seat in each region.
    The other point is curtices projection uses average polling results whereas in reality we know that there will be areas of stiff unionist opposition where snp will lose unexpected constituencies. Take almondbank council by election as example where snp got humped by all unionists switching to back the tories.
    do what you did in 2011 and vote snp x2 and ensure to deliver an snp majority - it's the only way to indyref2. Doesn't matter if it is 1 or 10 just MUST be a majority.

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  2. Oh ho, how the story of list seats has been cleared up! Thanks for the example :-)

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  3. If only the whole of Scotland got to see this, James! Very clear and concise show of the d'Hondt system (despite it being a hypothetical situation with solidarity and SNP). This finally puts the "naive" tactical voting theory to rest.

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  4. thank you ,that has cleared it up, nicely :)

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  5. yeah that's a real example that's going to happen. Why don't you use the latest poll on the constituency of ACTUAL data to show what would happen. You can assume SNP win every constituency or they win all but 1 constituencies (the other goes to Labour). Why you won't do it. Because in both scenarios every single SNP list vote is wasted.

    You're not biased at all, are you?

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    1. correct stella, this is twonk world figures from kelly

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    2. Oh for pity's sake. No-one is forcing Tommy Sheridan to go around making the totally false claim that only one-tenth of SNP list votes will actually count. I make no apology for using a hypothetical example to illustrate as clearly as possible why that is untrue.

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  6. It's not a real example. In the real world Solidarity and RISE will get a few hundred votes at best. Here's a real world example
    ~
    This is the full calculation for the regional seats in Central Scotland in 2011.

    The list count for each seat is divided by the number of MSP's each party already has + 1

    The SNP won 6 constituencies so for the first seat count their vote was divided by 7 (6 MSPs + 1)

    Labour won 3 constituencies so for the first seat count their vote was divided by 4 (3 MSPs + 1)

    The regional vote was as follows

    SNP 108,261 (divided by 7 = 15,466)
    Labour 82,459 (divided by 4 = 20,614)
    Tory 14,870
    Pensioners 5,793
    Green 5,634
    Fiberals 3,318
    Christian 3,173
    BNP 2,214
    Socialist Labour 2,483
    Unionist 1,545
    UKIP 1,263
    Independent 821
    SSP (RISE) 820
    Solidarity 559
    Homeland 337

    First seat. Top four
    SNP 15,466
    Labour 20,614
    Tory 14,870
    Pensioners 5,793
    Labour win with 20,614. They now have 4 MSPs so their vote is divided by 4+1 = 5 for the next seat. 82,459 divided by 5 = 16,492

    Second seat. Top four
    SNP 15,466
    Labour 16,492
    Tory 14,870
    Pensioners 5,793
    Labour win with 16,492. They now have 5 MSPs so their vote is divided by 5 + 1 = 6 for the next seat. 82,459 divided by 6 = 13,743

    Third seat. Top four
    SNP 15,466
    Labour 13,743
    Tory 14,870
    Pensioners 5,793
    SNP win with 15,466. They now have 7 MSPs so their vote is divided by 7+1 = 8. 108,261 divided by 8 = 13,533

    Fourth seat. Top four
    SNP 13,533
    Labour 13,743
    Tory 14,870
    Pensioners 5,793
    Tory win with 14,870. They now have one MSP so their vote is divided by 1+1 = 2 for the next seat. 14,870 divided by 2 = 7,435

    Fifth seat. Top four.
    SNP 13,533
    Labour 13,743
    Tory 7,435
    Pensioners 5,793
    Labour win with 13,743. They now have 6 MSPs so their vote is divided by 6+1 = 7 for the next seat. 82,459 divided by 7 = 11,780

    Sixth seat. Top four
    SNP 13,533
    Labour 11,780
    Tory 7,435
    Pensioners 5,793
    SNP win with 13,533. They now have 8 MSPs so their vote is divided by 8+1 = 9. 108,261 divided by 9 = 12,029

    Seventh and final seat. Top four
    SNP 12,029
    Labour 11,780
    Tory 7,435
    Pensioners 5,793
    SNP win with 12,029

    SNP majority over Labour on the final seat 12,029-11,780 = 249. As the SNP vote had been divided by 7 to start with, working backwards this equates to 7x249 = 1,743 original votes

    If 1,743 people had voted for parties other than the SNP then Labour would have won the final seat.

    If there had been an 8th seat the SNP would have won it.
    if there had been a 9th seat Labour would have won it.
    If there had been a 10th seat the SNP would have won it.

    The lowest original vote that got an MSP was 14,870 – the Tories
    The Greens would have needed to triple their vote to win a seat
    The SSP (RISE) would have needed to increase their vote by 19 times to win a seat
    Solidarity would have needed to increase their vote by 27 times to win a seat.

