Tactical voting 2021: The basics

The SNP are a MINORITY party that wins because the anti-Nationalist opposition vote is split three ways. Of the 73 constituency seats in the Scottish Parliament Elections, 59 are currently held by the SNP. That’s an astonishing 81% of seats from just 46.5% of the vote. 

Talk about not getting the government you vote for!

But how will tactical voting help? First we need to discard the two sets of seats where tactical voting won’t make a difference. The first set is the 28 seats where the combined anti-Nationalist vote is still less than the SNP vote. Even if 100% of the anti-Nationalist vote swung to the second-place candidate, the seat would still remain in the hands of the SNP. In these seats the priority must be to increase the anti-Nationalist vote share.

The second set we don’t need to consider are the 15 constituency seats currently held by anti-Nationalist parties. Assuming they will continue to hold them, that leaves 30 seats currently held by the SNP, where there are more anti-Nationalists than SNP voters. These seats are our primary tactical voting targets. See the table above for an interactive table of results.

For example, in the first row, Aberdeen Central, the SNP won with 11,648 votes, despite anti-Nationalist parties winning 15,056 votes. The second placed party, Labour, had 7,299 votes, so it would need 4,339 (56.1%) of the remaining 7,759 Conservative and LibDems votes to win the seat.

Likewise, in Dunfermline, Labour need to supplement their 9,699 votes with 4,558 votes from 8,953 Conservatives and LibDem votes to win. In this case, around 50.9% would have to switch votes to Labour.

If voters vote tactically, anti-Nationalist parties could gain as many as 30 seats. More importantly, the SNP would lose 30 seats. This would result in anti-Nationalists taking 45 out of 73 seats, a majority of eight constituency seats.

Labour would gain 14 additional constituency seats, while the Tories would gain 13 seats and the LibDems would gain three seats. Labour and Tories gain almost the same number of seats, so it is fair to say that each party benefits equally. Giving your Labour vote to a Tory candidate in one area, will result in a Labour candidate being elected in another area, and vice versa.

This would destroy the SNP for a real generation, not a pretendy one.

Even if only 75% of anti-Nationalist voters, whose party didn’t come second to the SNP, switched, there would still be a gain of 17 seats to anti-Nationalist parties, giving a total of 32 constituency seats. More than double. That would still knock the wind out of the SNP’s sails.

The main parties must step up

While every individual anti-Nationalist voter can do our best to vote tactically and spread the word about tactical voting, it would be far more effective if the main parties created a one-time tactical voting alliance where the parties would field only the best candidate to win in each constituency, while educating their voters on the benefits of tactical voting. The Tories have already said that they are interested in an alliance, but it has been, in our opinion, foolishly rejected by Labour’s leadership candidates.

This can be presented to voters as:

1. A one-time deal to break the back of the SNP. One and done.
2. A win-win. Labour and Conservatives gain equally from the deal. If you vote for a Labour/Tory candidate in your area, you will gain a Tory/Labour candidate in another area. More importantly, the SNP will lose those two seats.

And any objections can be handled as follows:

1. Are Labour and the Tories working together again?
   1. It worked last time
   2. We are all — Labour, Conservative and LibDems — anti-Nationalists against toxic Nationalism
   3. Nationalism is so toxic that it always needs alliances to beat it
   4. Nationalism, in Scotland, is worse than the Tories. It wasn’t Nationalists who stole Scottish Labour’s votes by pretending to be socialists.
   5. It’s a one time deal
2. Why should voters reward parties that have been, so far, unwilling to consider tactical voting ? Because there is no other way. We need to help the main parties restore themselves.
3. What about once an anti-Nationalist majority wins, should there be a coalition?
   We believe the main parties should propose 100 days of action, where they agree to work together to put forward centrist plans to improve Scotland’s health, education and economy, but it’s not a requirement of any tactical voting alliance.

Voters want success, not lame opposition. If the parties don’t step up and show us they’re worthy of our votes, for good or bad, we will go somewhere else.

We have a choice. Another four years of Sturgeon and her endless agitation by a MINORITY, or we give the MAJORITY the tools to break the back of the SNP once and for all.

Mark Devlin is the publisher of The Majority. Data prepared by Paul McLafferty (@bigpud1982). Co-edited by Mary Devlin (@MaryDevlin21).

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