Thread by @ListVoteSense

'Tactical voting' in the Scottish Parliament election. #SNP #Greens #Holyrood #TacticalVoting #AMS #DHondt

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“The brutal but honest truth: anyone who still persists in their beliefs about ‘tactical voting’, in the face of all the algorithmic evidence to the contrary, is as impervious to the facts as any Brexiter or anti-vaxxer.” #TacticalVoting #DHondt #AMS #Indyref2 #Yes2

"The single most important aspect of the discussion witnessed over the last week, is that it has once again highlighted just how widespread is the failure to understand the practical operation of the Additional Member allocation process”

“Failures to comprehend how process works has led to dangerous & delusional fantasy that voters & parties can ‘beat’ system through ‘tactical voting’. These delusions & assertions then achieve status of factoids, propagating remorselessly through Yes community, misinforming“

“But each time the facts are explained, it seems to make no difference whatsoever to the belief (and this is the operative word, *belief*), that tactical voting using ‘list only’ parties is the Holy Grail to maximising the number of pro-indy list MSPs.”

“Even if it was possible to ‘game the system’, and to pack Holyrood with a supermajority of indy MSPs (leaving unionist voters vastly underrepresented and feeling disenfranchised), how do you think that would be seen by potential converts to Yes?”

“Those who remember the 1979 referendum will recall the notion widespread in the Highlands, Islands and Borders, that a Scottish Assembly would just be ‘dominated by Central Belt Labour’, a fear that compelled many to vote against devolution at that time.”

“Do we really want to make potential Yes voters (you know, the sort of people we need to ensure we win indyref2 with 55%+), start to worry that if Scotland becomes independent, they’ll just get an SNP + Indy Alliance ‘one party state’, with no effective opposition?”

“2016 has become a veritable shibboleth for swathes of the social media indy movement, the election results fixing mindsets in an ediface of unshakeable opinion - nay belief - seemingly impervious to any rational argument or presentation of facts.”

“There’s just one small problem: this is merely an untested assertion, not based on any actual modelling to see how true it is.
It doesn’t matter how logical a claim appears, how much sense it seems to make, indeed who said it — the only thing that matters is modelling of data.”

“Opinions on this subject are highly subjective, and ‘obvious’ inferences from a casual examination of election data can not only lead to utterly erroneous conclusions, but also lead us up entirely the wrong garden path in terms of political strategy.”

“Discussions of Indy pundits is akin to a community of scientists endlessly pontificating on an assortment of theories, but without ever conducting a single experiment!

Understand this: a claim made without any empirical testing whatsoever is nothing more than an assertion.”

“Such assertions are based on an (all too often thoroughly) imperfect understanding of how seat allocation algorithm works, based on distribution of votes among parties, regional effective threshold, and the realistic electoral prospects of new & untested fringe parties.”

“In fact, palpably false assertions have, because of their appeal, attained online immortality as factoids, endlessly regurgitated across Indy social media as the ‘undeniable truth’.”

“... But, does anyone see problem with these discussions?
There is absolutely no way of knowing, prior to election, exactly how votes distributed among parties will play out in the D’Hondt list algorithm — and which way the seats will fall — until *after* the votes are counted.”

“Call for #BothVotesSNP is perfectly reasonable to make for a party looking to maximise its representation & achieve overall majority.

Calling for #BothVotesSNP can be made with confidence an increased SNP list vote will add list seats, contrary to belief this is impossible”

“Looking back to 2016, despite success of SNP in the constituencies (and the factoid now engrained in the minds of so many Yessers about ‘wasted list votes’), if the SNP list vote had matched their constituency vote in 2016, they would actually have won four or five more seats.”

“Another boil that needs to be lanced is the myth that the Unionist parties have a massive built in systemic advantage, because there are three of them and they can thus attain many more seats than they would ever be able to get than if there were only two or even one of them.”

“Unionism actually suffers from their split across three parties, getting fewer seats than if there was only one or two unionist parties.
The assertion Unionist parties ‘massively benefit’ from their ‘split vote’ is yet another baseless factoid presented as “common sense”

“If you don’t like SNP or Greens, you have to decide whether to prioritise disagreements over indy, or use your vote wisely by contributing towards electing pro-indy MSPs thereby furthering indy

It might not be your preferred choice on Polling Day…but it is your *only* choice.”

“Unless someone can show you actual modelled outcomes to prove their assertions about list ‘tactical voting’, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

But they *won’t* because they *can’t*.”

“Additonally, as we have seen, you cannot ensure Party X candidates win seats only at the expense of Unionists and not the SNP or Greens.

Thus the concept of ‘targeting’ Unionist MSPs with ‘tactical voting’ is even further nonsense.”

“Let no one mistake me: I don’t oppose the concept of tactical voting because I want to exclude other parties, I oppose it because it *simply won’t work*. It is certainly not ‘cheating’, just pointless and potentially self-defeating for the independence movement.”

“The best thing the indy movement can do is abandon the ‘tactical voting’ fantasy — and make no mistake it *is* a fantasy — right now.”

“We cannot allow ourselves the navel gazing indulgence of numerous, factional list parties, in what will undoubtedly be the most important election in our lives, the ‘independence election’.”

“So, next time a prolific blogger or opinionated indy pundit proffers you the intoxicating ‘drug’ of a miracle ‘Party X’ to use the ‘wasted SNP vote’ to win swathes of list only indy MSPs through ‘tactical voting’:

‘Just Say NO’
Back away quickly; and
Run, run for the hills…”

“And anyone still clinging to the snake oil fantasy of ‘tactical voting’ should be locked in a room with pencil and paper, and made to calculate each and every one of the various scenarios, by hand, until the penny -hopefully - finally drops :)”

Listen to #ListVoteSense

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