Nevertheless, I'm going to make a rare exception and reply to one attempted comment from earlier today, because apart from the standard insult, it also contained an erroneous claim of fact that the troll in question presumably believed to be true - specifically that Alba cost the SNP a list seat in the north-east. This is a very silly myth that simply refuses to die, so I'm going to walk you through the arithmetic in excruciating detail to demonstrate that Alba made no difference to the north-east result whatsoever.
The actual number of list votes for the main parties in the north-east was as follows...
SNP 147,910
Conservatives 110,555
Labour 41,062
Greens 22,735
Liberal Democrats 18,051
Alba 8,269
So as a hypothetical exercise let's assume that Alba had never existed and all of their 8,269 votes had gone to the SNP instead. That would have made the result -
SNP 156,179
Conservatives 110,555
Labour 41,062
Greens 22,735
Liberal Democrats 18,051
And the seat allocation would have worked out as follows...
First list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they won nine constituency seats) and the Conservatives' vote by two (because they won one constituency seat).
Conservatives 55,278
Labour 41,062
Greens 22,735
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Conservatives win first list seat
Second list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats) and the Conservatives' vote by three (because they've already won two seats).
Labour 41,062
Conservatives 36,852
Greens 22,735
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Labour win second list seat
Third list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by three (because they've already won two seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).
Conservatives 36,852
Greens 22,735
Labour 20,531
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Conservatives win third list seat
Fourth list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by four (because they've already won three seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).
Conservatives 27,639
Greens 22,735
Labour 20,531
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Conservatives win fourth list seat
Fifth list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by five (because they've already won four seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).
Greens 22,735
Conservatives 22,111
Labour 20,531
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Greens win fifth list seat
Sixth list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by five (because they've already won four seats), Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat) and the Greens' vote by two (because they've already won one seat).
Conservatives 22,111
Labour 20,531
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Greens 11,368
Conservatives win sixth list seat
Seventh list seat:
The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by six (because they've already won five seats), Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat) and the Greens' vote by two (because they've already won one seat).
Labour 20,531
Conservatives 18,426
Liberal Democrats 18,051
SNP 15,618
Greens 11,368
Labour win seventh list seat
So in total the Tories win four list seats, Labour two and the Greens one - exactly the same as the real result. The SNP aren't even vaguely close to getting a look-in, even with the help of the extra Alba votes.
Why on earth, then, are some people so utterly convinced that Alba cost the SNP a seat in the north-east? It's actually an embarrassingly elementary "two plus two equals twenty-two" type error. What they're doing is looking at the d'Hondt calculation for the final seat, spotting that the SNP were "only" a few thousand votes adrift, and thinking to themselves "aha, if Alba's 8000 votes had come across, we'd have taken that seat". But what they're forgetting is that d'Hondt would have divided those extra votes by ten, just like all the other votes for the SNP.
Some people wear mindless zombie stupidity like a badge
ReplyDeleteTribalism is hard to fight. I was a member of GUSNA in the late 80s in my time as a undergraduate, even being elected as a candidate to the Student Representative council, and tribalism encountered there put me off political parties for life. I'd rather be an independent but fight for Scottish independence rather.
DeleteI've just done the same calculation for the Greens too - same result
ReplyDeleteThey'd have needed more votes than labour to snag the last seat, 18,327 extra votes or all Alba's plus another ten thousand approximately
Thanks for that James, though I'm not an Alba supporter I knew intuitivly that the supposed loss wasn't correct, but lacked the arithmetical motivation to work it out as you have. This is a handy example to 'cut out and keep' for next time, if there is one!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that very useful example of how d'Hondt works. It might well be a revelation to those who haven't bothered to find out in the past.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not even particularly close. Thanks for the clarification, although I doubt this post will solve your troll problem.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a post you made a while back when the wole Alba thing started. The one about "jump up or jump down". I'll admit I too was concerned the Alba project might be counterproductive to the Indy movement. And while Alba certainly have not succeeded with what they wanted to achieve in this election, at least they haven't caused any harm, because voters indeed jumped down, it seems.
