If you were to believe a lot of the campaign leaflets out there, particularly those that take you down the yellow brick road of bar charts on Lib Dem literature, it is just as important to be in second place when challenging for a seat than it is to have a decent set of policies to take to the voters.
It is not out of the question for people to vote for party X because they want party Y to form the next Government because they don’t want party Z in there. In these cynical times, tactical voting has never been so rampant.
So, with that in mind, I thought I’d do a bit of an analysis of who is where in the 73 FPTP constituencies of Scotland going into this General Election, seeing as how important it seems to be.
Taking a high level view of the lay of the land by calculating the weighted average of positions across each of the constituencies from the 2007 election, this gives you a feel for where each of the parties stand at the current time.
SNP is 1.85th
Labour is 1.93th
Tories are 3.09th
Lib Dems are 3.09th
(Note that this compares with the 2005 GE as follows:
Labour are 1.47th
Lib Dems are 2.53rd
SNP is 2.78th
Tories are 3.19th)
Most ardent fans of politics and elections can rhyme off the number of FPTP MSPs each party has but I’ll do it anyway. The Tories have 6, the SNP 21, the Lib Dems 11 and Labour 35, which is 6+21+11+35=73.
However, what about 2nd place? Which party is waiting in the wings more than the rest?
Well, as some may have already worked out from the SNP’s prime ‘1.85th place’, Labour are 2nd with 18 2nd placed spots, the SNP 1st with a whopping 43 2nd placed spots, the Tories have 7 and the Lib Dems 5 (4 of which are 2nd places to the SNP).
This, for me, is the reason why the SNP has such a great chance to record a stunning victory in this coming election. They are in 1st place in 21 seats and 2nd place in 43 seats. Do the seat projections for the current crop of polls take into account the tactical voting that will take place? The consideration that always takes place whereby many voters only decide between who is 1st and 2nd from last time around? If not, the SNP’s result may infact be higher than the already remarkable results that have been predicted since they are 1st or 2nd in 64 of the constituencies, a full 88% of all constituencies. The equivalent figures for Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives are 73%, 22% and 18% respectively.
With a dramatically declining voteshare and only a handful of second place spots dotted around, it is difficult to find a constituency where the Lib Dems have a realistic chance of making gains. Edinburgh Northern & Leith could be one place for the Lib Dems and Perthshire South & Kinross-shire is possibly a seat that the Tories could take. North East Fife and Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire are those rare seats where the Lib Dems and Conservatives are 1st and 2nd so deciding whether that will remain the case or whether SNP/Labour will charge through on Thursday is less easy to predict, something that I will conveniently avoid doing.
The Lib Dems sit 3rd/4th in a massive 21/36 seats which doesn’t lend itself to bar chart production. One can only wonder what graphic delights are taking place across the country. I suspect they are going heavy on the local policing pledge to fill that bottom corner of their leaflets.
Assuming (in line with recent polls) that the four main parties will score SNP 42%, Labour 34%, Tory 12%, Lib Dems 7% and applying the national swing to each constituency then the weighted average positions will become:
SNP – 1.43th
Labour – 1.90th
Tory – 3rd
Lib Dems – 3.66th
Labour will hold onto 28 seats, the SNP will be up to 43, the Lib Dems will have held onto 1 and the Tories will be on 1. Now, I don’t the above result will happen this Thursday but it does highlight the dominance that the SNP could potentially start to enjoy and the risk that the Lib Dems face of dropping into the dreaded ‘other party’ territory.
With four more years of an unpopular coalition and SNP candidates sitting 1st or 2nd all across Scotland, the Nats really could have two bites at the independence cherry over the coming years. A referendum in this coming term or an out-an-out majority from 2016.
Looking not so far into the future though, the above post serves one key message for me and that is that, if a significant tranche of voters have not decided who to vote for and if many of them tend to only chooce between the notional 1st and 2nd candidates, then the SNP could yet be runaway winners.
#1 by mav on May 2, 2011 - 9:53 am
how does it look if you take out the seats that are ridiculously safe – say where the incumbent has over 45% and a lead of over 15%?
And surely a FPTP surge would lead to a similar list vote reduction? Particularly if the sunday poll showing a 2% lead there is accurate? Granted, a huge change in faces would lead to disorganisation in the labour ranks at first, and eck might capitalise on that, but after that, parliamentary maths would kick in.
I suspect this mornings news from pakistan may draw attention away from the election anyway. It takes news cycles away from the parties trying to fight back (Gray surprised me last night, I felt only Tavish struggled), but big news overseas of this nature never helps the SNP.
#2 by aonghas on May 2, 2011 - 2:32 pm
“surely a FPTP surge would lead to a similar list vote reduction?”
I always have this thought, whenever people are examining the minutiae of constituency races (which is fun nonetheless). I may be wrong, but I think winning a lot of FPTP seats can give you an advantage in the SP. However, when the race narrows, I think any squeaky FPTP wins will tend to result in corresponsing list setbacks. Look at the last election – a tiny vote share difference was reflected pretty well in a 1-seat difference in the two front runners. Should we be mostly ignoring the first vote, and just paying attention to the second vote, since the system tries to allot seats in proportion to that vote?
