The crazy, topsy-turvy logic (and in some cases hypocrisy) of the "tactical voting on the list" advocates

I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to mute certain accounts on Twitter to get through the rest of the Holyrood campaign with my sanity intact.  Every single time I log in, I see retweet after retweet from the Atlas brigade of Tommy Sheridan basically lying through his teeth (or being misleading, to put it charitably) by claiming there was recently a Find Out Now poll predicting that Atlas will take 8% of the national list vote.  That poll showed no such thing, and he damn well knows it, because he and his colleagues commissioned it themselves and chose the question.  Indeed, there were Glasgow-specific results from the poll which were startlingly poor for Tommy.  They suggest that his popularity in the city has dipped and make it overwhelmingly unlikely he can win a seat there on the basis of his personal vote, no matter what party he chooses to stand for.

But the worst part of the dishonesty is his claim that "SNP 1 & 2" (there are no numbers in this voting system, chaps!) is a "unionist voting strategy" and that all independence supporters should vote for him and the Atlas gang instead to stop Reform winning seats.  Now the case for SNP supporters to vote Both Votes SNP is clear enough and I've set it out many times.  The list vote is the more important vote because it is the only vote that directly determines the composition of parliament.  If you think you are voting tactically by voting for your first-choice party on the constituency ballot and your second-choice party on the list, there is a very high risk of you kicking yourself afterwards, because if your first-choice party doesn't win in your constituency, literally the only thing you will have done is cast a vote for your second-choice party in a proportional representation election.  That's the only vote that will count, which is a perverse outcome.    By contrast, if you act in the way that the system was intended by voting for your first-choice party on the list ballot, your two votes will effectively operate in tandem with each other and ensure that your preference is counted towards seats.  If your first-choice party doesn't win your constituency, that's not a problem because your list vote will still count and will help your party win list seats.  But if that party does win your constituency and other neighbouring constituencies, even if that means it doesn't win any compensatory list seats, that's still OK because your preference has still counted towards the party winning a seat.

Now, some people just viscerally hate the fact that the two votes work in tandem in this way, and that you often effectively end up using one vote as a back-up in case something goes awry with the other.  They feel that it shouldn't work like that and that if both votes don't actively count towards getting pro-independence MSPs elected, something has gone fundamentally wrong and it must be corrected.  That's not a realistic attitude, but after decades of listening to this stuff, I know it's never going to go away.  But what I also know is that if you truly believe that both votes have to count in all circumstances, and that if you truly believe the SNP cannot win any list seats in this election (definitely not true by the way) what you would do is look for a non-SNP pro-independence party that actually has a chance of winning list seats.  The only such party in existence is the Green party.

And yet Tommy and the others tell you NOT to vote Green on the list, but instead to throw your vote away on a no-hoper fringe party that cannot possibly win any seats.  By doing that they are guilty of *exactly* what they accuse SNP list voters of doing, ie. of following a 'unionist voting strategy' that can only help Reform win list seats.  Why do they not tell people to vote Green, as their own logic points inexorably towards?  I'm trying to imagine what answer they would give to that question, and all I can think of is that they would say "because the Greens don't know what a woman is".  Hmmm.  That doesn't sound much like "independence nothing less, independence nothing else".  Quite the reverse, it sounds like you're massively prioritising an unrelated issue over independence.  It's just sheer hypocrisy.

My own message is simple: tactical voting on the list is a mug's game because it carries too high a risk of backfiring.  You should always vote for your first-choice party on the list, and yes, if your first-choice party is the SNP, you should vote SNP on the list.  However, if you are reckless enough to go down the tactical voting route, for the love of God at least make sure you're voting for a pro-indy party that can actually win seats on the list.  If you vote for a party on the list that is not your first choice, and which cannot win any seats because it is too small, and if by doing so you are helping unionist parties to win seats instead, and if you imagine all of this constitutes some sort of ingenious "strategic" vote...well, there is only one word for what you are doing and that word is stupidity.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Glasgow Cathcart & Pollok (where Anas Sarwar is standing for Labour).

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