Harnessing the 55%

While toddling through Shawlands this week, I chanced across the Labour's Glasgow South candidate, Tom Harris, campaigning outside the local Co-op. Having politely explained that I wasn't with him in this election, I took the opportunity to ask him about a letter which has been circulating in the constituency, inviting folk who voted No on the 18th of September 2014 to save his bacon on the 7th of May. 

"I thought Jim had said that Scottish Labour isn't a unionist party?" I enquired. "But I'm a unionist," he said. In his affably bluff way, Tom explained that he needed every vote going, and if that involved putting the fear of god up the Tories of Newlands, he'd make no apology for doing so.  "And I suppose you're pretty right-wing too, so - " I quipped, for villainy - "I suppose I am," he responded, with unexpected candour. I sidled on. Good luck to him. He'll need it.  

But the encounter made me think a wee bit about the assumptions lying behind Tom's letter, and being pushed nationally by Liberal Democrats in tight spots, that the Better Together alliance can be cobbled back together to save their skins."55% of people voted no, back me to stop the Nationalist juggernaut." John Curtice has been pouring buckets of icy water over the idea that tactical voting represents an effective anti-Nationalist strategy over most of the country, arguing that the sums just don't add up. As Professor Curtice points out, there aren't enough Labour, Tories or Liberal Democrat voters in the overwhelming majority of seats to make a decisive difference, even if folk were inclined to lend their vote to a Better Together ally. 

But the thinking behind this isn't just numerically problematic - it also flies in the face of what the referendum taught us about the reasons and attitudes lying behind the No vote. Tom and the Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten who the 55% are, and why they voted against independence last September. The recent findings of the Scottish Election Study suggest that the No lead did not come down to British identities, or optimism about the Union, nor widespread pessimism about independence, but fear, risk and uncertainty. 

The study concludes that identities - Scottish and British - provided core support for both Yes and No campaigns, the outcome was decided by perceptions of economic risk. The most recent tranche of survey data from the study suggested that feelings of Britishness or attachment to the Union account for just 29.5% of the No vote. To put a more concrete number on that, just 590,568 of the 2,001,926 votes attracted by the No campaign seem to have hinged to any significant extent on British identities. 

This chimes with my own experiences. If this referendum has revealed one thing, it is that Scots allegiance to the British state is - perhaps disturbingly - provisional. A popular, winning, organic unionism has not emerged. If anything, the Conservative and Unionist Party seems hell-bent on salting the earth across the border, to ensure no sprouts grow. 

For some folk, a sense of Britishness is essential, a part of their identity, the object of passionate attachment. Some of the best pieces from pro-union writers during the dying days of the campaign spoke of these themes in a way that the cynical, anxiety-generating apparatus of the official campaign never even attempted. But like the identity ultras on the Yes side, these are minority enthusiasms. The Better Together parties looked deep into the eyes of the Scottish people, and found dealer's eyes peering back at them, unsentimental, commercial, counting the pennies, weighing the odds -- and won the game on that basis.  

A gulf of feeling separates this dicing of the economic odds from the anti-Nat ardency which this new Better Together alliance hopes to ignite. And if you voted against independence on the basis of these cool calculations, what the devil are you to make of the plaintive efforts of candidates like Christine Jardine and Tom Harris, addressing you like a union fundamentalist, a loyalist, re-running September's poll? 

This stands at odds, not just with the numbers, but what we know about the key motive forces of the No vote. It may peel off ultra montane No voters, for whom the national question has acquired new and critical salience, but seems likely to strike a dud note for those opposed to independence who do not share these intense attachments. It is a case of pro-union political leaderships, projecting their own antipathies onto a more ambivalent, less ferociously negative, public. Scotland is not a land of Effie Deans. 

It is a phenomenon which surprised SNP canvassers are experiencing on the doorstep. Over the weekend, I was having a blether with one of the SNP candidates in the city about what, if you read the media, you probably regard as an improbable phenomenon - the No voting SNP supporter. Why? For some, it is buyer's remorse. But for many more, they voted no on a more conditional basis: "not yet", "not ready", "not convinced by the arguments" - but none of this is proving decisive in determining which party they believe will best represent them in this parliament in Westminster.

For electors of this kind - the overwhelming majority of the 55% - the #indyref cannot be comprehensively "weaponised" in the way Liberal Democratic, Tory and Labour campaigners in East Dumbartonshire, Glasgow South and Gordon - increasingly desperately - hope, believe and pray. 

Rank local election wonkery: Glasgow City Council...

Seen as we've Scottish council elections coming up in a month and a bit, it seems appropriate to stray back into obsessive wonkish territory, and indulge ourselves in a closer squint at a) the election system Scotland will be using and b) a few choice examples of contested wards. 

You may recall that 2007 was the first local election to be conducted using the "single transferable vote" under the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Screwed out of Labour by the Liberal Democrats under their coalition agreement of 2003, the shift from first past the post to proportionate election of local authorities merrily buggered up Labour's councillor base in 2007. Although nationally, Labour took 590,085 first preferences votes to the SNP's 585,885, the net result was a loss of 161 Labour councillors, with the SNP gaining 182 - while the poor auld Liberals contrived to lose nine under their own STV scheme.

Just muse on this example. Under the first past the post poll in 2003, Labour won seventy one of seventy nine seats in Glasgow City chambers: a stonking 90% of the wards on 48% of the vote.  Come STV in 2007, and the party's 43% of first preference votes could only secure them 45 seats, representing 57% of the whole chamber. Twenty six of their councillors were evicted, and the SNP increased its representation in Glasgow from the three (!) councillors elected in 2003, to 23, under a more proportional procedure in 2007. Although going largely unappreciated and uncommented upon, this was a radical shift.  The SNP now have more MSPs representing Glaswegian constituencies than they had councillors in the city as recently as 2003.

Recent meditations on Labour's drubbing in 2011 and the party's prostrate subsequent politics have tended to emphasise Gray's lack of colour before and during the campaign, weak and unmemorable policy positions and a ramshackle national campaign dogged by hostile coverage. A nip back in time to the local results of 2007 suggest another vital factor. The evisceration of the party's councillor base in 2007 - potential locus for organisation and political vitality that they are - seems another important aspect which it would be remiss to neglect. 

So how does STV work in practice? Some of you may be well-aquent with the single transferable vote, and I dare say all of you know, from the resolutely practical perspective of the voter, how to construct a valid ballot paper. I thought it would be helpful - and potentially interesting - to explain with reference to a real world example how the allocation of seats functions.  For my object, I'll take the Pollokshields ward in Glasgow, where I cast my local ballot in 2007.

A few preliminaries. The Pollokshields allocation went through nine rounds in 2007, including two transfers of candidates' surpluses, six candidates excluded and the next preferences expressed on their ballots being transferred to the remaining candidates.  As you can appreciate, this can be lobe-rending stuff, which I cannot but condense a little, aiming at intelligibility. Those interested can see the full transfers and redistributions of surpluses for the ward here. 

