ALLIANCE party plans to game the next Holyrood elections to “max the yes” vote could "destroy the unity of the nationalist movement when the nationalist movement has never been closer to being able to achieve its objective," the country's top polling expert has said.

Professor John Curtice's comments came after a former SNP MSP announced he was setting up a new pro-independence party.

Dave Thompson told the Daily Record he believes his Alliance for Independence (AFI) could win up to 24 seats at next year's vote.

READ MORE: Ex SNP MSP to quit and form new pro-independence party

Thompson told the paper that the new group would allow small pro-independence parties, organisations and individuals to unite and contest the regional list seats.

He said: “Every regional list vote for the SNP will have no impact. It will achieve nothing. Whereas if a lot of these votes came to AFI we can garner a lot of MSPs.

“We are looking at anything between 8 and 24 MSPs.”

Professor Curtice described it as a “clever wheeze” and pointed out that parties had been trying to game the system for the last 21 years.

He told The National: “The problem with clever wheezes is that they're often too clever for their own good.”

The academic warned that voters might see it as “cheating”. 

Curtice said: “One of the great strengths of the nationalist movement in Scotland as compared with the unionist movement is that basically it is united behind one political party. 

“One of the reasons why you can contemplate the SNP getting an overall majority and 45% of the vote is because the vote's concentrated and the unionist vote is split and therefore it's not efficiently distributed. 

“Do you really want necessarily to introduce a fracture in a movement when the unity is to your advantage?”

Curtice added: “Look,if the polls are right at the moment, you don't need a clever wheeze, you're going to get a whopping majority anyway, so why risk it? 

“It's intriguing that people suddenly seem to want to game the system at a time when frankly the nationalist movement has never looked less in need of gaming the system.”

He added: "Why do you wish to destroy the unity of the nationalist movement when the nationalist movement has never been closer to being able to achieve its objective than it is now?"