U OK hun? Stew's extraordinarily epic squeal of pain after suffering that rarest of experiences for him: being confronted with the *truth*

Well, what a truly unexpected treat.  The man who famously "never even mentions me" has now written a second novel-length blogpost about me within the space of just three days.  And you can tell he's really angry this time, because he hasn't even bothered trotting out his usual schtick of "the fact that I'm writing this blogpost about him doesn't detract from my strenuous denials that I ever mention him, indeed if you think this blogpost about him exists or that you're reading it, that's probably just a figment of your imagination".  And yes, that's what tells you he's angry, and not his claims that I'm "blinded by hate", "disturbingly close to a complete psychotic mental breakdown", and "demonstrably insane to the point of requiring psychiatric intervention", because that's just Stew's little thing, it's his equivalent of love poetry.  We'd be worried about him if he didn't do it.

So what on earth could have made him so furious with me?  Remarkably, it was the fact that I dared to point out the obvious to him - that, far from his fraudulent claims that all SNP list votes will "definitely" be wasted next year and that "we know this", in reality the SNP have won list seats in every single Holyrood election in history and in 2026 will have a stronger opportunity to win a substantial number of list seats than in any election since 2007.  The reason is that their current share of the vote on the constituency ballot in opinion polls is significantly lower than it was in the 2011, 2016 and 2021 elections, and at least for large parties, the worse you do on the constituency ballot, the greater the scope to be compensated with significant numbers of seats on the list ballot - but only, of course, if you attract enough list votes, which you may not do if some of your own supporters are foolish enough to follow Stew's advice and vote for their second-choice or third-choice party on the list on a supposedly "tactical" basis.

According to Stew, what I've just outlined is not only a lie, but "the most dishonest, knowingly false and wildly extreme lie about Scottish politics we’ve ever seen anyone tell in the 13.5 years of Wings Over Scotland’s existence".  Crikey, what an accolade.  I'm touched, Stew.

Just one snag, though: it's not a lie.  And the fact that's it not a lie is remarkably easy to demonstrate.  "We'll keep this brief", as the Great One himself would say.

In the 2011 election, the SNP took 45.4% of the vote on the constituency ballot.

In the 2016 election, the SNP took 46.5% of the vote on the constituency ballot.

In the 2021 election, the SNP took 47.7% of the vote on the constituency ballot.

Whereas in an average of the last five Holyrood opinion polls, conducted between January and this month, the SNP's constituency vote share stands at just 34.4%.  That's a very considerable drop on all of the last three elections, thus opening up an obvious opportunity for the SNP to improve their allocation of compensatory list seats.

Understandably, Stew can't bring himself to directly acknowledge this elephant in the room, because to do so would drive a coach-and-horses through his fatuous claim that (and I paraphrase) "the SNP didn't win many list seats in 2021, and 2026 will be just like 2021", when in fact 2016 is highly likely to be radically different from 2021, and from 2016, and from 2011.  However, he does tacitly nod towards his little problem by claiming "FPTP (first-past-the-post) does not care the tiniest jot what size your vote share is".  Blimey, that's handy for you, isn't it, Stew?  

So what, pray tell, does FPTP "care about"?  It certainly doesn't always care about which party is in the lead, because in the 2007 Holyrood election, the SNP won the popular vote on the constituency ballot (albeit narrowly), but only won 21 constituency seats compared to Labour's 37.  That's right - Labour won an absolute majority of the 73 constituency seats despite being in second place on the constituency vote.  If SNP supporters had been daft enough to think "my party are going to win the constituency ballot so they don't need any list votes", Alex Salmond would never have become First Minister and we'd have been stuck with Jack McConnell for another four long years.

The best that can be said is that there's a weak correlation between the gap in the popular vote between the first-placed party and the second-placed party, and the share of constituency seats that the first-placed party takes.  But if we make that the test, as Stew wants us to do, does it actually help his case?  No, I'm afraid it doesn't.  "This won't take long", as the Great One himself would say.

In the 2011 election, the SNP had a 13.7% lead on the constituency ballot over the second-placed party.