Secondly, unlike first past the post, STV elects multi-member wards. The number of councillors elected per ward is either three or four, depending on regulations. In Pollokshields, three seats on the council were for the filling, and nine candidates put themselves forward: one each from the parties with MSPs in Holyrood - SNP, Labour, Liberals, Tories, Greens - two independents, and vying against one another at the bottom, a candidate apiece from Solidarity and the Scottish Socialist Party.  In the end, Labour, SNP and Tory candidates were elected - but third place was a close run thing.  After the elimination of the Liberal candidate in the eighth round (who by that time was trailing behind the Greens by around 300 votes), the Tory vote exceeded the Greens by just four and a few percentage pips, roughly rendered 1,839 to 1,835. Damn close run indeed.  In terms of first preferences, the 2007 vote in the ward was as follows:

Stage 1: First Preferences

Irfan Rabbani (Lab) 2,575 (26.92%)
Khalil Malik (SNP)  2,057 (21.5%)
David Meikle (Con) 1,435 (15%)
Ian Ruffell (Green) 1,043 (10.9%)
Isobel Nelson (Lib) 863 (9.02%)
Muhammad Shoaib (Ind) 592 (6.19%)
Karin Currie (Ind) 438 (4.58%)
Fatima Uygun (Solidarity) 380 (3.97%)
Ali Ashraf (SSP) 184 (1.92%)

So now what? In terms of allocating seats under STV, the most important concept is the quota.  In the Scottish system, this figure is reached by taking the total number of votes cast and dividing that number by the number of seats available + 1, and adding 1.  The quota remains the same throughout the "rounds" used to shuffle and reshuffle preferences. So, if 100 people voted in a ward, and four seats were to be allocated, the quota for election would be twenty votes.  In Pollokshields in 2007, the quota was 2,392 (9,567 (total turnout) ÷ 4 [3+1] +1). As you can see, Labour's (now the SNP's) Irfan Rabbani already exceeds the quota on the first round by 183 votes, and is accordingly elected Pollokshields' first councillor. If he had not achieved a sufficient level of support to be elected on the first round, we would have immediately proceeded to exclude the candidate achieving the lowest level of support, and redistributing next preferences among remaining candidates. Before we can crack on with eliminating candidates, however, there falls a necessary and modestly complicated interlude.

Transferring "surplus" votes
 

Here's where things get a little trickier. We have to transfer the surplus secured by Irfan Rabbani - who in this case, received 183 votes above the 2,393 threshold.  To do so is a multi-stage endeavour. Firstly, you have to take the whole body of ballots registering a first preference for the candidate with a surplus, and count up their second preferences. Remember, however, that we don't want to transfer all of Rabbani's second preference votes: only the 183 votes above the threshold. Although initially a bit mind bending, this is done in a simple enough fashion.  We calculate a "transfer value" to each ballot. Here, we do so by dividing the total number of surplus votes by the total number of votes the candidate with the surplus received.

To put this in numerically convenient terms, consider a contest where a candidate in a two-member ward is elected on first preferences. Say the quota for election is 900 votes, and Bob received 1,000 votes. His 100 vote surplus needs to be redistributed between his three competitors. Percival receives 70% of Bob's second preferences, Guthrie receives only 30% while Imelda garners none. Taking the total surplus and dividing that by Bob's total vote (100/1000), the transfer value of each surplus vote would be 0.1. Accordingly, Percival would receive 70 of the 100 surplus votes, Guthrie would receive 30, and Imelda none.  In the real world things aren't quite so neat, and we stray into the domain of figures with five-decimal points. To take Irfan Rabbani's surplus in Pollokshields, this worked out as 183 votes (Rabbani's surplus) ÷ 2,575 (Rabbani's total vote) giving us a "transfer value" for votes of 0.07106. Concretely, this means that every second preference vote on a Rabbani ballot is counted as 0.07106 of a vote, and is transferred to his competitors based on the number of second preferences they received.  

Stage 2: Transferring Rabbani's surplus

Irfan Rabbani (Lab) 2,575 (-183 votes)
Khalil Malik (SNP) 2,057 (+25.01312 votes)
David Meikle (Con) 1,435 (+10.09052 votes)
Ian Ruffell (Green) 1,043 (+17.97818 votes)
Isobel Nelson (Lib) 863 (+20.96270 votes)
Muhammad Shoaib (Ind) 592 (+13.50140 votes)
Karin Currie (Ind) 438 (+3.48194 votes)
Fatima Uygun (Solidarity) 380 (+8.17190 votes)
Ali Ashraf (SSP) 184 (+4.76102 votes)

Non transferable: 1112 (79.01872 votes)
Non transferable due to rounding: 0.02050

For those particularly interested in the politics of who transferred to who in Pollokshields, we can work back from these figures to make the following observations. About 43% of those giving their first preferences to Rabbani recorded no second preference and so didn't transfer votes to his competitors.  Of the remaining 57% of Rabbani's ballots, 13.7% listed the SNP candidate as second preference, 11.5% for the Liberal Democrat, 9.8% for the Greens and just 5.5% for the Tory, behind the 7.4% of the Labour candidate's transfers to the independent candidate, Muhammad Shoaib. You'll notice that even with Rabbani's transfers, no remaining candidate has achieved the quota of 2,393. Accordingly, we have to go on to the next stage of the process: eliminating the candidate with the smallest number of votes.

As an out of turn aside, when Kalil Malik (SNP) was elected in the seventh stage of calculating the Pollokshields vote, his surplus numbered 232.74834. While just over 50% of Malik's surplus would not transfer to the remaining candidates (explanations include a) Malik was his supporters' first and only preference; b) they had only indicated a preference for candidates already elected or c) who had been eliminated), of the half which did transfer, roughly 23% of next preferences went to the Greens, 17% to the Liberals and 9% to the Tories. 

Elimination and transfer

Back to the next stage of the process. In Pollokshields in 2007, the Scottish Socialist candidate received the smallest number of votes, resting on just 188.76102 votes after the transfer of the Labour candidate's surplus. He is now eliminated from the contest, and his ballot papers redistributed to their next recorded preference.  To be absolutely clear, the transferred ballots are only those of the eliminated candidate. For example, say a paradoxical socialist had put the SSP first and Tory second, the ballot would move to David Meikle's pile. And so on till all of the excluded candidate's ballots have been transferred to other candidates, or identified as untransferable.

Since he has already been elected, any second preferences for Rabbani are passed over, for the next preference candidate recorded, if any.  So far, so simple. But the transfers are complicated somewhat by the legacy of transferring Rabbani's (and any previously elected candidate's) surplus. Remember, the SSP candidate gained 4.76102 votes from Rabbani's surplus, in addition to those second preferences, recorded on ballots. Practically, the rule is that ballots carry whatever "transfer value" they currently have, over to the candidate they are transferred to. The candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated, one after the other, until a candidate achieves the quota, their ballots and surplus votes then cascading across the field of remaining candidates according to voter preferences.

I don't propose to go through the detail of the exclusions of Ashrag, Uygun, Currie and Shoaib which constituted the third to sixth stages of the 2007 allocation. There is, however, the odd political morsel worth mentioning. Firstly, of the four candidates first excluded, in every case around 25% of ballots didn't express transferable next preferences (and remember, at this stage only Rabbani is being passed over, so we aren't deep in the impenetrable mangroves of this contest, eking out last next preferences). Might this change over time, as Scots become more acquainted with the system, less likely just to scratch an "X" beside their preferred candidates, as they used to do before 2007?