#3 by Jeff on May 2, 2011 - 3:52 pm
I think winning more FPTP seats has an advantage because you simply have votes in the bank. Take Glasgow, Labour won 9 and the SNP won 5 out of a total of 16, which was broadly reflective of the share of the vote. Had George Galloway and the SSP been standing as potent forces and taken a seat each then Labour would have won 9 and the SNP 3, even perhaps with a similar share of the vote as the 2007 actual results.
By and large though, as you say, d’hondt is very good at delivering a result that is in keeping with the list vote after stripping out the small parties that don’t win any seats so, yes, going by that voteshare alone is probably decent enough.
#4 by Jeff on May 2, 2011 - 3:12 pm
Yes, good question, especially given I said in my previous post that chances are Edinburgh Pentlands – East Kilbride etc will stay the same colour. I’ve not checked that (and I didn’t save that down that version of the file so don’t fancy rerunning the numbers on this glorious bank holiday) but I think it’s fair to take these figures as indicative rather than predictive.
I’ve never been that sold on suggesting that a FPTP comes with a similar list reduction, otherwise all parties would stay on the same number of seats for ever more. You are right of course though that there would be a list impact but whoever has the upper-hand in the constituencies obviously has an advantage, something we’ve seen with Labour’s grip on certain areas for the past 3 elections which may or may not continue on Thursday.
The pulling of SNP names up to 2nd can only be a good thing for the party although, I haven’t checked, but are there any dodgy Nat bar charts out there? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were….!
Still not seen the debates but I thought the same as yourself Mav, the killing (murder?) of Osama Bin Laden will hoover up much of the news agenda for the rest of the week. I suspect that could only help the parties that consider themselves to be ahead of expectations which, for me, is SNP, Greens and perhaps the Tories. We’ll see though, a snapping back of the Labour vote really isn’t out of the question.
#5 by Danny1995 on May 2, 2011 - 12:50 pm
I think on they day the Tories end up holding all their seats except Dumfriesshire and gaining NE Fife.
The Lib Dems lose all their FPTP seats except Orkney and Shetland(Tavish Scott hold in Shetland by under 1000 votes with the independent in second imo)
#6 by GHmltn on May 2, 2011 - 2:26 pm
Good analysis as ever.
What I find interesting is the prospect of Hoyrood swamped by Labour and Nationalist MSPs and everyone else at the margins.
Especially of the Nats successfully pull together a sort of anti Labour coalition as part of their vote.
But the Nats and Labour do not represent all Scotland and this risks alienating Holyrood from Scots life somewhat.
Also as both parties are on the centre left you get the division of small differences.
I see almost some parallels with Fine Gael and Fine Fail in Ireland – a lot of bluster but actually not that many ideas.
I see this as a bad thing.
#7 by Jeff on May 2, 2011 - 3:20 pm
Thanks Gavin.
Not only do I share in your finding it interesting that Holyrood may be swamped with SNP and Labour activists, I also share in your finding it really quite worrying. Democracy is democracy I suppose and the make-up of the Parliament doesn’t lie.
I don’t know much about Irish politics but I get what you mean about two subtle shades of left being at loggerheads being a bad thing.
#8 by Stuart on May 3, 2011 - 6:56 am
I thought Fine Gael and Fine Fail were two shades of right rather than left?
But yes, this is a real worry. To see a polarisation of politics on a single issue would be bad for Scotland. Getting rid of the List / FPTP system and having STV for a voting system (like the Council elections) would help prevent this, but ultimately its down to the electorate.
It doesn’t help when our media is bias towards major parties (i.e. Leaders Debates).
#9 by An Duine Gruamach on May 2, 2011 - 4:59 pm
As with the Royal Wedding, I suspect that the news from Pakistan loses Labour at least one day of clear media to dominate the news agenda and media narrative. The SNP need to keep the ship going steady, it’s Labour who need to make a big noise.
#10 by Colin on May 2, 2011 - 6:36 pm
Sunday was a relatively clear day of media and the SNP absolutely dominated it with two polls, several newspapers backing them and several celebrity endorsements.
Labour, with this lost day, have no had a chance to counter attack.
#11 by mav on May 2, 2011 - 8:23 pm
“The Lib Dems sit 3rd/4th in a massive 21/36 seats which doesn’t lend itself to bar chart production. One can only wonder what graphic delights are taking place across the country.”
I once got a libdem leaflet for a general election, when I lived in Midlothian. About a quarter of a leaflet was a big bar chart showing them in second place ‘here’. Odd I thought, they were fourth. I checked the small print – it was a local council election result.
#12 by John Ruddy on May 3, 2011 - 8:57 am
Yes, same dodgy bar chart here in Angus North. A bar chart showing local councillors – ignoring Independants, and if the map was anything to go by, ignoring the part of the constituency that used to be in Tayside North!
#13 by OllieGarkey on May 4, 2011 - 11:55 pm
Jeff, I used to read SNP Tactical voting, and I’ve followed you here. I linked to a blog post where I quoted your figures about the second place SNP.
This was hastily written, but the Americans I write for need to know.
It’s at the American political blog, Daily Kos, affiliated with the Progressive wing of the American Democratic Party.
Thanks for your work. Hop over and check us out sometime. I’d love to see some of your work crossposted there.
#14 by Jeff on May 5, 2011 - 9:24 am
That’s very kind Ollie, I shall indeed hop over next chance I get.
Cheers!
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