IndyLive Radio interview

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be on the Daytime Show on Indylive Radio today, which starts at 11am.  The interview was pre-recorded on Tuesday night.  They're also speaking to Professor John Curtice and a number of SNP and Green candidates.  If you happen to be around, you can listen HERE.  I believe the interview will also be uploaded to Soundcloud at some point, so I'll try to post a link to that when it's up.

You can read my analysis piece in The National about yesterday's two opinion polls HERE.

Alba affirmed

I remember feeling a bit windswept when I heard the news that Caroline McAllister and Lynne Anderson had defected from the SNP to Alba.  Of course as an Alba supporter I was delighted, but there was a little part of me that recalled what a remarkable achievement it was to turn the tide within the SNP and get them elected in November as Women's Convener and Equalities Convener.  And out of the blue they were voluntarily giving all of that up.  Now, to be clear, it won't have been a rash or hasty decision - I'm sure Alex Salmond or his close allies will have been in touch with them well in advance to give them a chance to mull it over and make a considered decision.  But once you jump, you're committed and you have to make it work.  You've left the SNP in the hands of the Fiona Robertsons of this world, and if you want your viewpoint to be heard in future, that'll depend on getting Alba MSPs elected in May.  

That's why it's totally unrealistic for people to say "oh look at the two new polls, Alba aren't getting off the ground, you have to toddle back and vote SNP on the list". The people who have moved across to Alba don't have that option.  Of course if Alba were to eventually fold, some people would go back to the SNP, start from scratch, and try to build up an internal powerbase all over again.  But that would be a very long-term project.  For now they're quite rightly going to hold their nerve, see this campaign through, and try to maximise Alba's list vote.  If every party that had a couple of poor opinion polls immediately gave up, no politician would ever achieve anything.

I've already sent in my vote by post, and it was SNP on the constituency ballot, Alba on the list.  When I saw the ComRes poll this morning, I did wonder for a fraction of a second if I'd made a mistake, but I quickly realised that I hadn't.  I live in Central Scotland, and the reality is that a list vote here for either Alba or the SNP could easily be wasted - a vote for Alba could be wasted if they fall below the de facto threshold of 5% or 6%, and a vote for the SNP is likely to be wasted due to the d'Hondt formula penalising them for being over-represented in the constituency seats.  Some would say that the Greens are the percentage choice on the list in this region, but I was never going to vote for a party that doesn't make independence its highest priority.  (I'm also very unhappy with the Greens' obsession with identity politics, but I could have held my nose if they at least shared Alba's sense of urgency on independence.)

The reality is that the Alba experiment will have been a success if there's at least one Alba seat in the new parliament.  If you doubt that, you only need to look at how important it is to the Alba-haters that the party draws a complete blank and that Alex Salmond suffers his "final, crushing defeat". They won't be able to make that claim if Mr Salmond himself is returned as an Alba MSP in the north-east.  I was thinking back to 2003 when the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party won a list seat in Central Scotland thanks to a below-the-radar campaign that relied on leaflets pointing out that they were running Billy McNeill as a paper candidate.  I don't recall them registering in the pre-election polls much.

In other words, don't write Alba off.  It's entirely possible they'll have a presence in the new parliament.

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

A plea to all independence supporters: don't put the pro-independence majority at risk by mucking around on the constituency ballot. It's essential to vote SNP.

As stated in the previous post, there's a complete contradiction between today's new Scottish Parliament polls, with one showing the pro-indy camp surging to a huge majority and the SNP also winning a single-party majority, and with the other showing the SNP falling short of a majority and the pro-indy majority looking a bit too tight for comfort.  I have no idea which of the two is more accurate, but in this sort of situation it's always wise to assume the worst and act accordingly.  That means no mucking around on the constituency ballot.  Voting for Green constituency candidates, or for Bonnie Prince Bob in Edinburgh Central, or even abstaining as a protest against GRA reform or the Hate Crime Bill, is a luxury we simply cannot afford at the moment.  If the wheels truly come off and we lose the pro-indy majority, it'll be on the constituency ballot that the real damage is done.  We must ensure that doesn't happen, and that means voting for SNP constituency candidates across the board.

There are quite a few independence supporters on social media who seem to actively want Angus Robertson to lose in Edinburgh Central, even though that probably means losing to the Tories.  I was half-tempted to run a Twitter poll asking people whether they would prefer to have Robertson losing or an independent Scotland.  That would have lacked subtlety but it may turn out to be the nature of the choice.

As for the special case of Glasgow Kelvin where the Greens start from second place: even there, it's not impossible to imagine the pro-indy vote splitting in a way that allows a unionist candidate (ie. Labour) to come through the middle and win.  It's just not worth the risk.  Even in Glasgow Kelvin, the SNP are the safe option.