Although results cannot be calculated from the figures, it is also interesting to take a look at the preference numbers*. Just how keen were the folk of Pollokshields to express preferences? Did they sweep through all nine candidates, or make a choice selection of one or two? I knocked the results together on this graph, which shows pretty plainly that while 7% of those who vote diligently complete the whole ballot, for the vast majority, interest sharply fell off in 2007 after the first preference was identified.  Historically, it would be interesting - but no insubstantial task - to see how Pollokshields compares with the rest of the country on this score. Prospectively, we can also speculate on how Scottish voters' use of their local STV ballots change this election year, and whether they avail themselves of the possibility of expressing multiple preferences.

 

One major change which is likely to have an impact on that is a new phenomenon in Scottish politics: multiple candidates from the same party, standing in multi-member council constituencies. The peril, potentially, is that your vote is split between your candidates, and so neither wins, rather than returning two candidates of the same tribe, as intended. In Glasgow in May, the SNP will be running two candidates in twenty of the twenty one council wards, and as many as three in Govan.  Similarly, Labour is running between one and three candidates in the various wards across the city.

Unlike the closed lists used for our Holyrood elections, voters in Glasgow will be able to single our preferred candidates in their ward rather than simply selecting a party. The Labour voter, for example, who rates one candidate but despises another will be able to direct their electoral support accordingly.  No doubt the headline council results and overall balance of power will receive the greatest attention in the press, but it will be fascinating to see just how far the parties' new multi-member strategies will work out - or precipitate unmitigated electoral disaster - in Glasgow.

*Which the council also publishes (POLLOKSHIELDS-preferences is the relevant page in this .zip file).

John Mason & a more equal Scotland...

In 2006, former leader of Glasgow City Council, Steven Purcell, came out. It is perhaps inevitable that opposition members of the Council were asked for their opinions on the subject. What do you think about Steven Purcell's homosexuality? You might have responded in any number of ways. "I have no thoughts on the subject; we are councillors, and the sexuality of the council leader is wholly irrelevant to the way he and we conduct our civic duties and deliberations.  This isn't what local politics about, so why don't you shove off and stick your neb somewhere else." Alternatively, you might have avoided appealing to traditional divisions between public and private spheres, and been supportive. "I would like to congratulate Baillie Purcell for taking this brave step and publicly avowing his sexual identity." So what do you think John Mason said? Apparently speaking for the whole SNP group on the Council, Mason responded... .

The SNP has been asked what its view is of the Labour Group Leader's announcement that he is gay. John Mason replied, "We will be spending our time attacking Cllr Purcell's destructive policies, not his personal life. Steven Purcell has broken down the committee system, sidelined many councillors from decision-making, and now is hiving off parts of the Council into unaccountable trusts and companies. All of that gives us plenty of ground to attack Labour on. We do not require to attack Labour councillors on a personal basis."

Frankly, I'm astonished that the SNP group would have selected John Mason to respond for them on this issue. And, having selected him, I'm still more surprised that they allowed him to release these remarks in their name. Mason's remarks remind me of the ambitious Christmas elf caballing against his tippling employer, who assures his local rag, the Lapland Chronicle that...

"Santa Claus' chronic alcoholism and obesity are a matter purely for him. It would be quite, quite inappropriate for me to dwell on his ravaged liver, his intravenous mince pie use or the numerous drink-sledging bans which the courts had made against him. Moreover, if he is in the habit of interfering with Donner and Blitzen when the nights draw in, well, that is entirely a matter for him, and is not a topic I feel comfortable bringing up, never mind discussing. Honestly, it's his declining facility for manufacturing bespoke grenadier nutcrackers which is really concerning us all."

Some may disagree with the assessment of Mason's comments as homophobic. They may not be blatant and littered with the epithets of casual abuse, but the effect is more subtle, more telling and perhaps best identified by asking, what sort of person, if blandly asked about their views on someone's newly publicised homosexuality, immediately assumes they are being invited to attack that person's character? Unlike my climbing and Machiavellian elfin subordinate, there is little indication that Mason is aware of the casual homophobia which informs and makes intelligible this response to the question of Purcell's sexuality. By suggesting that the SNP does not need to resort to personal attacks on Purcell, Mason clearly implies that Purcell's homosexuality is something which could furnish the basis for just such an attack, which the benevolent nationalist Councillors decided to abstain from. The ugly homophobic logic is quiet, but undeniably present.

Remarks from a good while back, certainly, but interesting in the context of John Mason's motion on the "Equal Marriage Debate", which has caused a stir. The media have particularly picked up Pete Wishart's criticism of its terms as a "nasty little anti-gay marriage motion". It reads as follows:

That the Parliament notes the current discussion about same-sex marriages and the Scottish Government’s forthcoming public consultation concerning equal marriage; further notes that, while some in society approve of same-sex sexual relationships, others do not agree with them; desires that Scotland should be a pluralistic society where all minorities can live together in peace and mutual tolerance; believes that free speech is a fundamental right and that even when there is disagreement with another person’s views, that person has the right to express these views, and considers that no person or organisation should be forced to be involved in or to approve of same-sex marriages.

Cue a number of sneering, look-I-told-you-so suggestions (often, I'm afraid, from the Labour-sympathetic) that, despite every declaration to the contrary, that the SNP is really a party of enthusiastic bigots, and that overtures to inclusiveness and tolerance are simply cultivated rather than sincere. This is wearying predictable and, as the following will demonstrate, simply inaccurate. Curiously, over the last couple of days, MSPs who had originally been recorded as supporting Mason's motion have deleted their endorsements. There has been some suggestion of technical glitches, although that may not strike the mind as immediately plausible. While SNP MSPs Gil Pateron, Dennis Robertson and Mike McKenzie initially appeared to support Mason's position, their names have now been removed from the motion, leaving only Richard Lyle and Bill Walker. Only Dave Thompson's has been added since. By contrast, Patrick Harvie's amendment has accumulated several more supporters in the meantime, at the time of writing including Jamie Hepburn (SNP), James Dornan (SNP), Sandra White (SNP), Kevin Stewart (SNP), Maureen Watt (SNP), Dennis Robertson (SNP), Joe FitzPatrick (SNP), Gil Paterson (SNP), George Adam (SNP), Alison Johnstone (Green), Aileen McLeod (SNP), Joan McAlpine (SNP), John Finnie (SNP), Drew Smith (Labour), Willie Rennie (Liberal) and Mark McDonald (SNP). Given the condescending commentary from many Labour supporters about what they see as the unmasking of SNP reactionariness, and their own egalitarian credentials, the relative dearth of Labour signatories to this amendment must strike the fair minded observer as somewhat ironic. 

However, in terms of clear political commitments, it is undeniably the case that the SNP's official line on marriage equality is profoundly limp, and we can certainly expect a few of our parliamentarians to articulate views that many in the party will profoundly disagree with. In the final analysis, however, I expect most SNP parliamentarians to support the equalising measure, however regrettably coy we might have been about making a clear party commitment to the policy. On page 16 of the manifesto, under the heading "a more equal Scotland", we say...

"We recognise the range of views on the questions of same-sex marriage and registration of civil partnership. We will therefore begin a process of consultation and discussion on these issues."