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    1. there is no 8th,9th or 10th seat, if my aunty had bollox etc.

      no one is predicting a swing back to labour, no one

      in the real world, labour will not win 3 constituencies, as such, your figures a bollox

      snp1
      rise2

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    2. Anonymous 11:36, I agree that the 8th, 9th and 10th, seat stuff is irrelevant, but how can you say "in the real world, labour will not win 3 constituencies, as such, your figures a bollox"??? This WAS the real world! - and it actually HAPPENED! Yes, the situation has changed since 2011, but NOBODY can, with ANY degree of certainty, predict how the vote is going to pan out. I'm tempted to say "Except for the fact that Solidarity haven't a snowball's of getting a seat", but then I'd be falling into the same trap. :)

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    3. use the list proportions in the latest poll or the poll of polls. Assume SNP win every constituency or all but 1 (in the latter case) assign it to Labour. See what happens. SNP don't win a single list seat and greens win 2. Funny how that real example based on actual polls isn't the one chosen. Central 2011 is silly. We are only arguing for a split because we think SNP will clean up on the constituency. If we thought it was like Central 2011 we wouldn't argue for a split. And RISE in terms of the tactical vote is wasted. Green is the tactical vote but not in South or Highlands.

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    4. Pull the other one, Bella fanboy.April 24, 2016 at 12:13 PM

      Seems the SGP blog has rankled with the RISE/Bella propaganda brigade. RISE is a mess, my experience with RISE supporters is one full of self-entitled, professionally offended, baseless ranting which wouldn't look out of place with a UKIP badge on it, if only we could tell what their policies are. Rather than going for the Labour vote, where they could feasibly win some votes, it seeks to damage the Yes vote by misrepresenting D'Hondt and pursuing a vague line of debate about how 'diversity', not the SNP, was the real factor that brought Yes to 45%. It ignores the facts about the voting system and continually presses that a list vote for RISE is somehow valid in 2016 Scottish politics.

      The reality is that the SNP and its followers brought Indy to the table, and was the vehicle that followed it through to the vote. RISE hung on to the rear bumper with a few fingers, and now claims somehow that it was instrumental in delivering the high Yes vote, rather like a goalkeeper who never played a match in the run up to winning the cup final, who comes off the bench to collect his cup winners medal but receives the plaudits anyway. Revisionism is not sustainable when we have the internet, however.

      RISE seem to think they are the party with the real plan, if only the whole country could see it. I'd love to see Cat Boyd in parliament, as I think she is a good voice for the left, equality, etc. However, RISE as a party is a complete mess, strewn with in-fighting, contradictions and a frankly annoying sense of importance that ensures it will never be taken seriously in these pre-Independence days.

      If it wasn't for that odious turd Mike Small and Bella Caledonia giving them a platform to 'let all voices be heard' (as long as they are pre-approved by Small), RISE would be in the same boat as the Scottish Resistance, occasionally standing in the rain on a Saturday morning and shouting at no-one in particular, achieving precisely nothing, whilst attempting to come across as 'activists' of sorts, before signing off and going home for their tea.

      It's embarrassing.

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  7. In amongst all the speculation we have one solid FACT.
    'Both votes SNP' resulted in an SNP majority and an independence referendum last time.

    Taking risks with that strategy is a massive gamble.
    Bear in mind, we won't see Labours manifesto until a week before the election and it will probably contain some huge bribes.

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  8. James,
    Sorry to ask pretty direct question of you.
    Just looking at Derick fae Yell's summary of the Central list votes from 2011, I see:

    Pensioners 5,793
    Christian 3,173
    BNP 2,214
    Socialist Labour 2,483
    Unionist 1,545
    UKIP 1,263
    Independent 821
    SSP (RISE) 820
    Solidarity 559
    Homeland 337

    That's something like 14,000 votes going to what might be considered relatively right wing populist protest parties - assign those votes to UKIP and it's competitive in almost every region.

    Am I right in thinking that the Christian and Pensioners parties haven't up candidates?

    With the BNP imploding, and the EU referendum dominating national news headlines, UKIP should have a very good opportunity to get seats, especially since the Scottish Conservatives are taking a pretty clear 'Remain' stance.

    Should this be more of a story?

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    1. Not sure you are correct in describing the Pensioners as a 'right wing populist party'.

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  9. The Sunday herald, like the greens, cannot be trusted on independence. Glad I don't buy into either tricksters.

    It has to be SNP x 2

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  10. Looks like the Sunday Herald are caught between a rock and a hard place, as the number of people who cancelled their SH subscriptions or said they would stop buying that rag after last week, will have hurt, but with their wealthy Elite type owners demanding that an article that harms the SNP electoral chances gets promoted, they have decided to attempt to skip along the edge of a cliff with this latest offering.

    Well Sunday Herald, you are fooling no-one, people in Scotland are too well informed to be manipulated by your lies and deceptions any more, so take whatever reward you were given in return for your tattered reputation, and leave the rest of us in piece.

    BTW, I'm glad you published this article James because like many many others, I have stopped reading the Sunday Herald after last week.

