@Lovingi79716481 I can explain it for you now if you like. It's actually more simple than the politicians make out.
@Lovingi79716481 First thing - stop thinking of it as d'hondt, because it's not. Sorry, but it really annoys me people call it that - it's the additional member system. Now for this example I am going to use my region mid Scotland and fife.
@Lovingi79716481 So! We have the region MSF (mid-scotland fife). It has 9 constituencies in it. The 9 constituencies form the region. First we have the constituency ballot where you vote for the person. In MSF 120,000 people vote SNP.
@Lovingi79716481 Around 70,000 vote Tory, 50,000 vote Labour. The SNP take 8 out of 9 constituency seats. It's first past the post in those constituencies (most votes win).
@Lovingi79716481 Now remember that number 8. That's reeeeeeeeally important.

It comes time to count the regional ballot. See the number of votes above.
@Lovingi79716481 Now what you have at the start of the count is the SNP on 8 seats in the region. You have labour and tories on zero. So straight out of the gate we need to establish what is called "the divisor" which is just a fancy way of saying "how much do we divide their votes by on the list
@Lovingi79716481 And that's worked out by taking the number of seats a party already has and adding one.

For the SNP, they have 8 constituency seats so their divisor is 8+1 = 9
@Lovingi79716481 Labour and the Tories have zero seats in the constituency and so their divisor is 0+1=1
@Lovingi79716481 These are the numbers that the votes on the regional ballot are first divided by so:

SNP = 120,000 votes - We divide that by 9 which gives us 13333

As for lab and tories, that's 70,000 divided by 1 and 50,000 divided by 1. Which is obviously still 70,000 and 50,000
@Lovingi79716481 So straight away the SNP are penalised 9 times more than the Labour and Tories.

After this first division. The tories clearly have the most votes 70,000 vs 50,000 vs 13333
@Lovingi79716481 So the first seat on the list goes to the tories. They now have 1 seat so their divisor is recalculated 1 seat + 1 = 2. So we take their 70,000 votes and divide by 2. That now drops them into second place at 35,000 behind labour.
@Lovingi79716481 So! Labour now have 50,000, tories have 35,000 and the SNP are still at 13333. Now labour are at the top - so they get a seat. They now have a seat so we recalculate their divisor. 1 seat + 1 = 2. So we divide their 50,000 by two. Now the tories are back in the lead...
@Lovingi79716481 So we give them a seat.

So! The long story short in Mid Scotland and Fife is that we end up with 4 tories and 2 labour MSP's
@Lovingi79716481 With 8 seats the SNP get penalised 9 times more than anyone else. If they took willie rennies seat in the constituency ballot as well, well now we're talking about them getting penalised 10 times as much.
@Lovingi79716481 In order for the SNP to take just 1 single seat in the list they'd need at a minimum an additional 46,000 votes in MSF, which is not going to happen. You're talking nearly 1/3 of the unionists voting SNP.
@Lovingi79716481 If they took rennies seat and were penalised 10 times as much, they'd need an additional 80,000 votes over and above the 120,000 votes they already have.
@Lovingi79716481 The system was designed a bit like a set of scales. If one ballot goes up, the other penalised you to make the other side go down. There's only a very very small avenenue in the middle where both sides of the scale are equal where one party can get maximum votes.
@Lovingi79716481 But to hit that (like 2011) the SNP would actually need to lose votes in the constituency ballot so they wouldn't be so heavily penalised in the regional list.

Hope that helps.
@Lovingi79716481 Theres only two area where the SNP might and I stress might get a seat in the list, south of Scotland and highland - that's because they are less popular on the constituency ballot.
@Lovingi79716481 But even with that, its still nowhere near what another party could do and this is where ALBA comes in.