During the Holyrood campaign in May, Alex Salmond let it be known that he supports gay marriage. Although one might suspect that the timing of this declaration was prompted by the potentially alienating Souter factor, we have no reason not to take Salmond at his word that he'd vote for equalising marriage in Scotland.  Similarly, at a hustings in Queens Park Baptist Church during the campaign, Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that she too supports gay marriage. Amusingly, her Labour opponent in Glasgow Southside, Stephen Curran, gave such an elaborate and circuitous answer (in the end, supporting gay marriage), that a wee auld wifie I met later that week actually believed that he'd insisted that a marriage is between a man and a women. Either that, or she had muddled him up with the skelf running in the constituency for the Tories, Councillor David Meikle, who insisted the marriage is a knot betwixt Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Although it very likely signals his personal approach to equal marriage for same-sex couples (and incidentally, I hope the consultation will also consider the possibility of civil partnerships for couples who are not of the same sex), the implications of much in Mason's motion are not immediately clear. Is he arguing some people oppose gay marriage, therefore it must not be permitted to go the statute book? His comments have been read like that, though he doesn't explicitly say so. Is he putting it to the parliament that marriage is exclusively a theological concept, "instituted by God" and thus limited to men and women, which the civil authorities should "recognise" and "uphold"? Maybe, but again, he doesn't explicitly say so. Surely, however, he is correct to identify this as a complicated issue, commingling law, social policy - and for some, theological positions.

What's more, it strikes me that the answers to the questions raised in and by Mason's motion are by no means straightforward or unerring deduced from accepting their premises.  For example, I am not myself a religious creature, but I can imagine one of the faithful who believes that marriage is exclusively to be understood in theological terms, but who would be willing to recognise the right of civil authorities to bind same-sex couples in wedlock. These unions may not resonate in the divine sphere, for her, but would accept that that religious conception of marriage need not determine the approach taken by Scottish civil authorities. Others will disagree, demanding that marriage remain exclusively between men and women, while substantially agreeing between themselves on the idea that marriage is to be understood in primarily religious terms.

I for one very much welcome the disagreement and discourse which this has already prompted in the SNP group - which I fancy will, in due course, be felt in other parts of Holyrood too.  I doubt the issue prompts a uniform reaction from either the Tory or Labour groups, for example.  It is quite right for these issues to be discussed in parliament, for disagreement to be aired where disagreement exists, and the arguments and conceptions relied upon explored, and where necessary, dissected and rebutted. If we are going to get into these issues, understand one another, and hopefully, convince folk of the virtues of the state affording its citizens equal right to institute their relationships on equal terms, we should dispense with discussion-foreclosing responses which loftily dismiss alternative positions as "ridiculous", and leaving that intolerably brief characterisation as the last, trite word on the topic.

Scottish N(/n)ationalism & class-based politics...

A peaty crony recently sent me an account of a conversation overheard in a bar in the Southside of Glasgow.  The characters are a group of men in middle-to-late middle age. They are smartly dressed, prosperous, with a taste for the finer things in life. Natty watches hang from their joints and swanky shoes are an immediate concern. Sipping a second or third drink, they pass around plates of salade niçoise and moules marinières, discuss the architecture of British cathedrals - when their discussion noisily turns to the working classes. Despite their snobberies and their habits of consumption, none of the speakers show any remote sense of restraint discussing this topic. Their discussion isn't abashed with bourgeois fumblings and they do not envisage working class fellow-citizens as external observers might.  Despite their objective circumstances, and tastes, and manners, and expenditures - each of these men feels themselves to be, at bottom, working class characters.

During May's Holyrood election campaign, I analysed the SNP's party political broadcast with reference to this curious (and often Labour-voting) archetype, which I contended was very accurately depicted by the broadcast's skeptical protagonist, played by Jimmy Chisholm. A number of you found the lineaments of this character recognisable. Last week, I noted but didn't really delve into the class-based  data, generated by Professor James Mitchell et al in the Scottish Election Study 2011. One of the profoundly interesting aspects of the data as generated - positively inviting speculation - is its inclusion of subjective class-identifiers and a contrasting "objective" class identifier, which is to say, a consistent standard applied across the Study sample, based on the occupation of the head of household. These numbers are preliminary, borrowed from slides in which the researchers involved in the Study have presented their findings. Some important points of detail are absent - but this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed social scientific labour, so I don't have to feel too embarrassed about speculation and best-guesses. 

Firstly, the middle classes. I have written before about some of the curiosities which surround the Scotch bourgeois. They are often conceived as Anglicised - and by dint of that, of attenuated Scottishness - the burdens of national representation being devolved onto the working classes, often dominated by urban, west coast sounds and images. Although I have not enlarged on the proposition before here, one of the most irritating manifestations of this tendency is Scottish theatre. All too often, I have sat in middle class audiences, watching middle class actors perform material composed by middle class authors - cheerfully playing out yet another plucky-working-class-touchstone-of-authenticity type tale, without any sense of embarrassment. It is a complex issue, which I'm conscious that I'm only touching on here. I am certainly not attempting to make the case for banishing such material for our stages, nor indeed denying that such parliamo Glasgow offerings are without their charms. It is just the almost hegemonic status of such dramatic material and the delusions it fosters that I find problematic.  The crucial point is the tied presence and absence of the Scottish bourgeoisie. To paraphase (I think) Christopher Whyte or Cairns Craig, it conspires at its own invisibility.

There is also a curious gendered aspect of this. All credit to Gerry Hassan, one of the few folk in our public life to try to talk about Scottish masculinities. Gerry has contended that men are everywhere and nowhere - and that too often, we lack a vocabulary, range of images and narratives about what it means to be a Scottish man.  The same point can be made, forcibly, about Scottish bourgeois masculinities, which are doubly silenced, both on the gendered and classed register. I've made the point previously, in a closer look at some elements of the small body of gender research we have, which engages with Scotland. As some of you may know, for the time being, I live in Oxford. I am always surprised when folk tell me that the town is "very English", struck by the contrast with Edinburgh. Both places are strongly associated with their respective institutions of learning, representations of them overwhelmingly defined by their bourgeois citizens (in the case of the latter, prompting Irvine Welsh's strong dislocating reaction, in Trainspotting) . In English terms, Oxford is also very much part of the South - which are least suggests questions about who dominates representations of Englishness, who can claim to encapsulate its authentic qualities? While Oxford is able to assume such a national mantle without much difficulty, Edinburgh continues to be problematic. Pleasingly paradoxically, the Scottishness of the Scots capital is at best suspect - and has been for some time.  This is just a hastily composed gallimaufry - but I think begins to suggest some of the interest of thinking in a more nuanced way about the commonplace understandings of social class - and what is inexpressible or difficult to express, expelled from our public discourses by embarrassment or long neglect.

While the terse quantitative data of the Scottish Election Survey has limited explanatory potential in such a complex field - its findings are not without their impressionistic interest. Firstly, look at the data on subjective identification as middle class....

Respondents subjectively identifying as middle class...

• SNP ~ 37%
• Labour ~ 16%
• Tories ~ 22%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 9%
• Others ~ 8%

And according to social grading's objective criteria...

AB voters (upper middle & middle classes)...

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 5%
• Greens ~ 8%
• Others ~ 7%

And...

