lichtgilphead Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 It depends on your priorities, if your priority is to maximise the SNP contingent then of course you're going to double down on them. If your priority is to minimise the Unionist contingent then tactical voting is advisable. Even if the country is split 50-50 unionist and nationalist, the Nats have to vote as a bloc. Now again for the sake of simplicity we will assume the SNP win every seat in a given region. They'd need the full 50% support to even get one MSP, whereas if they stood aside and the Greens got 50% of the vote then they'd probably get 5 MSPs, and the Unionists would be in tatters. For that same reason I often wonder if the Unionists should form a pact Under D'Hondt, it's very difficult to win 5 list seats out of 7 with 50% of the vote, even if you do start with zero constituency seats. You either need both the 2nd and 3rd place parties to get between 10.01% & 19.99% and no other party to get over 10% or you need the 2nd place party to get between 20.01% & 29.99% and every other party to poll under 10%. That's a pretty tight window. In addition, in real life, not every SNP supporter will consider giving their list vote to the Greens, so your fantasy scenario becomes even harder to achieve. Meanwhile, all it takes across Scotland is for the SNP to fail to win 9 constituency seats to put them into minority and need a coalition to form a government. I would much rather that the SNP had an overall majority of their own. SNP/SNP is the safest & most likely way to acheive this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 The point that all this pish in the wind about tactical voting comprehensively misses is how monumentally unworkable it is. The SNP are obviously not going to go out and say to their supporters 'give your second vote to someone else', and the Greens are minor players in a media sense so any tactical voting campaign is going to have to be done at a grassroots level. That's fine, but what percentage of the population: Understands the d'Hondt system enough to get the argument about why an SNP vote is 'wasted' on the list Is pro-independence to the point where a larger 'Yes bloc' or the desire to 'give Labour a kicking' is the determining facet of their politics Is not already a member of a political party (i.e someone who is extremely likely to vote for the same party in both votes) Total non-starter. I think it's a kind of hubris on behalf of the people who propose this stuff that they believe that there are enough people who agree with them out there to make these ideas workable. I know there's this perception that Scotland's full of very engaged people hotly debating politics etc, but the vast majority of people really aren't waking up every morning hoping to wipe out Labour at Holyrood in May. Even if this kind of campaign could get off the ground, who could say the vote would even split evenly to the Greens? I'd personally much rather see RISE in parliament than extra Greens, but that seems vanishingly unlikely. It's also worth saying there's a precedent for this. There was (IIRC) a much more high-profile tactical campaign from unionists leading up to May urging people to vote for whoever would stop the SNP. Obviously it's a different voting system, but it's illustrative. And what impact did it have? Hee haw. You are putting it across as some evil plan created in some smoky backroom (illegal now more's the pity). Lots of folk are going to do this off their own back. This discussion is the plan. Folk discussing and engaging in politics and working out what they want to do. The greens and other minor parties will be campaigning for second votes of yes minded folk but like you say - they don't get much coverage anyway. Will it create this huge block of yes supporting parties? No, definitely not. Will it gain the minor parties a bigger vote share and maybe some more seats? Time will tell. The idea that the snp would ever enter into this is laughable. But I'll be encouraging folk to think about it and countless others will be too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elixir Posted January 17, 2016 Author Share Posted January 17, 2016 Couldn't really care less whether there's 70 or 80 SNP MSPs. They'll have a comfortable majority one way or the other. What I do want to see is over 50% vote share. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH33 Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I've utterly no idea what I'm doing with my votes. I'm not an independence or snp supporter. I'm not a fan of the torries. Have never voted labour and wouldn't vote Scottish labour as they are a shambles. Last time I voted lib dem/greens. In the general I voted green. I'm aware they are pro independence. Was really torn at the general as to what to do. Didn't want to spoil Ballot paper as I do believe we are lucky to have a democratic (even with its flaws) society. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
invergowrie arab Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I've utterly no idea what I'm doing with my votes. I'm not an independence or snp supporter. I'm not a fan of the torries. Have never voted labour and wouldn't vote Scottish labour as they are a shambles. Last time I voted lib dem/greens. In the general I voted green. I'm aware they are pro independence. Was really torn at the general as to what to do. Didn't want to spoil Ballot paper as I do believe we are lucky to have a democratic (even with its flaws) society. I have read what you have to say including the subtext I would advise both votes SNP for your situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH33 Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I won't vote snp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I won't vote snp. Why not vote the same as you did last time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Rational Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I won't vote snp. Why? Independence has been shelved for this election. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
invergowrie arab Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I won't vote snp. wasted votes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Gaines Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 Vote for who you want to vote for. If that means they're wasted then so be it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Granny Danger Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I won't vote snp. Change your mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonMan Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I've utterly no idea what I'm doing with my votes. I'm not an independence or snp supporter. I'm not a fan of the torries. Have never voted labour and wouldn't vote Scottish labour as they are a shambles. Last time I voted lib dem/greens. In the general I voted green. I'm aware they are pro independence. Was really torn at the general as to what to do. Didn't want to spoil Ballot paper as I do believe we are lucky to have a democratic (even with its flaws) society. Probably best to go for the Greens at the moment then. They do support independence, but that's not really a major issue at the moment and unless there's an EU exit probably won't be for a while. The Lib Dems are useless at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Stubbs Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 Not going to happen this time obviously but actually imagine having the Scottish Labour or Lib Dem diddies in charge at Holyrood again. Lot of folk would be regretting the day they worried about the SNP winning by too much. That said, my second vote will go to the Greens. A decent sized group of them would be great for the parliament. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Stubbs Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 ...btw, the Greens had an open position on Independence. Everyone was free to take their own stance on it and the leadership happened to support it. You'd have to be pretty staunch to object to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ad Lib Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 I've utterly no idea what I'm doing with my votes. I'm not an independence or snp supporter. I'm not a fan of the torries. Have never voted labour and wouldn't vote Scottish labour as they are a shambles. Last time I voted lib dem/greens. In the general I voted green. I'm aware they are pro independence. Was really torn at the general as to what to do. Didn't want to spoil Ballot paper as I do believe we are lucky to have a democratic (even with its flaws) society. Paisley's West of Scotland region, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH33 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Yup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Ad Lib's just sent his application to stand in your constituency since he'll be guaranteed of at least one vote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fide Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Yup If I were you, I'd do both votes SNP. HTH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoda Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 My list vote will be going to the Greens. My constituency vote is another matter, Fergus Ewing isn't really someone I want to vote for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gordon EF Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 The other possibility is that you you have me pigeonholed as a political opponent and want to turn everything on here into yet another turgid Nationalist vs Unionist argument. My point is that tactical voting only has to swing "a few seats" against the SNP in a Holyrood context on the constituency side of things for a stable SNP majority to be dependent on getting extra list seats, which would not necessarily happen if the SNP's list vote dropped down to about 40% if a lot of voters drifted off to the Greens or maybe even RISE to try to give Labour an extra kicking. Not really, seeing as my only reply, before you got defensive, was a flippant remark about the ability of the #SNPOuters to actually significantly impact the outcome of elections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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