Both Votes SNP? Or Split Our Indy Vote?

The Greater Glasgow group invited Tony Grahame to speak about how the D’Hondt system is used to calculate who wins List MSPs in the Holyrood elections.

Tony took us through the Glasgow List vote from 2016 explaining how the List seats were allocated. He also compared overall Scottish list results from 2016 with those from 2011. And he showed how a small rise or fall in a party’s proportion of the list vote can result in large changes in number of seats gained or lost.

You can listen to the talk, followed by questions, here, and scroll down for the slides that Tony used in his talk:

Here are the slides which Tony refers to during the talk:

00 Tony Grahame
15 Choose Your Headline
1 Intro
1a Voting systems in use in Scotland
1c How the voting is counted
1d NEScot 2011
1e 2016 Actual Full List Result
2a Glasgow List Changes from 2011
3a Glas 2016 list calculation
3b Glas List_Constituency Comparison
5 2011_2106 Changes
6 Opinion Poll Accuracy
6a Polling comparison
7 List 5% Required
8 2016 With No Leakage
9 Second Vote Greens?
10 2021 Implications
11 SNP Preparations 001
12 SNP Preparations 002
13 Lessons to be learned
14 Known Unknowns
15 Choose Your Headline
16 Routs to Indpeendence
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The questions covered a lot of ground….

They were strongly influenced by the announcement – just an hour before the talk – that Alex Salmond is forming an independence supporting List party called Alba.

  • do you think we should we decide how we vote on the list just looking at our own region, rather than the whole country?
  • you think  Alba Party will hoover up all the other new wee parties?
  • could Alba pick up list seats in Glasgow?
  • does arrival of Alba make SNP1+2 even more necessary?
  • are we throwing it away?
  • is Conservative unity against our divisions the biggest danger?
  • do you think Labour vote will increase this time round given the level of anti tory feeling there is this time? 
  • What tactics can we employ to persuade people about the D’Hondt arithmetic?
  • Any ideas on how to counter slogans like Max the Yes? 
  • If Alba takes 5% away from SNP what sort of effect would that have on the SNP?

Decision time is fast approaching.

Over the last year, Pensioners for indy have accumulated an impressive playlist of podcasts from our meetings. They have been broadcast by IndyLive Radio and are now available on Scottish Independence Podcasts on Soundcloud. Just click on the image below to go to the playlist:

2 thoughts to “Both Votes SNP? Or Split Our Indy Vote?”

  1. A problem with “both votes for the SNP” is that Nicola Sturgeon and the party mandarins have alienated many supporters. They feel they need to have Alba in Parliament to make the SNP Government accountable and to return them to the main reason for their existence.

  2. Well worth the listen cleared up a lot of questions about where the list vote should both votes SNP.

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