Make Mine A Double: as the polling stations open, be a 'peach' and listen to the strong case for Both Votes SNP

The polling stations are now open and the Scottish Parliament election of 2026 is well underway, so let's be 'peachy' and have a final word about the voting system.  I've been writing this blog since 2008, and I feel as if at least 10% of the posts over that time have consisted of me explaining that you should vote for your first choice party on the list ballot, because the system simply does not lend itself to tactical voting on the list - there's too big a risk of it backfiring.  

The voting system hasn't changed over the years, so the logic I was setting out in 2011 and 2016 for the most part has remained sound.  That logic was:

* The overall composition of parliament is determined by the list ballot, not by the constituency ballot.  If Party X gets 15% of the vote on the list ballot, the system will aim to give Party X roughly 15% of the overall seats in parliament, regardless of whether it receives 5% or 40% of the vote on the constituency ballot.  The list ballot is therefore the more important of the two, and should be used for your first-choice party.

* Although the greater importance of the list ballot can break down a bit if one party has a totally dominant lead on the constituency ballot, and although that leads people to feel they can 'hack' the system by tactically voting for a second-choice party on the list, you can only do that safely if you know what the constituency results are going to be at the moment you cast your vote, and by definition you don't.  If you think you do, the information you're basing that belief on is nowhere near as reliable as you think it is.

* In both 2011 and 2016, it was fair to say that past history suggested there was a significant risk that the Greens might not win list seats in most regions, so if an SNP supporter voted 'tactically' for a second-choice party on the list, regardless of which party that was, there was a danger they were voting for a party that wouldn't win any seats in their region and would thus help unionists to win seats - a classic example of an intended tactical vote completely backfiring.

If the logic has changed at all, it's only on that third and final point, because the Greens are now much more established and it's arguably extremely unlikely that they won't take a significant number of list seats.  So the risks attached to voting Green are now lower than they used to be - but it's important to stress that the point remains unchanged for all of the non-Green fringe pro-indy parties.  If you vote 'tactically' on the list for any of those tiny parties, you are throwing your list vote away on parties that cannot possibly win any seats, and you are helping unionists to win seats.  That is true beyond a shadow of doubt.

The choice on the list for sensible independence supporters therefore narrows to just two: SNP or Green.  I'm a member of the SNP, so I'll leave it to Green members and supporters to make the case for the Greens.  I'm going to make the case for Both Votes SNP, and it remains an extremely strong one.

The nub of it is this: as things stand this morning, you really don't have a clue what the constituency results are going to be.  There is a huge spread in the polls from a 12-point SNP lead in the constituency ballot with More In Common to a 24-point lead with Find Out Now.  Polling accuracy is not determined by majority vote, or by averaging - often an outlier poll proves to be the most accurate, as we saw in 2017.  I therefore would not be totally surprised if the SNP clean up in the constituencies to such an extent that they win an overall majority on constituency seats alone, and I also would not be surprised if the wheels come off and they lose a truckload of constituencies that most people are assuming are safe.  There's one overnight projection on Twitter based on the More In Common poll that has the SNP on just 43 seats.  That would be a catastrophe that could potentially even open the door for a unionist government.  It's a real possibility because with a 12 point SNP lead on the constituency ballot, unionist parties start to move into the fringes of contention in a large number of seats, and in some cases unionist tactical voting on the constituency ballot will get them over the line.  (To be clear, tactical voting does work on the constituency ballot.). If people have abandoned the SNP on the list ballot because they assume SNP list votes will be 'wasted', the SNP will not be compensated for their constituency losses with list seats, and the disaster will be compounded, wholly unnecessarily.

As we survey this scene of massive uncertainty on the morning of polling day, with both an SNP overall majority and a disastrous SNP result remaining realistic possibilities, we can really only look back in wonder at the unutterable folly of the people such as Somerset Stew who were absurdly trying to convince you a year ago that they already knew with absolute certainly how many constituency seats the SNP were going to win today and therefore that all SNP list votes would be wasted.  If you're an SNP supporter who is tempted to vote 'tactically' on the list, it's true that in the best case scenario where the SNP clean up in the constituencies, you could look back with the benefit of hindsight and think to yourself that there was a missed opportunity to get rid of one or two unionists on the list.  But in the worst case scenario that the More In Common poll is right, you could end up with the psychological catastrophe of Reform outpolling the SNP on the list ballot (it's within the poll's margin of error), and such a poor seats tally for the SNP that it would set the cause of independence back years.  You would then spend the next five years kicking yourself for being so daft as to not vote SNP on the list and to contribute to that result coming about.  The latter danger is far more scary than the former.

I don't know which way it's going to go - I don't even have a particularly strong gut feeling about whether the polling average is underestimating or overestimating the SNP.  There's a plausible case to be made for either, and I therefore can't promise you that you won't end up with regrets if you take my advice.  But it's the very fact that we don't have a crystal ball handy that means the logic points overwhelmingly, in my view, to being safe, being responsible, and voting Both Votes SNP.