C1 voters (lower middle classes)

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 17%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 3%

Professor Mitchell's slides do not record the brute number of people we are talking about here - so it is impossible at this point to see whether subjective identifications as middle class are significantly smaller than those identified as such by "objective" social grading criteria. I suspect so. It is the discrepancies which strike me as particularly interesting. For example, amongst AB and C1 respondents, the Conservative vote is 14% and 17% respectively - but amongst those who subjectively identify as middle class, it runs between 5% and 8% higher at 22%. Although it would be important to look at how many folk we are actually talking about - these findings might suggest an interesting correlation between self-identifying as middle class and voting Tory. Certainly, in anecdotal form, I know a number of folk who recount the idea that certain people of their acquaintance started voting Tory, as a signifier of their conceit of themselves and place in the world. Further to the characters with which this blogpost opened, it is equally interesting to note that Labour support ran at 25% amongst AB and C1 voters - but only 16% of those subjectively identifying as bourgeois voted Labour. Again, we have to be careful here*. The SES data, as presently presented, doesn't allow us easily to compare across subjective and objective categories. We don't know the actual numbers of respondents in each group, so at the moment, we cannot tell for sure (but can guess) how far the objective and subjective class categories overlap. However, the fact that there is a 9% difference between objective classification as middle class, and subjective identification as middle class amongst Labour voters, might well suggest that a significant number of them either believe themselves to be working class, or abstain from a class-based analysis altogether. We'd have to see the figures and not just the percentages, to be sure. As those who read my post the other day will have seen, the working class data (subjective and objective) breaks down as follows...

Respondents subjectively identifying as working class...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 33%
• Tories ~ 7%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 3%
• Others ~ 6%

C2DE voters (working classes)...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 28%
• Tories ~ 9%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

Again, we don't have numbers of respondents - only percentages - but a few interesting points can be picked up. Firstly, while the SNP vote is stable across subjective and objective categories - the Labour vote decreases by a not insignificant 5% when one moves into the objective register. Bluntly, 5% of the Labour vote conceives of itself as working class, but isn't according to occupational criteria. Interestingly, despite protestations to the contrary, the Greenies are attracting only tiny percentages amongst working class respondents, whether subjectively or objectively defined.  Finally, and in some respects, perhaps most interestingly, are the results under the third subjective class category - those who do not identify with any class at all. The data is striking:

Respondents subjectively identifying as having no class...

• SNP ~ 53%
• Labour ~ 17%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

A truly walloping lead for the Nationalists, 36% ahead of their nearest Labour rivals. There is a fascinating ideological aspect to this. One aspect of Scottish Nationalism - and indeed nationalism as such - which has historically concerned (some) socialists and communists, is its capacity to leech energy from the class struggle. In place of a united working class, contending against the rapacious bourgeoisie, you have nationalist division between English and Welsh and Scottish workers, whose energies are dispersed rather than united by a nationalist politics. I don't share the view - but I know a number of folk who would still hold to and proselytise for it. Unlike the social grading data and the subjective identifiers, we are unable at this point to set subjectivity beside objective criteria, and see how else we might categorise these "classless" respondent, and where in the brute boxes of ABC1 and C2DE most of them might fit - or how they are distributed across social grades. This is a pity, but it does pose a few pungent questions. First and foremost, what are the characteristics of these "classless voters"? Given how problematic middle-class identities can be in Scotland - indeed as I remember, David McCrone once suggested that there is a strong version of Scottish nationalism, which sees class as a wholly alien and English fixation - what does the SNP's majority amongst respondents of this character suggest about N(/n)ationalism's appeal?

Answers and speculation on a postcard, please...

*I'm obliged to James Mackenzie for pointing this out.

Scottish N(/n)ationalism & class-based politics...

A peaty crony recently sent me an account of a conversation overheard in a bar in the Southside of Glasgow.  The characters are a group of men in middle-to-late middle age. They are smartly dressed, prosperous, with a taste for the finer things in life. Natty watches hang from their joints and swanky shoes are an immediate concern. Sipping a second or third drink, they pass around plates of salade niçoise and moules marinières, discuss the architecture of British cathedrals - when their discussion noisily turns to the working classes. Despite their snobberies and their habits of consumption, none of the speakers show any remote sense of restraint discussing this topic. Their discussion isn't abashed with bourgeois fumblings and they do not envisage working class fellow-citizens as external observers might.  Despite their objective circumstances, and tastes, and manners, and expenditures - each of these men feels themselves to be, at bottom, working class characters.

During May's Holyrood election campaign, I analysed the SNP's party political broadcast with reference to this curious (and often Labour-voting) archetype, which I contended was very accurately depicted by the broadcast's skeptical protagonist, played by Jimmy Chisholm. A number of you found the lineaments of this character recognisable. Last week, I noted but didn't really delve into the class-based  data, generated by Professor James Mitchell et al in the Scottish Election Study 2011. One of the profoundly interesting aspects of the data as generated - positively inviting speculation - is its inclusion of subjective class-identifiers and a contrasting "objective" class identifier, which is to say, a consistent standard applied across the Study sample, based on the occupation of the head of household. These numbers are preliminary, borrowed from slides in which the researchers involved in the Study have presented their findings. Some important points of detail are absent - but this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed social scientific labour, so I don't have to feel too embarrassed about speculation and best-guesses. 

Firstly, the middle classes. I have written before about some of the curiosities which surround the Scotch bourgeois. They are often conceived as Anglicised - and by dint of that, of attenuated Scottishness - the burdens of national representation being devolved onto the working classes, often dominated by urban, west coast sounds and images. Although I have not enlarged on the proposition before here, one of the most irritating manifestations of this tendency is Scottish theatre. All too often, I have sat in middle class audiences, watching middle class actors perform material composed by middle class authors - cheerfully playing out yet another plucky-working-class-touchstone-of-authenticity type tale, without any sense of embarrassment. It is a complex issue, which I'm conscious that I'm only touching on here. I am certainly not attempting to make the case for banishing such material for our stages, nor indeed denying that such parliamo Glasgow offerings are without their charms. It is just the almost hegemonic status of such dramatic material and the delusions it fosters that I find problematic.  The crucial point is the tied presence and absence of the Scottish bourgeoisie. To paraphase (I think) Christopher Whyte or Cairns Craig, it conspires at its own invisibility.

There is also a curious gendered aspect of this. All credit to Gerry Hassan, one of the few folk in our public life to try to talk about Scottish masculinities. Gerry has contended that men are everywhere and nowhere - and that too often, we lack a vocabulary, range of images and narratives about what it means to be a Scottish man.  The same point can be made, forcibly, about Scottish bourgeois masculinities, which are doubly silenced, both on the gendered and classed register. I've made the point previously, in a closer look at some elements of the small body of gender research we have, which engages with Scotland. As some of you may know, for the time being, I live in Oxford. I am always surprised when folk tell me that the town is "very English", struck by the contrast with Edinburgh. Both places are strongly associated with their respective institutions of learning, representations of them overwhelmingly defined by their bourgeois citizens (in the case of the latter, prompting Irvine Welsh's strong dislocating reaction, in Trainspotting) . In English terms, Oxford is also very much part of the South - which are least suggests questions about who dominates representations of Englishness, who can claim to encapsulate its authentic qualities? While Oxford is able to assume such a national mantle without much difficulty, Edinburgh continues to be problematic. Pleasingly paradoxically, the Scottishness of the Scots capital is at best suspect - and has been for some time.  This is just a hastily composed gallimaufry - but I think begins to suggest some of the interest of thinking in a more nuanced way about the commonplace understandings of social class - and what is inexpressible or difficult to express, expelled from our public discourses by embarrassment or long neglect.

