The Greens have now been crowned the undisputed Olympic champions of misleading bar charts on election leaflets - they're bizarrely claiming that SNP-held Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between themselves and Labour, and their source for this improbable claim is (drumroll, please) *themselves*. So brazen it deserves a reward biscuit!

A few weeks ago, the Green co-leader Ross Greer posted a Labour leaflet from Strathkelvin & Bearsden, mocking it for containing a particularly extreme example of a misleading Lib Dem-style bar chart.  Ironically, its sole purpose was to try to convince local voters that the Lib Dems couldn't win the constituency.  It showed the SNP on "three", Labour on "two", and others on "one".  The explanation of these mysteriously small numbers was that they represented the amount of times each party had won Strathkelvin & Bearsden since devolution began in 1999. But as Greer pointed out, Labour's two victories were in 1999 and 2007, and so were pretty much irrelevant to the question of who the main challengers to the SNP are in the present-day.

It has to be said, though, that the Greens themselves have managed to top Labour's effort with an even more bonkers leaflet in Edinburgh Central.  It not only claims that "Lorna Slater is winning Edinburgh Central" but provides a bar chart which purports to show that "it's between the Scottish Greens and Labour in Edinburgh Central".  (As fluent speakers of Barchartese will instantly know, those words translate as "it's actually a three-cornered fight between the SNP, Labour and the Greens, but we'd rather you didn't know that because it's mainly the SNP we need to take votes from".)  The bar chart specifically claims that the Greens are on 28%, Labour are on 22% and the SNP are in only third on 21%.  These numbers are, to put it mildly, somewhat improbable because:

* The SNP won Edinburgh Central five years ago, with the Tories in second place, Labour third, and the Greens a distant fourth.

* Although the boundaries of the constituency have changed, the notional results suggest the SNP would still have won in 2021, with Labour moving into second, the Tories in third and the Greens remaining in a distant fourth.

* Even making a common sense adjustment for the fact that there was no Green candidate in the new part of the constituency in 2021, the Greens would still have been in fourth place.

* Although the Greens are undoubtedly in a stronger position now than they were in 2021, no MRP projection of the campaign so far supports their claim that Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between themselves and Labour.  YouGov have the constituency as a virtual three-way dead heat, with the SNP and Greens both on 25% and Labour on 23%, while Find Out Now have the SNP clearly ahead on 28%, the Greens in second place on 23% and Labour not that far behind on 21%.

So what on earth could the source be for this wildly improbable notion that Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between Labour and the Greens?  If you check the small print on the Green leaflet, you'll find out.  It states: "source: ballotbox.scot".  That means the Ballot Box Scotland website.  You know, the same Ballot Box Scotland website that is run solely by a young gentleman by the name of Allan Faulds, who is a former serial Scottish Green party candidate in local elections and European Parliament elections.  He's since nominally "left" the party, although he's made little secret of the fact that he did that solely for appearance's sake, ie. in the hope that people would stop laughing quite so hard whenever he angrily protests that his "project" is "non-partisan".  He's also (perhaps surprisingly) made no secret of the truly heroic lengths he's gone to in order to flatter the Greens in the constituency projections on his site - he states in black and white that he factors in the 2021 list vote for projecting the Green constituency vote in 2026, but that he does not do this for any other party.  To put in some perspective just how absurd that is, if you did use the 2021 list vote as a baseline for other parties, you'd be pretty close to projecting the SNP as being ahead in the Lib Dem fortresses of Shetland and Edinburgh North Western, which would plainly be barmy.  

It's even worse than that, though, because notional figures show the Greens were a long way behind the SNP even on the list in Edinburgh Central in 2021 - and although they were in second place, both Labour and the Tories were only fractionally behind them.  Any reasonable person looking at the bar chart on the Green leaflet would assume it's based on some kind of real measure of public opinion - either a real election from the past, or a real constituency-level opinion poll from the present.  But it's neither.  It's no more than a piece of candy-floss from Allan Faulds' own imagination, which piles wild assumption upon wild assumption in order to justify using the wrong baseline figures and then 'reimagining' them as he sees fit.

In a nutshell, then, the Greens' source for the baseless claim that Edinburgh Central is a two-way fight between themselves and Labour is a baseless claim made by a Green party candidate - ie. their source is themselves.  This election is increasingly moving into Alice Through The Looking Glass territory, because the only reason I even saw the leaflet was because it was posted by the Brit Nat propagandist Sam Taylor of These Islands fame.  He's trying to boost the Green campaign in Edinburgh Central, even though he clearly has more in common with the more centrist politics of the SNP candidate Angus Robertson than he does with Lorna Slater.  Why is he doing that?  Because it's the SNP he sees as the threat to his beloved Union, and he thinks losing Robertson would leave the SNP weakened.