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

A total contradiction: the key trends from the new Savanta ComRes poll cannot be reconciled with the new YouGov poll

We're deep into the 'fog of war' stage of the campaign.  "SNP's hopes of a majority continue to fade" say the Scotsman about their new ComRes poll, with 'continue' and 'fade' looking like weasel words given that a YouGov poll on the exact same day shows the SNP on course for a majority.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 46% (-3) 

Conservative 25% (+2) 

Labour 20% (+2) 

Liberal Democrats 6% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 38% (-2) 

Conservatives 23% (+2) 

Labour 17% (-1) 

Greens 7% (-2) 

Liberal Democrats 5 (-1) 

Alba 1% (-2)

The Scotsman's write-up of the poll (written, naturally, by Conor Matchett, notorious for the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal) vaguely suggests Alba are on a "similar" level of support to All for Unity, UKIP, the Abolish the Scottish Parliament Party and the Scottish Libertarian Party.  I would guess that probably means those other four parties are also on 1% of the list vote, but that isn't actually spelt out.

The ComRes and YouGov polls are difficult to reconcile in several ways.  YouGov suggested that the Tories are going backwards on the constituency ballot, allowing Labour to draw level with them and the SNP to further extend their huge lead.  ComRes shows the complete opposite, with the Tories increasing their constituency vote to an unusually high 25% and the SNP lead dropping to an unusually low 21 points.  That's the main reason YouGov show the SNP with an overall majority and ComRes do not - which makes it all the more odd that the ComRes spokesman quoted in Matchett's piece claims that the way the SNP could still win a majority is by substantially boosting their own list vote.  Yes, of course that's a theoretically possible way of doing it, but the much more plausible way would be by securing the sort of margin over the Tories on the constituency ballot that the YouGov poll is pointing to.

ComRes and YouGov also contradict each other on the Green list vote, which is a point of great importance for the pro-indy majority.  YouGov have the Greens surging to an unusually high figure, ComRes have the Greens going backwards.  Clearly they can't both be right.  My gut feeling is that YouGov are probably closer to the truth, but we'll have to await more polls to find out.

Seats projection (with changes from 2016 election): SNP 62 (-1), Conservatives 32 (+1), Labour 22 (-2), Greens 8 (+2), Liberal Democrats 5 (-)

The above projection is my own calculation using a predictor website, and differs from the nonsensical projection in Matchett's piece (good luck trying to get his figures to add up to 129).

SNP: 62 seats

All others: 67 seats

SNP SHORT OF MAJORITY BY 3 SEATS

Pro-independence parties: 70 seats

Anti-independence parties: 59 seats

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 11 SEATS

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

YouGov poll points to big pro-independence majority in the new Scottish Parliament

These are apparently the Holyrood figures in the new YouGov poll, although so far I've only got a single tweet to go on, so hopefully it's accurate...

Constituency ballot:

SNP 49% (-1)

Conservatives 21% (-3)

Labour 21% (+4)

Liberal Democrats 6% (+1)

Greens 1% (-1)

Regional list ballot:

SNP 39% (-7) 

Conservatives 22% (-2)

Labour 17% (+2) 

Greens 10% (+2) 

Liberal Democrats 5% (-) 

Alba 2% (+2)

There are two key factors that ensure these numbers would translate into a large pro-indy majority.  Firstly, a very large lead for a single party on the constituency ballot effectively busts the Additional Member System, and the SNP lead has actually increased in this poll - although ironically that's due to an intra-unionist swing from Tory to Labour.  And secondly there's the strong performance of the Greens on the list, which will produce more returns in terms of seats than the SNP's own list vote *if* the constituency numbers are accurate and hold relatively steady for the rest of the campaign.  Unlike Alba, the Greens have had the big advantage of being included in the TV debates, and Patrick Harvie did particularly well in the STV debate and may have won over some new converts.

As for Alba, I've pointed out before that: a) parties have won a seat in Holyrood on as little as 2% of the national vote before, and b) polls are snapshots not predictions in any case.  Alba only need to be on 5% or 6% to get a decent number of seats, so there's still all to play for - even assuming YouGov have got it right.  Other firms have shown a higher Alba figure.

Seats projection (with changes from 2016 election): SNP 67 (+4), Conservatives 27 (-4), Labour 19 (-5), Greens 11 (+5), Liberal Democrats 5 (-)

SNP: 67 seats

All others: 62 seats

SNP OVERALL MAJORITY OF 5 SEATS

Pro-independence parties: 78 seats (60.5%)

Anti-independence parties: 51 seats (39.5%)

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 27 SEATS

More details and analysis to follow...