While the terse quantitative data of the Scottish Election Survey has limited explanatory potential in such a complex field - its findings are not without their impressionistic interest. Firstly, look at the data on subjective identification as middle class....

Respondents subjectively identifying as middle class...

• SNP ~ 37%
• Labour ~ 16%
• Tories ~ 22%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 9%
• Others ~ 8%

And according to social grading's objective criteria...

AB voters (upper middle & middle classes)...

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 5%
• Greens ~ 8%
• Others ~ 7%

And...

C1 voters (lower middle classes)

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 17%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 3%

Professor Mitchell's slides do not record the brute number of people we are talking about here - so it is impossible at this point to see whether subjective identifications as middle class are significantly smaller than those identified as such by "objective" social grading criteria. I suspect so. It is the discrepancies which strike me as particularly interesting. For example, amongst AB and C1 respondents, the Conservative vote is 14% and 17% respectively - but amongst those who subjectively identify as middle class, it runs between 5% and 8% higher at 22%. Although it would be important to look at how many folk we are actually talking about - these findings might suggest an interesting correlation between self-identifying as middle class and voting Tory. Certainly, in anecdotal form, I know a number of folk who recount the idea that certain people of their acquaintance started voting Tory, as a signifier of their conceit of themselves and place in the world. Further to the characters with which this blogpost opened, it is equally interesting to note that Labour support ran at 25% amongst AB and C1 voters - but only 16% of those subjectively identifying as bourgeois voted Labour. Again, we have to be careful here*. The SES data, as presently presented, doesn't allow us easily to compare across subjective and objective categories. We don't know the actual numbers of respondents in each group, so at the moment, we cannot tell for sure (but can guess) how far the objective and subjective class categories overlap. However, the fact that there is a 9% difference between objective classification as middle class, and subjective identification as middle class amongst Labour voters, might well suggest that a significant number of them either believe themselves to be working class, or abstain from a class-based analysis altogether. We'd have to see the figures and not just the percentages, to be sure. As those who read my post the other day will have seen, the working class data (subjective and objective) breaks down as follows...

Respondents subjectively identifying as working class...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 33%
• Tories ~ 7%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 3%
• Others ~ 6%

C2DE voters (working classes)...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 28%
• Tories ~ 9%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

Again, we don't have numbers of respondents - only percentages - but a few interesting points can be picked up. Firstly, while the SNP vote is stable across subjective and objective categories - the Labour vote decreases by a not insignificant 5% when one moves into the objective register. Bluntly, 5% of the Labour vote conceives of itself as working class, but isn't according to occupational criteria. Interestingly, despite protestations to the contrary, the Greenies are attracting only tiny percentages amongst working class respondents, whether subjectively or objectively defined.  Finally, and in some respects, perhaps most interestingly, are the results under the third subjective class category - those who do not identify with any class at all. The data is striking:

Respondents subjectively identifying as having no class...

• SNP ~ 53%
• Labour ~ 17%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

A truly walloping lead for the Nationalists, 36% ahead of their nearest Labour rivals. There is a fascinating ideological aspect to this. One aspect of Scottish Nationalism - and indeed nationalism as such - which has historically concerned (some) socialists and communists, is its capacity to leech energy from the class struggle. In place of a united working class, contending against the rapacious bourgeoisie, you have nationalist division between English and Welsh and Scottish workers, whose energies are dispersed rather than united by a nationalist politics. I don't share the view - but I know a number of folk who would still hold to and proselytise for it. Unlike the social grading data and the subjective identifiers, we are unable at this point to set subjectivity beside objective criteria, and see how else we might categorise these "classless" respondent, and where in the brute boxes of ABC1 and C2DE most of them might fit - or how they are distributed across social grades. This is a pity, but it does pose a few pungent questions. First and foremost, what are the characteristics of these "classless voters"? Given how problematic middle-class identities can be in Scotland - indeed as I remember, David McCrone once suggested that there is a strong version of Scottish nationalism, which sees class as a wholly alien and English fixation - what does the SNP's majority amongst respondents of this character suggest about N(/n)ationalism's appeal?

Answers and speculation on a postcard, please...

*I'm obliged to James Mackenzie for pointing this out.

SP11: Those Glasgow Southside results...

Regular readers will know that I voted in the Glasgow Southside constituency and the Glasgow region in last Thursday's Scottish Parliament elections. For a spot of local colour, I thought I'd briskly summarise the results in this notionally close-run race - and cast an eye over how Glaswegians used their "second vote" on the regional lists. It is weel-kent that  the older, more familiar constituency of Glasgow Govan was extinguished by the boundary commission during the last parliament, replaced by a rejigged Glasgow Southside, excluding some parts of Govan while encompassing elements of previous, Labour-held Glasgow constituencies. Undaunted, Nicola Sturgeon swept aside the Labour candidate's slim notional majority on Thursday night, romping to a comfortable triumph. The votes cast were as follows: 

Glasgow Southside 2011 results (%)

• Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) ~ 12,306 (54.4%)
• Stephen Curran (Labour) ~ 7,957 (35.2%)
• David Meikle (Tory) ~ 1,733 (7.7%)
• Ken Elder (Liberal Democrat) ~ 612 (2.7%)

Total poll: 22,608
Majority: 4,349

A second point of interest is what transpired on the Glasgow list. Faced with an austere fiscal outlook, would voters turn to socialist alternatives? How appallingly would the Liberal Democrats do, and critically, who would capitalise on their deflation? I took a close look at Glasgow's 2007 regional results before the elections. Here is how the parties fared this time around, with percentage polled - and how many votes they gained or lost on their 2007 performance.

Glasgow Region 2011 results (%) (+/- change from 2007)

• SNP ~ 83,109 (39.8%) (+27,277)
• Labour ~ 73,031 (35%) (-5,807)
• Tory ~ 12,749 (6.1%) (-1,032)
• Green ~ 12,454 (6.0%) (+1,695)
• George Galloway (Respect) ~ 6,972 (3.3%)(-)
• Liberal Democrat ~ 5,312 (2.5%) (-9,455)
• Senior Citizens ~ 3,750 (1.%) (+47)
• BNP ~ 2,424 (1.2%) (-1,441)
• Socialist Labour ~ 2,276 (1.1%) (-404)
• Scottish Christian ~ 1,501 (0.7%) (-490)
• Scottish Unionist ~ 1,447 (0.7%) (-165)
• Scottish Socialist ~ 1,362 (0.7%) (-1,217)
• UKIP~ 1,123 (0.5%) (+718)
• Pirate ~ 581 (0.3%) (-)
• Caroline Johnstone ~ 338 (0.2%) (-)
• Scottish Homeland ~ 283 (0.1%) (-)

Total turnout: 208,712

Interestingly, Glasgow City Cooncil have also published the data on regional votes, arranged by  the constituency in which they were cast. Similar data is available from 2007, which I've mentioned in previous postings. Glasgow Southside's contribution to the Glasgow region was as follows...

