It’s just over ten months now until the Scottish Parliament elections and, although that may seem like a long time, once recess is out of the way I bet your bottom pound note that we seamlessly slip into polling, policies and Ponsonby-chaired debates before you can say ‘dimpled chad’.
Here are ten factors that I reckon will decide the election, five in the SNP’s favour and five in Labour’s; not that our wonderful, colourful Parliament is just about two parties, I hasten to add.
Anyway, here we go…
Cunninghame North
One of my favourite one-liners off the back of the 2007 election was that the SNP won it by 48 votes. I’m taken by this factoid because it is so simple and yet so true. Had Allan Wilson received 49 more votes in Cunninghame North then Labour would have received 1 extra Constituency MSP, the SNP would have received one less, there would have been no impact on the 7 regional MSPs for West of Scotland and there would be a Labour First Minister right now.
Needless to say therefore, this will be a key battleground in 2011. That’s not to say that if Labour win Cunninghame North then they’ll win the election but this is as close to a ‘swing constituency’ as we’ve probably got.
That said, in 2007 there was an ex SNP MSP on the ballot slip in the shape of Campbell Martin. I don’t know if Campbell is or isn’t standing next time around but if he isn’t then Kenny’s job should, in theory, be relatively easier. Mind you, it is also worth noting that Nicola Sturgeon faces losing out on Glasgow Govan after unhelpful boundary changes make the constituency a Labour nominal. Losing this seat may not result in the SNP picking up an extra Glasgow list seat, similar to the crucial Cunninghame North situation.
So even if Kenny G holds on in the West, there are other seats out there where it could be the SNP’s turn to lose out on holding power by a handful of votes.
Green resurgence
Perhaps it is just my own personal growing regard for the Green Party that makes me say it but I suspect that Patrick Harvie could find himself with a lot of colleagues on the Holyrood benches this time next year. An improvement in the party’s fortunes could be the decisive factor in the SNP losing out on being the biggest party as the following illustration shows:
Breakdown of MSPs from 2007 election:
SNP - 47
Labour - 46
Tory - 17
Lib Dem - 16
Green – 2
Ind - 1
The breakdown of MSPs were the Greens to have won 1 extra MSP in each region:
SNP - 43
Labour - 44
Tory - 17
Lib Dem - 15
Green – 9
Ind - 1
The SNP won eight of the fourteen spots in the 6th and 7th rounds of the d’Hondt formula allocation. A whopping 57%, all the larger when you consider there were four or five parties aiming for those spots.
That leaves the Nats vulnerable to a Green resurgence or, less likely, a Socialist charge.
Gray over McConnell
A key question at the next election will be whether Iain Gray is more popular amongst the electorate than Lord Jack McConnell was.
Jack did a lot of good things in his time as First Minister, the smoking ban being the one key delivery that he is most lauded for. However, the benchmark for the current LOLITSP is specifically on the date of the May 2007 election when, arguably, Jack’s popularity was at its lowest ebb, tired as Scotland was with the eight years of Lab/Lib rule.
People may scoff, and they do, at Iain Gray’s supposedly lacklustre performances at FMQs, not to mention his dismal personal poll ratings when he just started out as leader. However, Iain’s relative youth and relatively short tenure as leader may end up counting in his favour. I predict again ‘Gray-mania’ as a nation looks for a Scottish Nick Clegg.
Being more popular than Lord Jack come May 2011 may be all that is required for Labour in its aim to be a part of the next Government.
Salmond’s star fades
I’ve mentioned it before so I won’t labour the point but Alex Salmond may be on borrowed time as leader of the SNP. He has led the Nationalists longer than Tony Blair led Labour, longer than Margaret Thatcher led the Tories and longer than Paddy Ashdown led the Liberals/Liberal Democrats.
When the public has decided your time is up then a change should be made accordingly and if Scots suddenly make that decision in advance of May 2011, with the SNP having insufficient time to change its leader, then the SNP might not just lose the election, it could in effect be in line for a hiding to nothing.
Tory vs Labour
This is the first Scottish Parliament election that has any sort of Conservative Government in London as a backdrop. If the upshot of this is an automatic instinct to vote Labour in, even to a much lesser extent than was witnessed at the Westminster elections, then the SNP could lose out on this factor alone.
It’s not all bad news though for SNP fans….
There are five clear reasons why the SNP could not only maintain its 1 seat margin over Labour, but extend it.
Increased tactical voting
There is plenty of scope, based on the 2007 election results, for contests to skew towards the top two incumbents in a constituency. As an example one can look at Cunninghame North again.
