Scotland 2007; results thread

[Verily]

If the Edinburgh East swing is repeated, the SNP could gain Edinburgh North, too. That will throw my list predictions out the window entirely.

[Verily]

Lab hold Edinburgh North. SNP does pick up the SSP list seat in West Scotland. Lab and SNP now tied at 40-40.

Lothians (pred)
Con 2 (+1)
SNP 2
LD 1 (+1)
Ind 1
Grn 1 (-1)

North East (pred)
Con 3
Lab 3 (+1)
LD 1 (+1)

Highlands (pred)
Lab 3 (+1)
Con 2
SNP 1 (-1)
LD 1 (+1)

Lab will be largest party. If the SNP hadn't won Argyll and Bute, the Highlands list would have been SNP 2 Lab 2 Con 2 Grn 1, meaning a likely SNP-led coalition. Winning Argyll and Bute probably lost the SNP the election, ironically.

[Verily]

SNP had a big swing in Edinburgh West to them. I may be underestimating their chances in the Lothians list.

[Verily]

Unfortunately, Wales and Scotland have too few seats to do MMP right so you get things like the Conservatives winning more votes than Plaid in Wales but fewer seats.

[Verily]

Highlands and the Islands in... and the SNP wins!

SNP 47 (+20)
Lab 46 (-4)
Con 17 (-1)
LD 16 (-1)
Grn 2 (-5)
Ind 1 (-9, including SSP, SOL and SSCUP)

Highlands and the Islands
Lab 3
SNP 2 (big swing to them from Lab, Con and Grn to hold two list seats)
Con 2

[Verily]

So who is going to shack up with who...since the party numbers seem pretty even...SNP/Lab essentially tied, Con/LD essentially tied...Greens potentially holding the two seats needed for coalition...

Stop light?

Stop light doesn't have a majority, and I can't imagine the Greens joining it anyway (they're more staunchly nationalist than the SNP). SNP-LD-Green looks like the new government. Margo MacDonald might be offered a spot in the government, too, since SNP-LD-Green is a bare majority of 1.

Required for majority: 65

Theoretically possible coalitions, in order of likelihood, with minimal parties needed:
SNP-LD-Green: 65 seats
SNP-Con-LD: 80 seats
Lab-Con-LD: 79 seats
SNP-Con-Green: 66 seats
SNP-Lab: 93 seats
Lab-Con-Green: 65 seats
Lab-LD-Green-MacDonald: 65 seats

The SNP might try to run a minority government getting support when needed from the LDs, the Cons, the Greens and MacDonald.

[Verily]

Eh, I almost thought Labour had carved out a first place there after all. Funny about the lack of possible coalitions. What 3 indies can do to throw a spanner in the works...

It'd be even worse if MacDonald and the Greens weren't there. Then the only possible governments would be SNP-Lab (not happening) or any three-way combination, which would have to involve the Tories and either Lab or SNP, both of whom loathe the Tories.

[Verily]

The BBC has a good constituency map here, though it doesn't show margins.

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Something that just occurred to me... Are we likely to see a by-election in the Westminster Banff and Buchan constituency soon? I would assume Salmond will stand down as an MP to become First Minister.

[Verily]

Now things will get interesting. Tavish Scott ruled out a coalition with Labour yesterday, I believe.

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Now I won't get to see Gordon Brown try to handle Scottish independence.

It wasn't going to happen anyway. Even if the SNP got a referendum, it wouldn't win 50%, let alone the probable 55% or 60% threshold.

[Verily]

Note that there's no majority for Independence in the Scottish Parliament, even after these elections (besides I think that, technically, most of the SNP's gains came at the expense of more left-leaning pro-Independence parties? So perhaps more a shift to the right amongt Nationalist types, rather than a shift to Nationalism?)

I don't know that it was a shift to the right for nationalism, just a coalescing of the vote around the more mainstream SNP. The SSCUP was probably best characterized as right-wing, and it lost its seat, too. The real change, of course, was that nearly all of the SSP's vote reverted to the SNP.

Labour actually declined very little in the list vote, though it lost ground in the constituency vote.

The Lib Dems had the odd pattern of gaining in the constituency vote while losing constituency seats and losing in the list vote while gaining list seats.

The Conservatives remained almost perfectly static in the constituency vote but declined in the list vote.

[Verily]

The Conservatives won the election before Salmond, so it'll likely be on their radar. However, the Lib Dems are as a rule strong in north Scotland, and they do very well in by-elections. We'll see, I guess.

[Verily]

There was a by-election in 2001 for the Scottish constituency. The results were:

Stewart Stevenson (SNP): 15,386 (49.61%)
Ted Brocklebank (Con): 6,819 (21.99%)
Megan Harris (Lab): 4,897 (15.79%)
Kenyon Wright (LD): 3,231 (10.42%)
Peter Anderson (SSP): 682 (2.20%)

That suggests that the seat is pretty safe for the SNP even without Salmond and in a by-election. OTOH, the Conservatives were a lot less popular in 2001 than they are today.

[Verily]

...Which would clearly be a terrible system, seeing that Labour lost the popular vote quite significantly to the SNP.