Might just be worth bearing that in mind.

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My latest constituency profiles for The National are Glasgow Southside and Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill.  I'm on a roll with these constituencies that I can claim a connection to, because I'm a graduate of Glasgow University, which is in the Kelvin & Maryhill seat.

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If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

REVEALED: The hard science that makes Both Votes SNP such an effective strategy - why the "Make Mine A Double" voting craze is mathematically sound as well as fashionable and trendy

OK, the title of this blogpost is mainly there to wind up Stew, but there is actually a very serious point behind it, and it's one that may make you think about the importance of voting SNP on the list ballot in a wholly new way.  Patrick English, who seems to have been the key figure behind YouGov's new MRP poll for the Holyrood election, posted a thread on Twitter about the poll with some observations that I found genuinely startling - 

"Scotland is never an easy place in which to project elections, but we've given it a go.

Based on the data, our central expectation is that the SNP would win an outright majority if the election were happening right now

They do so in our model by hoovering up all but seven of Holyrood's 73 constituencies, plus a regional list seat in the Highland and Islands.

Such is the extent of the SNP constituency sweep, our central projection has Labour winning zero constituencies for the first time ever.

Each of Labour's 15 seats come from the lists.

Similarly, while we currently have Reform in second place, all their 20 projected wins are also list seats.

The Greens however we think have a good shot at winning their first ever Holyrood constituency (either Glasgow/Edinburgh).

Our model is, as it stands, pretty bullish on an SNP majority despite them only being two seats above the line (65).

The reason why is that even if the SNP start losing constituency seats, in many such scenarios they start winning extra regional list seats to compensate.

For example, let's imagine that Labour benefited from a big push of tactical Unionist support in Central and took three seats off the SNP there.

Unless the SNP also started dropping list votes, they'd win one regional seat to take them back up to 65!

Similarly, let's say the SNP lost Moray in the Highlands and Islands to Reform, who are currently second placed there.

The SNP would immediately then win a list seat in that region to compensate for that loss.

Another reason for model bullishness is the fragmentation of the pro-Union constituency vote behind the SNP, plus the boost they get from the Greens stepping aside in all but six seats.

Projected SNP majorities range from 7pts in Dumfriesshire to 27pts in Coatbridge and Chryston

These SNP cushions, plus the projected strong performance of the Greens, make it very difficult to see anything other than yet another SNP-led administration after May 7th *as things stand*.

As for securing official opposition status, it's a battle between Reform and Labour."

Remember that he's saying all of this about a state of play in which it's assumed that the SNP will be taking just 32% of the list vote nationally - way down on what they have received in all of the last three Holyrood elections.  I wouldn't previously have thought that a 32% list vote could have much role to play in getting the SNP over the line for a majority in a situation where they fall a little short of 65 constituency seats, but this guy has run all of the simulations and he's clearly saying that it very well could.  Even on the central projection from the poll, the SNP would take one list seat in the Highlands & Islands, but it sounds very much like a list vote for the SNP will play a crucial back-up role in other regions by compensating the SNP if they fail to take as many constituency seats as they hope.

As 32% of the national list vote is a perfectly achievable target, this should really be enough to convince SNP supporters to back the party on both ballots.  Clearly much of the commentary so far (including from the former YouGov president Peter Kellner in the bizarre article that was picked up by Lesley Riddoch recently) has severely underestimated the SNP's chances of taking seats on the list.  Perhaps for independence supporters who don't identify strongly with any particular political party, there may still be a difficult choice to make between the SNP and the Greens on the list, because clearly the Greens are capable of winning list seats too, and may win more than the SNP do.  But for anyone weighing up whether to vote for the SNP on the list, or for one of the wide array of pro-indy fringe parties like Atlas or ISP, there's strictly no contest - the SNP have a chance of taking seats on the list, and the fringe parties have no chance whatsoever.  That decision is an absolute no-brainer.

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You can read my constituency profile of Glasgow Easterhouse & Springburn for The National HERE.  That's another Glasgow constituency that I can claim a tenuous connection to, in the sense that I was born there (at Stobhill Hospital in Springburn).

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If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

*  *  * 

Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.