Vote Green ... or UKIP gets it.

UKIP. Eurgh! Boo! Yuk. Icky. Want to stir soya milk into Nigel's decent, plain, old-fashioned British cornflakes? Vote GREEN.

That, in an organic spelt kernel, is the Scottish Greens' pitch for May's European election.  The sixth Scottish seat either goes to Maggie Chapman - diligent Edinburgh councillor, immigrant, and anti-nuke feminist - or some far-right goon who attributes rain-clouds to the cosmic machinations of a Romanian sodomite who recently deprived him of gainful employment. (In the interests of disclosure, I should say that I know Maggie of old and wish her well).  For those of us keen to keep Scotland a UKIP-free zone, this is an anxiety-provoking scenario. But is it a credible one? I'm not so sure.

Firstly, it's important to remind ourselves about how seats are allocated in European elections. One, there's a single national constituency and six seats going begging. Two, seats are allocated on the basis of a simple quota system.  Like the regional vote in Holyrood, each party nominates and ranks a list of candidates. On election night, returning officers tot up all of the votes cast into national totals. 

These are then divided by the number of seats the party has already won + 1, with the party with the highest remaining tally winning a candidate in that round.  In practice, that means that the party winning the highest level of support takes the first MEP, and their vote is divided first by two, and then by three if they take a second seat.  I put together the following chart last March, showing how all of this shook out in 2009:

As you can see, last time out, the Greens trailed significantly behind not only Labour but also the SNP and the Tories. Short version? They'd only take a seat if Scotland elected nine MEPs rather than six. UKIP were nowhere. But much has changed since 2009. Specifically, the Liberal Democrats entering government has done little to boost their electoral fortunes in Scotland. The party's support fell by over 8% in the constituencies in 2011, losing just over 6% of their regional vote. Their suffering did not abate in the local government election of 2012, during which just under half of their first preferences deserted them, leaving the Liberals with around six-and-a-half per cent of votes cast nationally. 

So things don't look good for George Lyon, whose political career looks destined to end in a second failure, having already been hoofed out of Holyrood in 2007. But is it really just the Greens and UKIP, hovering over his carcase? Given the continuing strength of the SNP, I fancy not. The source of the Greens' claims is a recent pan-UK YouGov poll on the European election, and in particular, its regional breakdown. Yes you've guessed it: the Scottish sample is tiny, a weighted sample of just 165 folk. And intuitively, its findings don't look quite right, seriously overegging Labour (and potentially UKIP) support and underselling the SNP. 

This is significant, in that in 2009, the scrap for the sixth seat was actually between Labour (for a second seat) and the SNP (for a third), with the Tories trailing in third. For the battle for the sixth seat only to be a UKIP vs Green scrap would be a substantial departure; a fact nicely demonstrated by doing precisely what the Greenies want us to do: taking the YouGov sub-sample seriously.  Let's assume the same level of turnout as 2009, and that the election broke down precisely as YouGov's polling predicts. Who would win the seats? And who'd be in the scrap for the sixth?

The slightly embarrassing answer is: not just the Greens and UKIP.  The really embarrassing answer is: not the Greens or UKIP at all. Here's how, by my reckoning, it'd break if the YouGov polling was right.  The victor in each round of the allocation is bracketed underneath.

You'll notice a number of things. Firstly, it would be a battle between UKIP and the SNP for the final seat, with both Labour then the Greens coming up behind.  Lesson: if either Labour or the SNP do stonkingly well, a third seat for either of them can't be ruled out, nor can it be assumed that they'll take these seats early in the allocation, putting them out of contention for the final seat. Labour took its second MEP in 2009 in the last round of the allocation. In this model, the SNP would do so. The idea of a UKIP vs Green battle may be a congenial story for campaigners to tell, but it doesn't reflect the more substantial challenge represented by the big squeeze which Labour and the SNP have put on smaller parties since their recovery after 2003.

But what if the SNP does a bit better, and Labour does a bit worse? For the Greens, there's a sweet spot where both Labour and the SNP do well enough to net two seats apiece early on in the allocation, but insufficiently well to keep either party in contention for a third. Vote shares in the upper-middle twenties should do it: a bit better than Labour did in 2009, and a bit worse than the SNP. Alongside the sturdy Tory MEP spot, this would afford those parties hovering around the 10.5% mark to get a reliable look in, and to kick the sap out of each other for the sixth place.

Anything better than this and the Greens are in bother. The latest Ipsos-MORI poll of Holyrood voting intentions (not an unproblematic cypher for the European poll in which both the Greens and UKIP might expect to do better) has the SNP on 36% and Labour on 34% respectively.  The YouGov European polling gives the parties a total of 61% of the vote. Let's fiddle with it a bit and say that Labour and the SNP gain the same total percentage of support in the European poll, but allocate 31% to the SNP and 30% to Labour to reflect the closer contest suggested by the fuller Ipsos sample.  What happens then?

Again, neither the Greens or UKIP get a look it, with the SNP taking a third seat, trailed by UKIP, then Labour (behind by just 1 vote), then the Greens. The lesson? If UKIP looks to be doing well enough even to approach 10% of the Scottish vote in the Spring, voting for an electorally fragile and inconsistent Green party which itself has never attracted 10% of the vote may not do the trick. 

In simple mathematical terms, electing a third Labour or SNP MEP requires more votes that getting Maggie over the line, certainly (since by this stage in the allocation, every vote for the parties would be divided by three).  It is far from clear, however, that it would be politically more difficult to drum up 60,000 votes for either of the main parties, than it would be to add 20,000 new supporters to the Scottish Green tally in the party's current state.  If disappointing Nigel is your sole aim in casting your European ballot, a vote for either Labour or the SNP may be a more reliable weapon of choice.