Most of the SNP officials who were perpetuating the claim on Twitter that Alba cost them a seat in the NE have deleted their post, but at least one MSP has left it up despite the facts being pointed out
ReplyDeleteSorry you're getting abuse but glad you are reporting it. Some bloggers give the impression that all the abuse is coming from the Alba side or at least that most or the worst does.
ReplyDeleteTBH, both are at it equally. Alba accuse the SNP of not giving them their voters whole the SNP complain about Alba trying to take voters from them. All rather normal for parties chasing the same votes. :-)
ReplyDeleteOh and I think my response to you the other day got lost in the ether. I wasn't clear sorry and meant 2021 was the first time scots voted in majority for yes parties in an election to our national parliament. They have done so before as you noted in 2015 for the UK parliament, but I was trying to say that wasn't a Scottish election, but a British union one.
Holyrood elections are key here as they are our national elections, and where irefs are legislated for. Uk union elections are different and more like eu elections where people protest vote etc. People vote on British issues too.
Anyway, I think 2021 was key for this reason in a way 2015 was not. It seems we may now have a natural yes majority that was not there in 2015 where people could e.g. push for more devo by an snp vote without triggering another indyref.
Hope that makes sense
Sorry, that was meant to respond in part to Keaton.
DeleteTBH, both are at it equally. Alba accuse the SNP of not giving them their voters whole the SNP complain about Alba trying to take voters from them. All rather normal for parties chasing the same votes. :-)
DeleteWe're talking about a claim that the SNP would have achieved a parliamentary majority if all NE Alba votes had gone to them instead. I haven't seen Alba's MPs or councillors spreading a provably false claim like that.
Holyrood elections are key here as they are our national elections, and where irefs are legislated for. Uk union elections are different and more like eu elections where people protest vote etc. People vote on British issues too.
Debatable. Westminster elections tend to have a higher turnout in Scotland than Holyrood elections, which suggests that it's the former which are still generally regarded as the more important.
Holyrood is also the SNP's "home turf". Other than in 2015, they've has always performed worse in Westminster elections than at Holyrood (because of reduced media coverage, and because it's widely regarded as a Con/Lab contest). For that reason I'd say that achieving a pro-independence electoral majority at WM is the more impressive feat.
ALL elections are UK elections, whither held in 'Scotland' or 'Scotland and the rest of the UK'. Pretending otherwise is not helpful. If Holyrood elections were 'Scottish' elections then democratically filling our parliament with Independence supporting parties would have produced Independence. Spoiler alert - It has NOT.
DeleteI haven't seen Alba's MPs or councillors spreading a provably false claim like that.
DeleteI understand the bulk of those making the claims have accepted these were false once the maths was pointed out?
Certainly, Alba's (and voters) claims on 'wasted votes' were highly dubious to misleading at times. So both have been 'at it'. PR is about not wasting votes and the outcome, once again, pretty closely matched how people voted in terms of votes vs seats, particularly after parties below the threshold were eliminated.
And if someone chose to vote SNP + SNP because they didn't want to vote for Alba, then their vote was not 'wasted'. It would have been wasted by voting for a party they didn't want to vote for.
If we do a survey of all people who voted SNP then didn't vote Alba, but who would have done if they'd known about the strategy, only then do we know the number of wasted votes. People who happily voted SNP + SNP by choice didn't waste their vote.
No party has a right to people's votes; these need to be earned. Alba didn't earn them so the lack of seats is Alba's fault alone. Maybe Alba just left it a bit late and didn't get it's message across, but the blame is Alba's alone.
I'd say that achieving a pro-independence electoral majority at WM is the more impressive feat.
It was impressive, but I still feel getting a majority to vote for parties seeking a mandate to legislate for independence in the parliament where that's possible is more impressive.
In UK elections, as noted, people can SNP 'to beat the Tories'...'for the pro-EU party most likely to win'...'to push for more devo' and a host of other reasons safe in the knowledge that it won't lead to independence. Scottish MPs can't legislate for that.