Remember these words - if you don't stand on the constituency ballots, when the count starts for the regional you have no seats.
@Lovingi79716481 If you have no seats, your divisor can only be 0+1=1, ergo you don't get penalised. Which means ALBA, would be on the same terms as labour and the tories vote wise. A 50% shift of SNP voters voting Alba in the regional ballot...
@Lovingi79716481 ...which isn't detrimental to the SNP (because remember there are 73 seats in the constituency ballot, 56 in the regional) because they're expected to get their majority of 65 on the constituency ballot - but a 50% shift in the regional ballot to ALBA...
@Lovingi79716481 ...could see us wipe out up to 24 unionist seats. And this is the important bit.

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More from @MartinJKeatings

29 Mar
The question is not about SNP or ALBA on the regional ballot. The question is do we want to let unionists in the back door by default? That makes this a mathematical decision, not one of the heart or feeling or intuition or bias or dislike of a single candidate.
This is one of the most amazing moments in Scottish History, a clear mathematical certainty that will lead to our independence. It's like the 2014 independence referendum. The future of your country is in your hands. You can embrace it or throw it away.
The are those saying they wont vote SNP on the constituency ballot because of a political difference, and I would say fair enough to that. But then I would also say to you, what is the primary reason that person you dislike keeps getting re-elected?
Read 33 tweets
29 Mar
You'll note that I have deleted the tweet about the Alba list likely being full. I did so because the intention was to simply show that's likely the case. It wasn't so some people could take it and twist it and use it as a stick to beat other yes supporters with.
Let me be clear. The screenshot was from an AFI meeting, not one of ALBA. Also, all it said was list full and no approaches had been made by ALBA.

AFI candidates stood down to clear the way for ALBA knowing we'd be floating and WITHOUT EXPECTATION OF BEING ADOPTED.
Would the adoption of some of the candidates from AFI by ALBA have been cool, well yeah. But there was no expectation of such and trying to insinuate that ALBA conveyed such sentiments is simply not true. Correlation is not causation!
Read 5 tweets
28 Mar
I'm going to do something, (not approved by AFI btw), but I think it important to show you all the candidates the AFI actually had. No less than 4 in each region. These are the graphics that I had prepared to put out when circumstances overtook that announcement.
Here's why AFI candidates stood aside:
And here's the AFI candidates that you would have got.
Read 12 tweets
27 Mar
Im actually quite disappointed in SNP elected members commenting on @KennyMacAskill moving to #Albaparty. If it's the right of the electorate to vote based on their conscience, surely parliamentarians have the same right to do the same if they believe...
...that such a thing would increase the likelihood of delivering the very thing they stood for elected office in the first place. I.e. Independence.

Kenny hasn't abandoned the yes movement. He's simply moved to another part of it.
He's still a pro-independence MP, he's still going to champion our cause, he's still going to represent his constituents. If he'd gone libdem, tory or labour, that'd be different. But he's not...
Read 10 tweets
27 Mar
Here's one to warp your mind. Did you know technically when people say SNP 1, they are actually not correct. Because although a constituency candidate might me a party member, you're actually voting for the person not the party in the constituency. True story.
As for voting for a different party on the list. This is not "cheating" nor is it "gaming" anything. You're given two ballots for a reason - to make a choice. It was specifically designed to give you the option of voting for a person on the constituency and a party on the list.
The choice is yours on whichever you vote for, even if different. So voting for a person (who also happens to be a member of the SNP) on the constituency, then for a different party on the list, isn't gaming, it isn't cheating - It's called VOTING.
Read 4 tweets
27 Mar
Look! I understand people can't get it, namely, why on one hand do you express your disappointment that the announcement of alba may cause issues for you, but on the other hand step down to clear the way and then join them?
It's simple. The two are mutually exclusive. I've tried time and time again to explain that I don't make my decisions based on emotion, I make them based on empirical data and what's best for Scotland.
Now would it be good to be offered the opportunity to stand with ALBA now that there's no longer candidates standing for AFI - sure it would. But I very much doubt that would happen.
Read 20 tweets

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