In the 2016 election, the SNP had a 23.9% lead on the constituency ballot over the second-placed party.

In the 2021 election, the SNP had a 25.8% lead on the constituency ballot over the second-placed party.

Whereas in an average of the last five opinion polls, the SNP have a 14.4% lead over the second-placed party.  So that lead is way down on both 2016 and 2021, and is roughly identical to 2011 - when of course the SNP took no fewer than sixteen list seats, and won at least one list seat in seven of the eight electoral regions, thus ensuring that the overwhelming majority of SNP list votes were not "wasted".  So whichever way you cut it, the SNP have a much better chance of winning substantial numbers of list seats in 2026 than they've had for many, many years.  The only thing that will stop them doing that will be if they fail to win enough list votes - and remember the number of list votes they'd require is not in some sort of 'unachievable zone', because all they'd need is the sort of percentage vote on the list they've achieved many times before.   The fact that Stew is so desperate to convince you that it is somehow unachievable tells you three things: a) he knows the SNP could well increase their number of list seats and doesn't want that to happen, b) he thinks the only way to stop it happening is by deceptive means, and c) he thinks you're stupid enough to be duped.

We all know that some people are so totally infatuated with the elusive notion that the list vote can somehow be "hacked" (it's the modern-day equivalent of turning lead into gold) that a very small percentage of independence supporters will probably ignore the immense risks and attempt to "tactically vote on the list".  But if Stew was being honest with his readers (which of course is the one thing that will never happen) he'd warn them that the danger of inadvertently helping unionist parties is far greater than it was in 2021 or 2016, because the SNP do have a good chance of winning a fair number of list seats on this occasion, and if you don't vote SNP on the list you could gift-wrap those seats and hand them to Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems or Reform.  An honest Stew would also point out that anyone even thinking about taking a punt on tactical voting needs to be responsible and consider the question of which pro-independence parties are actually capable of winning any list seats at all, because if you 'tactically' vote for a no-hoper party with no chance of winning list seats, you really are throwing your vote away and helping the Brit Nats.

It's not possible to say with any precision what percentage chance each party has of winning list seats, because there are too many variables involved.  But let's try to make an intuitive stab at it anyway.

Alba: Their chances of winning list seats are close to zero.  They would have to treble or quadruple their negligible vote share from last time around, whereas opinion polls (with the exception of the occasional outlier) suggest that their popularity has not significantly increased since then.  Their probability of winning even one list seat must surely be below 10%, and some would say below 5%.

Greens: Their chances of winning list seats are close to 100%.  That wasn't the case in previous elections, but they're now well enough established to make it more or less unthinkable that they'll fall short.  That doesn't necessarily mean that they'll win a list seat in all of the eight electoral regions, but in the last election they managed it in seven of the eight regions, and their support may be a touch higher than it was back then.  So if you vote Green on the list, at the absolute mimimum there must be an 80% chance that your vote will not be wasted.

SNP: This is the hardest one to judge, because unlike the Greens and Alba, the SNP will be winning constituency seats, and the number of constituency seats they win in each region (which is unknowable in advance) will have a huge impact on their chances of winning big numbers of list seats.  However, past evidence suggests that their chance of winning at least one list seat somewhere in Scotland is not that much lower than 100%.  The number of electoral regions they win a list seat in could be anywhere in a broad range between zero and all eight, depending on how well they fare on the constituency ballot.

So even taking into account the high level of uncertainty, one truth shines through - that the chances of a tactical vote for the Greens being effective, or at least of it not backfiring, are many, many, many times greater than the chances of a tactical vote for Alba being effective.  Anyone in their right mind thinking of going down the tactical voting route (which I repeat I think would be very foolish) will be forced to conclude that the Greens are the only rational option available.  But don't ask Stew to be honest about that fact, because he'll start turning purple, stamping his little feet furiously, and calling you "deranged", "a lunatic" and "on the verge of a total psychotic mental breakdown".  

Or come to think of it, maybe you should get Stew to do all of that, because I can tell you from personal experience that there really is no entertainment quite like it.