While it's great to prevent unionist MSPs heading off to their favoured England, voting for Yes MPs has done only that since 1997. Even if they held the balance of power, English MPs would unite to make them powerless. Scots are not allowed to govern the UK in any way; they need to become British at least, preferably English.
The one thing that is possible is that we make a Westminster election a plebiscite for indy and aim for >50% SNP, but the public would likely only look favourably on that in the event of the UK tying to block a holyrood referendum. Should Boris play silly buggers with courts etc, then this might be an option if he tries to do an early UKGE....
Obviously that wasn't the case in 2015.
@Jason
DeleteI don't consider Scotland a region of the UK, but a country / nation. So for me, Scottish elections are that, with Scots free to choose independence as they wish.
And Scots did vote happily for their devolved parliament in 1997, based on their sovereign claim of right.
So I will continue to distinguish Scottish vs British and won't be referring to indyref2 as 'British'.
Also pertinent is the total SNP constituency vote across the region. This shows that even without green and Alba standing, and 100% of these repeated in the list vote, they would still be short of a list seat by approx 30,000 votes
ReplyDeleteEven both votes SNP wouldn't have helped, never mind the Alba votes. However, in South Scotland both votes SNP would have got an extra SNP list seat, and the much fabled SNP overall majority.
ReplyDeleteCare to explain how David ? We (the active members of Joan McAlpine's campaign team) saw that 'extra seat' claim within minutes of the list declaration, and our experienced number crunchers responded with an emphatic ''You're wrong !''.
DeleteWe all knew that as soon as the Ayr and E Lothian constituency results came in we were only going to get one list seat in South Scotland, and it wasn't going to the person who won the members vote.
But if you know better - please explain (and hopefully James can add his own thoughts).
SNP cost Alba 5 seats though, assuming all SNP list votes went to Alba.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I follow that, even the assumption.
DeleteWhat you mean is Alba cost Alba seats by not presenting themselves as a sufficiently attractive prospect to attract voters.
DeleteThat's what happened.
Maybe they didn't give themselves enough time due to the short notice, but the e.g. Greens show how voters are quite happy to vote e.g. SNP (C) + a smaller Yes party (R) without any instructions from the SNP, just simply because they like the Greens and that might boost Yes MSPs a bit.
Alba should maybe ask the Greens for some lessons on how to win seats this way.
Nice explanation, although I'm sure the "ALBA BAAAD!" trolls will take no notice. No list seats lost at all. Perhaps someone should point out a couple of constituency seats that could be argued the SNP gained because of ALBA, because many ALBA voters were persuaded to vote SNP 1 instead of actually not turning up, spoiling the constituency paper or even voting against the SNP, which many were seriously considering. Just saying. :)
ReplyDeleteNot hard, as only three constituencies changed hands. Let's look at the most marginal constituency: Ayr, taken with a 170 majority.
DeleteAlba had 3,896 votes in South Scotland; divided by the nine constituencies that's 430 each, about 2.5x the majority in Ayr. So yes, Alba could claim that.
Unfortunately, the net effect of that gain combined with East Lothian(which is not in the Lothian Region) cost the SNP two list seats in South Scotland. If you claim Alba swung it here, you essentially swapped Joan McAlpine for Siobhian Brown.
The margins in East Lothian were too great for Alba to affect based on 430 votes per constituency so that leaves Edinburgh Central, taken by Angus Robertson with a comfortable margin.
It could also be argued that the Buchan and Aberdeenshore east constituencies (SNP holds) may have been in trouble had ALBA voters not been motivated to hold their noses and vote SNP 1 in those areas. The tories were breathing down their necks. The SNP got out of jail, thanks to ALBA.
Deletehad ALBA voters not been motivated to hold their noses and vote SNP
DeleteAnd herein lies the explanation of why the Alba grand plan flopped.
Alba voters were busy telling everyone how they'd have to 'hold their nose to vote SNP, if they could even stomach doing so', then the same folk seemed surprised that SNP voters didn't rush out to vote Alba on request, especially when they didn't need to as polls projected a Yes SNP + Green majority anyway, without the Alba.
