Thread by @leonardocarella

I regret to announce that instead of doing my actual job or enjoying my Friday evening, I've built an R model to simulate how ALBA performance in the lists would affect the distribution of seats conditional on SNP performance in the constituencies and Green/SNP transfers to ALBA.

A snippet (clean code and more stuff tomorrow): on a good night for the SNP (in which they'd win 62 constituencies: uniform swing on latest BMG poll), ALBA would waste pro-indy votes as long as it stays between 1.5 and 5%. After that 'slump', ALBA starts benefiting the indy camp.

I think there's more to this: ALBA could do some real damage if they split pro-indy list votes with the Greens or if the SNP has a bad night in the constituencies and needs list votes. Will think about it and let you know :)

Here's another one. This is how ALBA could do real damage to the independence cause: if they start eating not only into the SNP but also into the Scottish Greens' (strategic) list vote, fragmentation in the indy camp brings down the overall number of seats the bloc can hope for.

To be clear, what I've plotted above is not the indy majority - it's the net *change* due to ALBA. In both cases, assuming uniform swing and latest poll figs, pro-indy parties get over half (69) the seats, though in the "Green leakage" scenario, it can get quite close, see below:

This is all in a better thread now.

https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1375804171425873922?s=20