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

New independence poll from Savanta ComRes

As we discovered earlier, the majority of Savanta ComRes independence polls in recent months have had some of problem with them, so it's difficult to know exactly what to make of the latest poll that's been published tonight.  But for what it's worth, here are the numbers...

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 48% (-2)

No 52% (+2)

Because this goes against the slight pro-Yes trend we've seen in a lot of polls recently, we should treat this result with caution until it's corroborated by at least one or two more polls.  There's always a chance that it might prove to be an outlier in terms of the trend.  That said, it's not at all unusual for the No vote to increase during an election campaign - although when that happens it tends to go unnoticed, because we're generally more interested in the party political voting intentions at that stage in the electoral cycle.  This time it's a bit different.

Why do election campaigns boost No?  It's probably because the opposition parties come after the SNP on independence, but the SNP don't respond in kind - they instead try to win on bread and butter issues.  So the anti-independence vote gets fired up but the pro-independence vote does not.  In this poll, the figures with Don't Knows included actually show Yes holding steady - the movement has been from Don't Know to No, which makes perfect sense.

Someone on Twitter claims to have seen the Holyrood voting intention numbers from this poll, but so far I can't find them.  Apparently they show the SNP falling short of a majority, but there also seems to be a YouGov poll suggesting the SNP are still on course for a majority.  I'll keep you posted as soon as I find out more.

UPDATE: The independence numbers from the YouGov poll are out - they're Yes 47% (-2), No 53% (+2), which lend support to the ComRes trend, although for the reasons I gave above, I don't think we should be overly alarmed - this has happened many times before in election campaigns.  What matters most at the moment are the Holyrood voting intention numbers - and I still can't find those.

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

New evidence that the Yes vote didn't dip as much as we thought earlier this year

If there's a precedent for this, I can't remember it.  Savanta ComRes have retrospectively changed the results of three independence polls from several months ago.  It looks like the British Polling Council spotted a calculation error and urged them to correct it.  In each case the Yes vote has been revised downwards, meaning that Yes never hit the heights with ComRes that we thought.  Instead of being on 58% in December (a joint all-time high across all firms) they were on a still-very-healthy 55%, and instead of being on 57% in January they were on 52%.  Looking back, that actually makes a lot more sense, because it always seemed odd that ComRes suddenly became a Yes-friendly pollster and then returned to the pack after only a few months.

In a strange way this is good news, because it means the dip in Yes support earlier this year may not have been as significant as we originally thought.  The dip certainly happened, because other firms picked it up, but no other firm showed quite such a sharp drop as ComRes.  Now it turns out that there's only a 5% gap between the highest Yes vote with ComRes and the Yes vote in the most recent ComRes poll.

It's been an eventful year for ComRes, because they were the firm caught up in the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal, although of course they were as much victims in that as the rest of us.

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

Why are the Greens held to a lower standard than Alba?

I've read some criticisms on Twitter that Alba supporters want Nicola Sturgeon to lose in Glasgow Southside.  Well, that's certainly not the position of Alba as a party, or of their candidates - they're actively urging that people should vote for all SNP candidates on the constituency ballot, including Nicola Sturgeon.  If anyone is saying anything different, they're just random supporters who do not speak for anyone but themselves.  And, yes, I know that Stuart Campbell is one of them and that he's influential, but he's self-evidently a law unto himself and takes instructions from no-one.  As the SNP have discovered themselves over the years with the manufactured 'Cybernat' nonsense, it's not possible to control the behaviour of every single supporter on social media, and to be expected to take responsibility for everything they get up to is completely unrealistic.

But it's worth repeating the point that Alba are actively encouraging people to vote for Nicola Sturgeon and other SNP candidates, and are even putting that advice on their leaflets.  To the best of my knowledge, no other pro-independence party is doing that.  If you asked the Greens whether you should vote for Nicola Sturgeon or Anas Sarwar in Southside, you'd probably get a neutral answer - you'd be told that they have problems with both the SNP and Labour.  Even worse, the Greens are actually standing against the SNP on the constituency ballot in a dozen seats - and those are all seats they cannot possibly win, with the exception of a tiny outside chance for Patrick Harvie in Glasgow Kelvin.  That means in eleven seats, the Greens are knowingly asking people to vote in a way that will make it more likely that an anti-independence candidate will win, and less likely that we will have a pro-independence majority when this election is over.  And yet people still claim with a straight face that Alba are the problem, and that the Greens are the serious option for anyone who really wants to maximise pro-indy representation.