Kenny Gibson of the SNP won the contest with 9,295 votes to Labour candidate Allan Wilson’s 9,247. Each of these scores were still lower than the 11,699 votes that went to the other candidates though. One would expect that this and similar close contests would pull votes into a two-horse race
With independence now no longer the ‘centre of gravity’ and the Lib Dems, Conservatives and Greens all finding productive compromises with the SNP recently, I would argue that it is the Nats rather than Labour who would benefit from increased tactical voting in the First past the Post vote in 2011.
It is interesting, and perhaps surprising to some, to note that Labour are 1st/2nd in 54 constituencies in Scotland while the SNP are 1st/2nd in 62.
Regroup on 2007 policies
The SNP didn’t just win the 2007 election with the clever wheeze of ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ on the ballot slip and disillusion with Labour making up the rest, the party had a red-hot manifesto to sell to the country.
It is inevitable that each of the other parties will attack the non-delivery of some of these commitments (LIT, Scottish Futures Trust, minimum pricing, student debt) with a mixed degree of justification but the flip-side of this is that the SNP can simply regroup, repackage and resell many of these policies all over again, citing opposition from other parties as partly justifiable reasons for their non-delivery.
Labour’s long-awaited response to the Local Income Tax plan will be key here and they did have time on their side to come up with the perfect policy riposte but if the public backed the SNP’s direction of travel in 2007, I wouldn’t bet against them doing so again in 2011.
FPTP breakthrough
The SNP may have won 47 MSPs to Labour’s 46 but in terms of constituencies the score was a lowly 21 seats to Labour’s 37. Note that this is despite the constituency vote being 32.9% (SNP) to 32.1% (Labour).
However, the SNP beginning to win seats that it just lost out on in 2007 will take the considerable pressure off having to win quite so many regional MSP slots. It’s surely a big ask getting 5 out of 7 regional seats in South of Scotland and Central and 4 out of 7 in Glasgow and West of Scotland, as they did in 2007.
Expanding the regional margin of error by looking to (in order of majority) Aberdeen Central, Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Linlithgow, Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, Airdrie & Shotts, Dumbarton, Midlothian, Falkirk East and so on for gains, while holding onto the hard-won Ochil, Stirling and Falkirk Wests, will be a key part of the macro-strategy for the SNP in advance of May next year.
It is worth noting that the SNP hold 8 of the 11 most marginal seats from the 2007 contest.
Independence referendum
Many have remarked that the grand plan for this entire parliamentary term from Nationalist’s perspective was to lay a Referendum Bill before Parliament, watch the unionist parties vote it down and then hammer them at the next election campaign for not giving the Scottish public a say on Scotland’s constitutional future. Broadly speaking, that plan is still unfolding with the Referendum Bill still (just about) live and a Scotland Bill due for discussion at Conservative-controlled (just about) Westminster.
There have been setbacks of course. The global financial crisis set independence support back, the toppling of RBS and the end of HBOS took the wind out of the Nats’ sails and the unexpected Scottish-heavy Lib Dems propping up the Tory Government in London wasn’t part of the preferred Doomsday scenario.
However, the leverage that Alex Salmond may be able to extract from the lack of support for a referendum may yet be a factor. Popular support for a plebiscite was, albeit a while ago now, sitting at around 70%. Not all of that number would vote Yes but they might not like that they aren’t getting their chance to try shutting the door on independence once and for all and could, perversely, vote SNP in order to get their opportunity.
Were Alex Salmond to corner the market by winning support from the pro-independence and anti-independence groups in this way, then the man truly is a political genius. And I wouldn’t put it past him either.
Underwhelming leader debates
One thing can be guaranteed during an election campaign, leader debates will be screened more than many would like. This is typically one of Alex Salmond’s strongest terrains and can expect to win considerable support, much of it grudging, if he performs as well as he in past campaigns.
Iain Gray would need to confound expectations to ‘win’ the debates,
Update – An extra eleventh point that I’ve just thought of can’t be ignored and that is money. Labour is strapped for cash, the Liberal Democrats nearly went bankrupt, the Conservatives are even having trouble with their deep-pocketed traditional backers and the SNP rather publicly didn’t receive donations from Brian Souter and Sir Tom Hunter at the UK election. It is not clear who may have the advantage going into May 2011 but whoever can keep the taps running should have a significant edge on the rest.
Here are ten factors that I reckon will decide the election, five in the SNP’s favour and five in Labour’s; not that our wonderful, colourful Parliament is just about two parties, I hasten to add.
Anyway, here we go…
Cunninghame North
One of my favourite one-liners off the back of the 2007 election was that the SNP won it by 48 votes. I’m taken by this factoid because it is so simple and yet so true. Had Allan Wilson received 49 more votes in Cunninghame North then Labour would have received 1 extra Constituency MSP, the SNP would have received one less, there would have been no impact on the 7 regional MSPs for West of Scotland and there would be a Labour First Minister right now.
Needless to say therefore, this will be a key battleground in 2011. That’s not to say that if Labour win Cunninghame North then they’ll win the election but this is as close to a ‘swing constituency’ as we’ve probably got.
