Scottish Parliament Election, 6th May 2021

[StateBoiler]

On a mostly British non-politics board I'm on the Scots there have a lot of criticism about how Sturgeon has run things, but she's able to get by publicly on a lot of stuff by comparing herself to London-based leadership, which is something American posters are very familiar with (Governor is kinda lukewarm leader but can always say he or she is doing better than the people in D.C.).

Also talk about what the SNP is doing as far as a credible plan for nationalism if they actually want to separate in the near future: the "keep the British pound" plan Salmond had would've condemned the state of Scotland to depression in present circumstances and North Sea oil has collapsed in price.

Linkity link link: https://forum.planetrugby.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=94170

[StateBoiler]

Unless they start going against the SNP this is simply a great way to maximise Pro-Independent MSP’s and game the list system, I can’t see why unionists are cheering this.

Hard to see the SNP saying "don't vote for us on the list, vote for Alba". And even if it doesn't turn out that way, there must be little doubt Salmond intends this to hurt Sturgeon rather than the reverse.

Alba have said people should vote SNP in the constituency vote. It’s hard to see people not being smart enough to work out the best chance of getting an independence majority is to vote SNP constituency and Alba list.

That's quite the shrewd gaming of the system. Well done to whoever Salmond's political strategists are. Throw on top of it the unionists are hopelessly splintered and will never cooperate with one another. This is a structural flaw in the constituency plus list system they have exposed to the world. Why would any party ever run in both constituencies AND lists from now on? It would make more sense if you had the Judean People's Front run only in constituencies and the People's Front of Judea run only in list seats. That way the People's Front of Judea can maximize their representation since they did not win any seats at the constituency level.

[StateBoiler]

Not that it means much but listening to Alex Salmons on Radio 4 this morning made it perfectly clear he is yesterday’s ego, to create a phrase.

He’s not popular or particularly liked 

Has very similar ratings to the person in your username and pic, strangely enough.

Well yes I was going to post that but it appeared quite meta; most despised by people in their own party, hated for their actions both in & especially out of office but retains an extremely vocal minority of support. 

He's one of the grand total of 2 Labour leaders that were able to win an election the last 70 years.

[StateBoiler]

While Salmond is extremely unpopular, I'm a bit uneasy with how seemingly the entire commentariat has decided to proclaim that that one poll is as good as an election result. (Though it is in keeping with the relentless hyping of every poll on Scottish independence) It's a single poll, there's still some time to go and it doesn't need to be too far off for seats to be a possibility.

Like most things with the media and politics, it's to drive a certain narrative so that most of the people that could potentially be convinced to vote for said party dismiss it as irrelevant. There's a question of how many people not super actively politically engaged knew what it was when answering the poll.

Went to Holyrood Magazine. Headlines that pass muster in British media but not the U.S.:

https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,15-years-off-the-fags-the-story-of-scotlands-smoking-ban

[StateBoiler]

The AMS system has always been a horrendous one which was obviously open to gaming. Anyway, it would be very easy to solve the problem of shell parties running on the list. That's by getting rid of the second ballot paper and just counting a party's total vote in each region from the first ballot paper. It would have the additional benefit of encouraging more parties to stand in each constituency and for them to campaign harder making elections more competitive. It would also make setting up splinter/ minor parties more difficult (which is an advantage IMO.

I like the idea.

[StateBoiler]

One giant nothing changed election. 3 constituency seats flipped, with SNP winning all of them.