Glasgow Southside's Region 2011 results (%)

• SNP ~ 9,548 (42%)
• Labour ~ 6,648 (29.3%)
• Green ~ 1,779 (7.8%)
• Tory ~ 1,518 (6.7%)
• George Galloway (Respect) ~ 1,359 (6.0%)
• Liberal Democrat ~ 497 (2.2%)
• Senior Citizens ~ 319 (1.4%)
• BNP ~ 261 (1.2%)
• Socialist Labour ~ 200 (0.9%)
• Scottish Socialist ~ 149 (0.7%)
• Scottish Christian ~ 119 (0.5%)
• UKIP~ 114 (0.5%)
• Pirate ~ 68 (0.3%)
• Scottish Unionist ~ 68 (0.3%)
• Caroline Johnstone ~ 17 (0.08%)
• Scottish Homeland ~ 16 (0.07%)

Total turnout: 22,680

Finally, and in another interesting result, in contrast with the crashing "no" delivered across the country, Southside only narrowly voted against introducing the Alternative Voting system for Westminster elections. The constituency divided...

AV Referendum 2011: Glasgow Southside (%)

• Yes: 10,972 (49.7%)
  
• No: 11,114 (50.3%)

Total votes cast: 22,086

The detailed breakdowns of Glaswegian results in constituencies, regional voting by constituency and AV referendum results by constituency can be examined here.

More Glasgow Southside psephology...

Did you know that you can find out how constituency voters in the 2007 Holyrood election used their regional list votes? I didn't. However, thanks to a kindly commenter after my recent post encouraging pro-Green voters in Glasgow Southside to seriously consider supporting Nicola Sturgeon in May, I've now discovered that the Scotland Office published this data in 2008. The full tables for the cross-paper combinations in every constituency in Scotland can be examined in full here. It is a huge and fascinating databomb that could be dismantled from every which way and is likely to keep those suffering from that well-known blogger's syndrome - tertiary psephology, defined as the sustained obsessive attachment to the minutiae of political life - awake through the night.  To afford a bit of an insight into the sorts of information which can be gleaned from this, I'll stay within the boundaries of my own Holyrood constituency of Glasgow Govan, as was. In 2007, the constituency results were as follows...

Glasgow Govan, Holyrood Election, 2007

• Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) ~ 9,010
• Gordon Jackson (Labour) ~ 8,266
• Chris Young (Liberal Democrat) ~ 1,891
• Martyn McIntyre (Tory) ~ 1,680
• Asif Nasir (Independent) ~ 423
• Elinor McKenzie (Communist) ~ 251

Turnout ~ 45.4%
Majority ~ 744
Rejected ballots ~ 1,220

How did this compare to how voters used their regional list vote? Here is what the Scotland Office figures for the constituency tell us. Click on the image for a clearer view.

You'll notice that the SNP regional vote in the constituency is noticeably lower than the vote attracted by Nicola herself, to the tune of 2,855 votes. Where did these go? The brisk answer is all over the place, but a few salient points can be made. Sturgeon-SNP ballots constituted only 68.3% of Sturgeon's total vote (6,155). The second largest combination (6% of her total) was Sturgeon-Green, with 561 votes, followed by Sturgeon-Solidarity (440 or 4.9%), Sturgeon-Labour (354 or 3.9%), followed by Sturgeon-Muhammad Shoaib (an independent candidate) on 236 votes (2.6% of her total) - and only then Sturgeon-Liberal (212 votes, or 2.4%). Put in a slightly different way, 10% of Tory list voters and 14.6% of Liberal Democrats supported Nicola in the constituency. Of the Greens I was talking about earlier, although 34.4% of Green list supported Nicola in 2007, 29.4% balloted for the Liberal, Chris Young - and 20.7% of them tried to shoot themselves in the foot by supporting Gordon Jackson for Labour.

Interestingly, Sturgeon-SNP ballots made up a stonking 91.5% of all of the SNP's list vote in the constituency (which totalled 6,727). The second most common source of SNP list votes was from amongst those who had supported Gordon Jackson for Labour in the constituency, but these numbered a slight 198 in total. Incidentally, the data suggests that folk who voted Liberal Democrats in the Glasgow Govan constituency were much, much more likely to vote Green than turn to the SNP. The SNP gained only 61 regional votes from people who supported the Liberal constituency candidate, compared to the 480 voters who cast their second vote Green, to borrow a phrase.

On a final curious note, 28.5% of the BNP list voters (which numbered 365 in the constituency) supported Gordon Jackson, 28.2% had voted Tory for their FPTP candidate and 23.8% had supported Nicola. Excitingly, since data of this sort is available across Scotland, the amateur psephologist with time of their hands can focus in a much more fine-grained way on past voting behaviour in particular regions and areas. It strikes me that the data may prove particularly helpful, to get some sense of which alternative a loosened Liberal vote might gravitate towards in a particular constituency. Do take a look at the full figures for yourself.

P.S. I've focussed on my own constituency thus far, but if readers are particularly interested in other constituencies across Scotland, do let me know which ones and I'll try to take a look at them before polling day in May.

Green tactical voting in Glasgow Southside?

Jeff Breslin, writing at Better Nation, speculates about the likelihood and utility of Green tactical voting in the upcoming Holyrood election. Glasgow Labour voters are a plum example of the sort of folk Jeff has in mind. Glasgow sees its number of constituencies compressed from ten to nine in the upcoming election. This has implications for the d'Hondt regional calculations, which involve list votes being divided by the number of MSPs presently elected in the region, plus one. Take the example of 2007. The first-past-the-post results in every constituency in Glasgow having been declared, from the get go Labour's regional list vote was divided by 10 (their nine constituency MSPs +1). In 2011, Labour's regional votes in Glasgow are likely be divided by nine at least.

What about Nationalists, idly tempted to divide their franchise if they could get away with it? For most in Glasgow, this won't be a consideration, since the constituencies are dominated by the Labour Party. For most Glaswegian nationalists, voting SNP in the region is the most effective way to return Nationalist representatives.  Simpliciter. Not so in my own case, however. Or at least, not necessarily. I'm registered in Glasgow Southside, the constituency whose resketched boundaries replaces the Govan seat won by  Nicola Sturgeon by 744 votes in 2007. According to the notional figures, the shuffled electoral frontiers mean that Labour are estimated to enjoy a minuscule majority of 27. Their candidate in 2011 is Baillie Stephen Curran. What of wayward Glaswegian Nationalist supporters here, loosely wondering about the implications of casting their second votes elsewhere? I would at least flirt with the idea of a Green tactical vote for Patrick Harvie, if I thought it wouldn't impact on the overall strength of Glasgow's Nationalist contingent. Further investigation seemed warranted. A quick look at the figures suggests that crying It's Thyme! in Glasgow Southside would be a decidedly risky course of action.

Glasgow hasn't exactly been a dear Green place where the Scottish Greens have flourished untended, verdant and unbuffetted by the thrawn West Coast elements. Having laid down relatively shallow roots, their plant still clings tenaciously on, embattled. Having taken 4% of the Glasgow regional vote in 1999 (10,159), the Greens' support increased to 14,570 (7.1%) in 2003 – electing Patrick Harvie for the first time – but fell back to 5.2% and 10,759 votes in 2007. As others have noted, the Scottish Green's retention of a seat in Glasgow in 2007 was wholly down to Nicola Sturgeon's victory in Glasgow Govan. I've calculated (I hope accurately) the d'Hondt distributions in the Appendices below, comparing the actual result (Table 1) with what would have happened if the Govan campaign had miscarried and Labour had clung on for grim death (Table 2). Briefly, the figures clearly disclose that if Nicola had been defeated by a miraculously resurgent Crackerjack, the Nationalists would have taken the final regional seat, the Greens undershooting to the tune of 408 votes. By contrast, where Nicola wins her constituency, I notice that Nationalists appear only to run only 1,455 votes shy of nabbing a fourth regional seat in Glasgow from the Greens. That said, we must remember that in order to make up that gap, the SNP would have to secure (the difference +1 multiplied by six) to reflect the d'Hondt calculations. On 2007 numbers, the SNP would actually have to secure a stonking 64,551 regional votes, or an increase of 8,718 on their 2007 performance, to deprive the Greens of that last seat.

