THANK you, Mhairi Black, for your much improved, clear explanation of the second (list) voting system (This is how splitting the pro-independence vote can cost us seats, April 17).
Your figures illustrating Lothian are correct. The 118,546 votes the SNP received in 2016 were divided by seven to reduce their effective vote to 16,935 votes. The seventh and final list seat was won by the Greens with 17,276 effective votes, with Labour second on 16,998. Very close, but the arithmetical fact is that the SNP would require at least an additional 344 x 7 = 2408 votes (2.03%) to have taken he final seat from the Greens.
You stated that a 1% increase in SNP vote would result in taking seats from the Tories. I have just disproved that claim. Your figures show that with the final Green seat being the most vulnerable, theirs is your target in Lothian. This is the party who have propped up the minority SNP government through policy, Budget and no-confidence votes, yet they are your first target from your figures.
READ MORE: Mhairi Black: This is how splitting the pro-independence vote can cost us seats
You also stated that “your first vote is for the person you want to represent you and your second vote is for the party you want to form a government.” With the SNP winning just four list seats in 2016, thankfully that is untrue or we would have had a Unionist coalition running Scotland. I have voted for Angus Robertson SNP with my first vote, but not because he is necessarily the best person to represent me (I would have preferred the excellent Joanna Cherry but your party contrived to block her intention to stand). My first vote has been used to help win my constituency back from the representatively useless Ruth Davidson and to help secure an SNP government.
Opinion polls indicate that Catriona MacDonald might also win the Edinburgh South constituency from Labour. I know her to be an extremely caring, hard-working and effective person who would be a wonderful representative. If either of those constituencies changed to SNP, the consequent divisions would make it even less likely for the SNP to win a list seat. Conversely, though, if the Tory or Labour parties lost a constituency, their divider would reduce helping them to possibly win another list seat in compensation.
I don’t take issue with the SNP policy in Highlands and in South Scotland, where list seats can be won. However, Mhairi, the 118,546 Lothian list votes you highlighted were joined by hundreds of thousands of other SNP votes in the other six Scottish regions. A total of more than 750,000 votes for the SNP which produced zero list seats. This number is not insignificant – it’s more votes that any of the other parties polled in all of Scotland.
Your members and close party followers may follow your advice and waste their second votes again, but if just half of that enormous number of wasted votes from 2016 were targeted on other independence-supporting parties or individuals, many of the Unionist-supporting seats could be won over.
You have given an SNP party position Mhairi, which is understandable, but the wider independence-supporting community will disregard your bias in favour of the effective use of their second vote. It has been Green for me.
Campbell Anderson
Edinburgh
MHAIRI Black now insulting Green voters! OK, Alison Johnstone standing in Edinburgh Central maybe cost the SNP dear and allowed Davidson in, but Greens weren’t standing in eight of the nine constituency seats.
Perhaps the reason the SNP vote dropped from 42% in the constituency to 36% in the list was due to Green voters actually voting for the party they support in the list because they couldn’t do so in the constituency!
Christine Small
Edinburgh
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