That said, in 2007 there was an ex SNP MSP on the ballot slip in the shape of Campbell Martin. I don’t know if Campbell is or isn’t standing next time around but if he isn’t then Kenny’s job should, in theory, be relatively easier. Mind you, it is also worth noting that Nicola Sturgeon faces losing out on Glasgow Govan after unhelpful boundary changes make the constituency a Labour nominal. Losing this seat may not result in the SNP picking up an extra Glasgow list seat, similar to the crucial Cunninghame North situation.
So even if Kenny G holds on in the West, there are other seats out there where it could be the SNP’s turn to lose out on holding power by a handful of votes.
Green resurgence
Perhaps it is just my own personal growing regard for the Green Party that makes me say it but I suspect that Patrick Harvie could find himself with a lot of colleagues on the Holyrood benches this time next year. An improvement in the party’s fortunes could be the decisive factor in the SNP losing out on being the biggest party as the following illustration shows:
Breakdown of MSPs from 2007 election:
SNP - 47
Labour - 46
Tory - 17
Lib Dem - 16
Green – 2
Ind - 1
The breakdown of MSPs were the Greens to have won 1 extra MSP in each region:
SNP - 43
Labour - 44
Tory - 17
Lib Dem - 15
Green – 9
Ind - 1
The SNP won eight of the fourteen spots in the 6th and 7th rounds of the d’Hondt formula allocation. A whopping 57%, all the larger when you consider there were four or five parties aiming for those spots.
That leaves the Nats vulnerable to a Green resurgence or, less likely, a Socialist charge.
Gray over McConnell
A key question at the next election will be whether Iain Gray is more popular amongst the electorate than Lord Jack McConnell was.
Jack did a lot of good things in his time as First Minister, the smoking ban being the one key delivery that he is most lauded for. However, the benchmark for the current LOLITSP is specifically on the date of the May 2007 election when, arguably, Jack’s popularity was at its lowest ebb, tired as Scotland was with the eight years of Lab/Lib rule.
People may scoff, and they do, at Iain Gray’s supposedly lacklustre performances at FMQs, not to mention his dismal personal poll ratings when he just started out as leader. However, Iain’s relative youth and relatively short tenure as leader may end up counting in his favour. I predict again ‘Gray-mania’ as a nation looks for a Scottish Nick Clegg.
Being more popular than Lord Jack come May 2011 may be all that is required for Labour in its aim to be a part of the next Government.
Salmond’s star fades
I’ve mentioned it before so I won’t labour the point but Alex Salmond may be on borrowed time as leader of the SNP. He has led the Nationalists longer than Tony Blair led Labour, longer than Margaret Thatcher led the Tories and longer than Paddy Ashdown led the Liberals/Liberal Democrats.
When the public has decided your time is up then a change should be made accordingly and if Scots suddenly make that decision in advance of May 2011, with the SNP having insufficient time to change its leader, then the SNP might not just lose the election, it could in effect be in line for a hiding to nothing.
Tory vs Labour
This is the first Scottish Parliament election that has any sort of Conservative Government in London as a backdrop. If the upshot of this is an automatic instinct to vote Labour in, even to a much lesser extent than was witnessed at the Westminster elections, then the SNP could lose out on this factor alone.
It’s not all bad news though for SNP fans….
There are five clear reasons why the SNP could not only maintain its 1 seat margin over Labour, but extend it.
Increased tactical voting
There is plenty of scope, based on the 2007 election results, for contests to skew towards the top two incumbents in a constituency. As an example one can look at Cunninghame North again.
Kenny Gibson of the SNP won the contest with 9,295 votes to Labour candidate Allan Wilson’s 9,247. Each of these scores were still lower than the 11,699 votes that went to the other candidates though. One would expect that this and similar close contests would pull votes into a two-horse race
With independence now no longer the ‘centre of gravity’ and the Lib Dems, Conservatives and Greens all finding productive compromises with the SNP recently, I would argue that it is the Nats rather than Labour who would benefit from increased tactical voting in the First past the Post vote in 2011.
It is interesting, and perhaps surprising to some, to note that Labour are 1st/2nd in 54 constituencies in Scotland while the SNP are 1st/2nd in 62.
Regroup on 2007 policies
The SNP didn’t just win the 2007 election with the clever wheeze of ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ on the ballot slip and disillusion with Labour making up the rest, the party had a red-hot manifesto to sell to the country.
It is inevitable that each of the other parties will attack the non-delivery of some of these commitments (LIT, Scottish Futures Trust, minimum pricing, student debt) with a mixed degree of justification but the flip-side of this is that the SNP can simply regroup, repackage and resell many of these policies all over again, citing opposition from other parties as partly justifiable reasons for their non-delivery.