Just imagine if the Greens were held to the same standard as Alba.  They'd be absolutely crucified.  "You're neutral on whether Nicola Sturgeon or Anas Sarwar should be the MSP for Southside? Get in the sea!  You want people to vote against Angus Robertson in Edinburgh Central and risk yet another Tory victory? Get in the sea!"

To be clear, it's entirely defensible for the Greens to say that independence is only one of a number of issues they care about, and isn't even the most important one, and that they therefore shouldn't be expected to back the SNP on the constituency ballot.  But what they can't do is have it both ways and claim that they, and not Alba, are the party trying to maximise pro-independence representation in Holyrood.  Quite clearly Alba are trying to maximise the number of pro-indy seats and the Greens are not.  Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater would be happy enough if there's a Yes majority in the new parliament but that is not what their electoral strategy is geared towards producing.

*  *  *

Another constructive suggestion for Stuart Campbell which he will doubtless ignore - instead of wasting the remainder of the campaign talking about nothing else but the trans issue, why not do a short sequel to the Wee Blue Book giving reasons for an Alba vote? You could do it as a PDF file, people could print off multiple copies and hand it out to their neighbours, family and friends.  (But make independence the pamphlet's focus - you're not going to win many votes by banging on about women with beards.)

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

Please make sure your indy-supporting relatives and friends are registered to vote before Monday night's deadline

Just a reminder that the deadline for registering to vote is tomorrow night (Monday) at midnight.  So if there are any independence supporters in your life who might not have registered yet for one reason or another, regardless of whether they're Alba, SNP or Green, please direct them to this link as a matter of urgency.  Remember that all residents of Scotland are entitled to vote in this election, regardless of nationality - you no longer need to be an EU or Commonwealth citizen.

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

How the Alba Party are running a self-sacrificing campaign in the best interests of the independence cause

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion over my myth-busting post about the Holyrood voting system, so I'll try to explain the point in more detail.  To reiterate, the claim I was correcting (and it's one that you'll hear from both Alba supporters and detractors alike) was this -

"The more seats the SNP take in the constituencies, the more seats Alba will take on the list."

That's not accurate, and in some cases it will be the complete opposite of the truth.  What *is* true is that the better the SNP do in the constituencies, the greater the overall representation will be for pro-independence parties in the parliament.  But sometimes it may well lead to Alba as an individual party missing out on seats.  

As an illustration, let's take two alternative hypothetical results in the same region.  Let's assume the region is a typical one with nine constituency seats and seven list seats.

Result A:

SNP: 7 seats (7 constituency, 0 list)

Conservatives: 4 seats (2 constituency, 2 list)

Labour: 3 seats (0 constituency, 3 list)

Liberal Democrats: 1 seat (0 constituency, 1 list)

Alba: 1 seat (0 constituency, 1 list)

Pro-independence parties: 8 seats

Anti-independence parties: 8 seats

Result B:

SNP: 9 seats (9 constituency, 0 list)

Conservatives: 3 seats (0 constituency, 3 list)

Labour: 3 seats (0 constituency, 3 list)

Liberal Democrats: 1 seat (0 constituency, 1 list)

Alba: 0 seats (0 constituency, 0 list)

Pro-independence parties: 9 seats

Anti-independence parties: 7 seats

Result A is a fairly standard outcome where the SNP are not awarded any list seats, because they've already taken their full entitlement of seats in the constituency section.  Instead, the seven list seats are shared out between other parties, and Alba take one to boost the overall pro-indy representation to eight seats.

In Result B, the SNP do even better and take all nine constituency seats, which means that even before the list seats are allocated, the SNP already have more seats in the region than their share of the vote warrants.  That effectively takes two seats 'out of the system' altogether and means the seven list seats are spread more thinly.  The Conservatives are given three list seats, as compared to two in Result A, to compensate them for the two constituency seats they've lost - although of course that's only partial compensation.  That means there's one fewer list seat available for the other parties, and in this example it's Alba that miss out.  

And yet in spite of the fact that Alba do worse in Result B, there's still one more pro-indy seat overall than there was in Result A.  So that's the importance of Alba strongly urging an SNP vote in the constituencies - it's not a way of maximising Alba's own representation and they may sometimes actually lose seats as a result, but it absolutely *is* a way of maximising overall pro-indy representation.  

In a nutshell, Alba are willing to risk sacrificing some of their own candidates in the best interests of the independence cause.  And that makes the nature of the Alba campaign genuinely unprecedented in Scottish political history.

*  *  *

I've had lots more constituency profiles in The National over recent days - Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale, Midlothian North & Musselburgh, Stirling, Clackmannanshire & Dunblane, Dumbarton, Argyll & Bute, Ayr, Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley and Lothian (regional list).  

*  *  *

You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.