A wasted second vote...?

There is something that really fascinates me as an ex-Statistician and all-round Politics nerd. And that is some Scottish people's use of the second vote. Now, I don't have a problem with who people want to vote for at all. Labour, SNP, Greens, BNP, Fascists or the Let's Kill Babies party. Really, it's all about being free to express yourself. But come on now, why would you vote for Labour with your 2nd vote in Glasgow or West of Scotland. I mean honestly...

Approximately 400,000 Labour votes were wasted in the last election in the second vote as they were used in constitutencies where there was no chance a Labour candidates was going to nick a seat. To me it sort of shows the blind loyalty that large patches of Scotland have for the supposed socialists of the tartan land.

As I say, it's not up to me to judge really except, dammit, I can't help it. Do people not understand the electoral system? It's possible, it took me more than a few goes to pick it up and I had one thing that many don't. A desire to want to know how something as dull as an election process actually works.

So it does undermine the system if those who know how it works can vote tactically whereas those who aren't too sure just blindly vote for their favourite party regardless. But if we can just assume that all Scots who don't understand the Holyrood election process are spread across all parties equally then it's not that big a deal.


Anyway, how can we make this work for the SNP (putting my yellow-tinted spectacles back on for a moment).


Well, I've taken the constitutencies where SNP do not take a regional seat, and then apportioned their expected share of the vote across all parties except Labour in accordance with these parties' expected share of the vote (this is based on the recent ICM poll by the way).

The result?


Well, using my slightly pessimistic figures only North East has a scenario where SNP do not get a single regional MSP. And this would give one less Labour and one more Lib Dem MSP thanks to the second poll.


And using my SNP optimistic approach of matching Labour for FPTP seats, there are 3 constitutencies where they don't have any regional MSPs. Central, North East and Fife. And apportioning out the votes in the same way as above would have Labour losing FOUR seats and Lib Dems, Tories, Socialists and the Old Fogey party all picking up one each.

Thus simultaneously increasing the rainbow flavour of the parliament and denying Labour a quartet of yes men or women to back up their numbers.

Of course, not all SNP voters will see the merits of voting for the Conservatives/Lib Dems/SSP/Baby Killing Party to stop Labour but hopefully enough will to make the difference in the odd region here and there….


The question is, how do we explain this to SNP voters without Labour voters getting a whiff of what's going on.

When's the next Old Firm game on again….?







EDIT: Maybe it's best not to go for that kind of tactical voting as we get the following scenario as the final result!

Labour - 39
SNP - 39
Lib Dem - 18
Tory - 19
Green - 8

So Greens and Lib Dems would be licking their lips at doing shuttle runs between Labour and SNP to see who wants that 1 seat majority the most.


God I love elections...