Scottish Politics Question

[DC Al Fine]

I'm trying to get a better handle of Scottish politics. I have a rough idea of how people vote in England, but a weak Conservative party and the SNP leaves me some questions.

1) What sort of people vote for each party?
2) Who is more left wing, SNP or Labour?
3) If the SNP didn't exist, who would win their seats?

[minionofmidas]

I'm trying to get a better handle of Scottish politics. I have a rough idea of how people vote in England, but a weak Conservative party and the SNP leaves me some questions.

1) What sort of people vote for each party?
2) Who is more left wing, SNP or Labour?
3) If the SNP didn't exist, who would win their seats?

A big problem here is that a lot of people consider these two parties as the two acceptable choices, with Labour usually as the default setting (similar with Plaid in ex-industrial Wales), while the SNP's "core"st supporters are rural and probably haven't voted Labour in their life - many of them living in areas where Labour never had a tradition of any sort, and being the local "Left" there vs the Tories as the Right. A further issue is that there are also people in rural Scotland who would consider the SNP and the LDs but not Labour.
So with question 3 (and apart from the simple, true, but utterly unhelpful answer that if the SNP did not exist, it would be created)... are you thinking of the seats it has held at Westminster for a while, or all the very many seats across Scotland it swept at the last election? In the second case, the answer is "Labour, the vast majority of them, and no mistake". In the first... hum. Most likely LD.
Based on their platform alone, you'd think the SNP was to the left of Labour, but really that's the only grounds on which to claim that.

[Leftbehind]

I'd definitely see them as left of Labour in contempary times, but I think they've been allowed that mantle by Labour's rightward drift moreso than any committal to the Left - their positioning on the Left is useful to their advancement, and will always be secondary to their nationalism. As it is - like every other party in the UK - it's an awkward alliance, with undeniably left of centre stances at the moment but a concern that you couldn't trust them not to abandon them the moment Independence forced them to compete in the global economy (not to mention Salmond's past well publicised praise of Iceland & Ireland's model).

[bore]

I think, even moreso than most other parties is the SNP are, as LeftBehind said an awkward alliance who are pro independence first and everything else later. The actual people in the party range from thatcherites to social conservatives to out and out socialists to social democrats and more. Their platform is I would say centre left, but their voter base is clearly right wing- although that's probably a function of being the anti labour party in Scotland

[freefair]

1) An odd combination of Ex Tories and Greens
2) I'd say they are to the right of Scottish Labour, a bit.
3) At Westminster, The Tories (apart from the Outer Hebrides). At Hollyrood, Labour and Tories.