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  11. The very fact that the Unionist press and faux-Indy newspapers are pushing this so hard is extremely suspicious.
    The fact that it's being discussed when no such discussions took place when Labour was in power in Holyrood and in Westminster sets of klaxons and alarm bells.

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  12. I didn't buy a Sunday Herald this week for the first time since the referendum and I sincerely hope that a lot of other SNP supporters didn't as well. I'm about as interested in what it has to say now as I am regarding what goes on, on the dark side of the moon.

    I bought instead The Sunday Times as I thought I might as well concentrate my "SNP Bad". They report under the headline "Report wanes for Scottish breakaway" essentially they say that a Panelbase poll conducted by them shows support for independence declining in the event of a brexit from 53% in January to just 50% now, with all the usual honking about how that shows Scots don't feel that brexit is sufficiently important to merit a new referendum. Professor Curtice is quoted at length here too so he has had a busy week. Any chance you can debunk this poll?

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    1. This is why we need both votes SNP.

      We need an increase in SNP vote to debunk the unionist press propaganda.

      Remember how the unionists said after GE that the only reason SNP got so many seats was because the unionist vote was split between 3 parties.

      It's now a clear tactic to try and split the independence vote in the same way.

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  13. That's what you get with a media that lives in fear of the SNP Government. Slavish devotion to the criminal mastermind and dictator for life Sturgeon. The doublethink required to be a pretendy journalist in Scotland will be part of University courses for centuries.

    In other news was anybody at the Pen*s on Parliament debacle yesterday? Did they repeat their calls from every previous edition to scrap the new Forth Bridge, A9 and A96 improvements?

    Also we still have the unanswered question. Is JK Plagiarist a revolting racist and co-creator of B Spanner? Is JK PLagiarist the power behind GWC and Aldo? The people deserve answers.

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  14. The only headline Unionists want is SNP LOSE GOV MAJORITY

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  15. In one word - No!

    I think the SH has thoroughly discredited itself not just with SNP voters but the broader Indy movement as well. I think it lost its way long before now though. It has just taken others a little time to see it.

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  16. The answer to your question is No. I doubt that many will be influenced by the media, maybe a tiny minority but I think that people made their minds up a while ago. The bulk of the postal votes will now have been cast.

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  17. I would dearly like to get back to 'real' politics. But until we get independence it has to be SNP 1 & 2.

    I like Kat Boyd, I completely agree with Andy Whightman and I am probably as Green as Patrick Harvie.

    But, all of that has to be on 'hold' as it were, until their voices will have a realistic chance of influencing a future sovereign Scottish Parliament.

    Tht is the sad truth of it, as per the OP, and comments further down.

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  18. Glasgow Working Class 2April 24, 2016 at 2:52 PM

    I am sure the voters will not have forgotten the Sheridan SSP fiasco. A decent party ruined by ego.
    Labour 1 & 2.

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  19. Postal votes are 25% and they have been sent off by a lot of people (I know I have sent my votes away ) At the time of sending, which was two weeks ago , we were being urged to vote for an other pro-indy party , be it Rise or Greens to give us an indy parliament .Now I didn't fall for that , but a lot of people would have.I recon that the SNP will have to go all out now to get two votes . People have been so confused and misdirected on this issue , we could end up with a rainbow parliament with no one with a majority . Job done Westminster , forget a referendum any time soon !

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  20. John,

    The 'heat' in this issue seems to me to only have reached boiling point in the last few days.

    So, fingers crossed, you are wrong ;-)

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  21. You know, these kinds of discussions usually take place between people who post on blogs about politics, and one characteristic that unites these people is that they are much more likely than your average citizen to be hyper-partisan.
    So let me come to the discussion from another angle. I was speaking last week with my aunt who is a floating but generally centre-left voter. She lives in Glasgow Kelvin (note that this is the only part of Glasgow where the Greens are putting up a candidate: Patrick Harvie).
    Her thoughts " I think the Greens have good policies and I like Patrick Harvie so I will vote for him for my MSP. But I will also vote SNP on the regional list because I want to see Nicola Sturgeon back as first minister"

    I remarked that considering her two objectives it would make more sense, because her votes would be more efficient and effective, to vote the other way around: SNP on the constituency ballot, Green on the regional ballot. Was that wrong?

    Isn't the problem with these discussions that they deal only with strongly partisan SNP supporters who want to vote for Rise, the Greens etc for *purely* tactical reasons - simply because they are Yes parties?
    But in reality, aren't most voters less partisan, less committed than that? And so aren't these long efforts at mathematical reasons fairly irrelevant to the way most voters will approach this election?

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  22. Can we have a post about Eurovision? #bothvotesboznia

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  23. Thanks for the very full explanation of how the regional vote is calculated.
    My only question is regarding the actual count. Are these votes calculated by a team of harassed human tellers or are they calculated by computer?

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  24. I hope I'm wrong to Douglas , LOL .

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