Labour’s long-awaited response to the Local Income Tax plan will be key here and they did have time on their side to come up with the perfect policy riposte but if the public backed the SNP’s direction of travel in 2007, I wouldn’t bet against them doing so again in 2011.
FPTP breakthrough
The SNP may have won 47 MSPs to Labour’s 46 but in terms of constituencies the score was a lowly 21 seats to Labour’s 37. Note that this is despite the constituency vote being 32.9% (SNP) to 32.1% (Labour).
However, the SNP beginning to win seats that it just lost out on in 2007 will take the considerable pressure off having to win quite so many regional MSP slots. It’s surely a big ask getting 5 out of 7 regional seats in South of Scotland and Central and 4 out of 7 in Glasgow and West of Scotland, as they did in 2007.
Expanding the regional margin of error by looking to (in order of majority) Aberdeen Central, Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Linlithgow, Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, Airdrie & Shotts, Dumbarton, Midlothian, Falkirk East and so on for gains, while holding onto the hard-won Ochil, Stirling and Falkirk Wests, will be a key part of the macro-strategy for the SNP in advance of May next year.
It is worth noting that the SNP hold 8 of the 11 most marginal seats from the 2007 contest.
Independence referendum
Many have remarked that the grand plan for this entire parliamentary term from Nationalist’s perspective was to lay a Referendum Bill before Parliament, watch the unionist parties vote it down and then hammer them at the next election campaign for not giving the Scottish public a say on Scotland’s constitutional future. Broadly speaking, that plan is still unfolding with the Referendum Bill still (just about) live and a Scotland Bill due for discussion at Conservative-controlled (just about) Westminster.
There have been setbacks of course. The global financial crisis set independence support back, the toppling of RBS and the end of HBOS took the wind out of the Nats’ sails and the unexpected Scottish-heavy Lib Dems propping up the Tory Government in London wasn’t part of the preferred Doomsday scenario.
However, the leverage that Alex Salmond may be able to extract from the lack of support for a referendum may yet be a factor. Popular support for a plebiscite was, albeit a while ago now, sitting at around 70%. Not all of that number would vote Yes but they might not like that they aren’t getting their chance to try shutting the door on independence once and for all and could, perversely, vote SNP in order to get their opportunity.
Were Alex Salmond to corner the market by winning support from the pro-independence and anti-independence groups in this way, then the man truly is a political genius. And I wouldn’t put it past him either.
Underwhelming leader debates
One thing can be guaranteed during an election campaign, leader debates will be screened more than many would like. This is typically one of Alex Salmond’s strongest terrains and can expect to win considerable support, much of it grudging, if he performs as well as he in past campaigns.
Iain Gray would need to confound expectations to ‘win’ the debates,
Update – An extra eleventh point that I’ve just thought of can’t be ignored and that is money. Labour is strapped for cash, the Liberal Democrats nearly went bankrupt, the Conservatives are even having trouble with their deep-pocketed traditional backers and the SNP rather publicly didn’t receive donations from Brian Souter and Sir Tom Hunter at the UK election. It is not clear who may have the advantage going into May 2011 but whoever can keep the taps running should have a significant edge on the rest.
1 comments:
A very interesting and perceptive analysis, Jeff. I think the challenges and opportunities for the SNP and Labour are about right.
Yet one other factor which will tend to mitigate against tactical voting are the new boundaries.
When people don't know who's likely to win in an area, they tend to ignore (to a greater degree than normal) the local scene, and vote for who they really want, or for whom they assume might win, which takes much greater cognisance of the national debate.
It takes a while for a cohesive tactical vote effort to coalesce when there is no previous result to rely upon as a comparison: in my experience even politically aware people tend to be more sceptical of notional results as reliable than real votes in a real election (and there's plenty of evidence to justify that approach).
For example, in Edinburgh North and Leith's Westminster seat, the notional result when it was created was Lab 42%, LD 20.5%%, Con 18.5%, SNP 14.5%, Oth 4.5%; yet the 2005 result was Lab 34%, LD 29%, Con 18%, SNP 10% and Oth 9%. OK, the national election campaign itself influenced how people voted, of course, but the fall in Labour support surprised many people, especially since it was also assumed that Lazarowicz's record as an incumbent would help him, but the figures suggest otherwise. For five years thereafter people were repeatedly told that the election was now a two-horse race, and the 2010 result was Lab 37%, LD 34%, Con 15%, SNP 9.5%, Oth 4.5%, with the two larger parties squeezing out more and more of the other parties' support (from a combined 63% in 2005 to 71% in 2010). Obviously voting behaviour depended more in 2010 on a perception of winnability locally, but that was far less the case in 2005. Shifting the battleground itself will make some incumbents more vulnerable, but in other places make it more difficult for challengers since there will be something less concrete for them to push against.
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