Glasgow's Holyrood history...

Given psephological ebbs and flows, and the relativity of political fortunes, it is worth briefly sketching the history of Glasgow regional vote in general terms. In the first Holyrood election of 1999, Glasgow elected four additional SNP members, with no constituency victories for the Nationalists, on 25.5% of the regional ballot and 65,360 votes cast. In 2003, this decreased to two additional SNP members, and no constituencies, with 17.1% of total ballots cast and 34,894 votes. In 2007, we took five – Nicola and four additional members, with 27% of list votes in the region, numbering 55,832. Since devolution, the SNP secured its highest percentage of Glaswegian votes in 2007, but the highest absolute number of votes in 1999. Votes went wandering in 2003, not least to the SSP, who picked up their first list seat in Glasgow in 1999, the ill-fated Tommy Sheridan being elected with 18,581 or 7.2% of the vote. He was joined by Rosie Kane in 2007, when the party's support increased to 31,216 votes, or 15.2% of the regional total. The Liberal Democrat list vote has been decreasing (just a wee bit) in Glasgow year on election year, from 18,473 (7.2%) to 14,939 (7.5%) to 14,767 (7.2%). Tory figures tell a similar tale. In 1999, they received 20,239 of votes cast in the city (7.9%), decreasing to to 15,299 (7.5%) and most recently to 13,751 (6.7%) in 2007.

On the left, it is interesting to note the extent to which there is unrealised potential for a united socialist platform to break through. If Solidarity's votes are added those secured by the Scottish Socialist Party in 2007, they totalled some 11,234, actually beating the Greens by 364 votes, kicking them out of that last list seat and - if Nicola had lost Glasgow Govan in 2007 - seizing the seventh additional seat from the SNP, reducing the Nationalists' overall list tally from four tribunes to three. Even more so if Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour vote (support for which ran at 2,680 in 2007) was added. I'm conscious, however, that the socialist left is riven with divisions, even before some account is taken of the venereal and litigious escapades of the Satsuma Socialist. Given this toxic legacy and these divisions, I don't know whether such a coalition would be sustainable - but the 2007 result suggests that it has the potential to be effective in Glasgow if its support coalesced around a single party.

Here we get a little more speculative. The Greens will clearly be hoping that a typhoon tears through the Liberal support in the city. The party have effectively ousted Robert Brown, the party's list MSP in Glasgow since 1999, by giving him only second place ranking on the Liberal list, replacing him with Katy Gordon. Baillie Bill Aitken, who has also represented the region since 1999, gave himself the heave ho, leaving  another Justice of the Peace, Malcolm MacAskill, to top the Tory list in Glasgow in 2011. I'm skeptical about the extent to which either gentleman might have enjoyed a significant "personal vote". Unless Greenie fortunes radically alter, securing a second Glasgow green seat seems a distant prospect, at best. In Glasgow, their primary goal must be to keep a single Green MSP but in a more secure position (namely, not reliant on topping the final tally for the last MSP and Nicola winning a second victory in Glasgow Southside). Will that happen? It is hard to conceive of a more improbable movement of support in Scottish politics than transfers from the ilk of Baillie Bill Aitken to Patrick Harvie. Greens seem more likely to seek more sustainable hunting grounds in Nationalist - and particularly Liberal - territory or even trying to tempt the city's array of unfocussed socialist left votes. Given the effect of Westminster coalition on the Liberal Democrat's national support (cf the Barnsley chop) the best Green hope in Glasgow must be to try to make off with as many Liberal votes as possible, at best swapping rankings with them in terms of numbers of votes received.

This presents an even more acute reason to cast one's second ballot for the SNP. If Nicola loses in Southside but the regional SNP vote stays in broadly similar territory, someone is being knocked off the bottom of the list, ideally Glasgow's solitary Tory - but potentially a Green, a Liberal - or that fifth SNP MSP, on a bad night. For my part, I'm confident that Nicola can beat Cooncillor Curran in Southside, although the conclusion is not foregone. Such a victory would take much of the pressure off of our Green friends on the list. As a consequence, perhaps the clearest finding in all of this is that it is in the rational self interest of Green voters in Glasgow Southside to support Nicola Sturgeon on their first ballot paper. Is it thyme in Glasgow Southside? Sorry Mr Harvie, but for my part, I haven't the steel nerves to risk it.

---------------------------------

Appendices

Table 1. Holyrood Election 2007. Nicola Sturgeon wins in Glasgow Govan. 

Seven additional seats available...

Total votes cast

• Labour 78,838
• SNP 55,832
• Libs 14,767
• Con 13,751
• Greens 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544

-----------------------------------------------
Round 1

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/2 = 27,916
• Libs 14,767 = 14,767
• Con 13,751 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 2

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/3 = 18,610.67
• Libs 14,767/1 = 14,767
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 =  10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 3

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/4 = 13,958
• Libs 14,767/1 = 14,767
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

Liberal MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 4

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/4 = 13,958
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 5

• Labour 78,838 /10 =  7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/5 = 11,166
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

Tory MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 6

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/5 = 11,166
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/2 = 6875.5
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
-----------------------------------------------
Round 7

• Labour 78,838 /10 = 7,883.8
• SNP 55,832/6 = 9,305.33
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/2 = 6875.5
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

Green MSP elected 

Actual Glasgow totals in 2007: 9 Labour members, 5 SNP, 1 Liberal, 1 Tory, 1 Green.

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Table 2. Holyrood Election 2007 If Nicola Sturgeon had lost in Glasgow Govan

Seven additional seats available...

Total votes cast

• Labour 78,838
• SNP 55,832
• Libs 14,767
• Con 13,751
• Greens 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544

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Round 1

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832 = 55,832
• Libs 14,767 = 14,767
• Con 13,751 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
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Round 2

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/2 = 27,916
• Libs 14,767/1 = 14,767
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
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Round 3

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/3 = 18,610.66
• Libs 14,767/1 = 14,767
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
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Round 4

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/4 = 13,958
• Libs 14,767 = 14,767
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

Liberal MSP elected
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Round 5

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/4 = 13,958
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected
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Round 6

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/5 = 11,166
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/1 = 13,751
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

Tory MSP elected
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Round 7

• Labour 78,838 /11 = 7,167.09
• SNP 55,832/5 = 11,166
• Libs 14,767/2 = 7,383.5
• Con 13,751/2 = 6875.5
• Greens 10,759/1 = 10,759
• Solidarity 8,544/1 = 8,544

SNP MSP elected, the Greens undershooting the Nationalists by 408 votes for the final seat. Glasgow totals in 2007 if Nicola had lost Glasgow Govan: 10 Labour members, 5 SNP, 1 Liberal, 1 Tory.