We are in the situation where many from Alba were saying unpleasant things about the SNP, and so in return many in the SNP were saying the same things back. Tit for tat; as is the nature of politics. Salmond can't falsely accuse the SNP leader of multiple breaches of the ministerial code in the hope of forcing her out of office, then ask SNP voters to back him when he kicks off his new party! :-)
By contrast the SNP campaign was not all about getting Alba supporters to lend them a vote that would normally be for Alba. Nope, the SNP were focused on getting previous SNP voters to back them again, and hopefully bring on board a few more previous No to now Yes unionists. That is how indy is won, and the Greens focused on the same.
Alba though, were busy saying unpleasant stuff about the people they were asking for votes from, which was kinda obviously bound to go belly up, no matter how well intended / 'put aside grievances' some Alba voters (such as James) clearly are.
Alba can't be a pro- and anti-SNP party at the same time. This is Schrödinger's Yes list party and is not a strategy that will get them anywhere.
Alba must copy the Greens; don't be an anti-SNP party, but just a different Yes party with it's own ideas that is focused on promoting these. It should be aimed at attracting its own voters on it's merits. It doesn't spend all the time talking about 'holding Yes party feet to the fire', but holding unionist feet to the fire.
And unisex loos are as old as the hills. Everyone has them at home without complain, even when having a party with loads of friends round. It just means anyone can use them; you don't share a throne room! You know, like you've always also had in restaurants and even smaller pubs, with this very much the European norm. Disabled loos are all like this. FHS it's not a women's rights issue as everyone gets a wee private loo no matter what their sex. @KennyMacAskill
Let's focus on indy, not loos!
Aberdeenshire East, no. There were only 1,235 Alba regional votes from there, constituency majority of 1,889. Helpful to be sure, but not essential - and that's without considering the 2,326 Green regional votes without a constituency candidate.
DeleteBanffshire and Buchan, maybe. It's likely that as in Aberdeenshire East, Green regional voters alone more than account for the majority gap.
Ayr's the only plausible one. As I already pointed out, that cost us all Joan McAlpine so it may not be the most strategic of victories.
The problem with the angle you're trying to create is that total constituency votes add up to a pro-union majority by a whisker while the (larger by 12,000) list vote does the reverse. That tells us around 0.5-1% of the electorate - who voted for pro-indy parties - wasted their constituency ballots or worse, voted for an unionist on them.
Some of them were indeed Greens, but a few had to be Alba.
had ALBA voters not been motivated to hold their noses and vote SNP 1 in those areas.
DeleteThis pretty much explains everything. SNP voters had no reason to 'hold their nose and vote Alba'; polls all showed an SNP +/- Green majority so no need to 'waste a vote' on a party they didn't really want to vote for.
Alba voters should totally appreciate this strategy surely? It's just their own sentiments in reverse.
Aberdeenshire East - of course NO, just short, based on simple arithmetic. However, itmay not be so simple - based on what went on before the election I'm convinced that a fair number of indy supporters were planning to actively vote against the SNP. The fact that AS came out and encouraged SNP 1 may have saved quite a few MSPs falling to the tories IMO. We will never know for sure, but its worth considering. I'm also gutted that Joan MacAlpine lost her seat, but the SNP list selection process has a lot to answer for that. Positive discrimination? Aye Right - that may come back to bite them hard.
DeleteThe last list seat went to Labour, on a count of 20531. This is 5.9% of the 348582 total list votes, and roughly bears out people's comments before the election - you need something like 6% of the list vote to get a seat.
ReplyDeleteThe Libdems got 5.2% and no seat. Alba got 2.4% and no seat. It's doubtful the Libdems would improve their vote much in another election. You'd expect Alba, hardly launched in the water on polling day, to improve their public standing ... but a lot of that hangs directly on Alec Salmond and his appeal to the general public.
When the SNP has been infiltrated by a man hating castration cult boosted by an anti democratic selection process for List seats that they are apt to make ludicrous menstrual fueled claims comes as no surprise. Or claims made by others due to a total lack of testosterone by beta cucks come as no surprise either. They have one objective and that is to castrate the Scots Indy movement. I fear they have succeeded.
ReplyDelete