One for the nerds: I've often made reference to Germany's similar-but-not-identical voting system to what we use for Holyrood (e.g. often talk about the concept of Overhang, as here: ballotbox.scot/the-overhang-o…), and it looks like they are set to tweak how it works.

https://twitter.com/HzBrandenburg/status/1636719809697132544

You'd be best reading the thread for detail, but the long and short of it is "parties can't overhang via constituencies anymore; if they win 'too many' constituencies, they don't actually win the weakest ones".

Right my ferry is very delayed so a short thread about Scottish Politics being very silly.

Firstly, party membership numbers: In my view these should be a required part of a party's annual, public accounts. They are not, which is weird! Why are we so bad at this stuff? However, parties being secretive about membership figures is not new. To this day, two years on, we only know the % share that Anas Sarwar and Monica Lennon got in Scottish Labour's 2021 leadership election. But was that 9,284 Sarwar votes? Or 3,691? Who knows! Not the public!

I'd seen a few of these pop up, but having been specifically asked it's worth picking up on.

These predictions are based entirely on Uniform National Swing - i.e. if a party is up 5% in national polls, it will be up 5% in every seat. As such, be very cautious with them.

https://twitter.com/ScoobyDrew2/status/1597179885679955968

Historically UNS was "fine-ish" because places it got wrong in one direction were broadly balanced by those it got wrong in the other. Since 2015 however it has been completely and utterly useless for Scotland, given the SNP's generally large leads.

I appreciate this will be a somewhat controversial set of Tweets - and a somewhat ironic one, being, as it is, a set of Tweets, but:

It is very clear a large section of Scottish Politics is just utterly Twitter-poisoned and cannot parse politics outside of that sphere. Whatever your view on a future referendum, the reason Scotland is still having this constitutional debate is because *the people of Scotland* have consistently voted since 2014 in such a way as to keep the issue live. Nobody has to LIKE that, but we do have to UNDERSTAND it.

🧵I'll also be adding each part of the #BBSLE22 Wards Worth Watching series to this thread here. As the series goes on, you'll be able to find the full pieces on the website too under this tag: ballotbox.scot/tag/wards-wort… East Renfrewshire: 18 Councillors
Wards Worth Watching: 1 of 5

2017 results: Seats (Votes)
🔵Con: 7 (38.3%)
🟡SNP: 5 (24.3%)
🔴Lab: 4 (17.4%)
⚪️Ind: 2 (16.0%)
🟠LD: 0 (2.2%)
🟢Grn: 0 (1.4%)

Full article: ballotbox.scot/www-east-ren

Today in equal opportunities reminders - it isn't correct to describe many votes cast in an STV election, as we use for Scottish Councils, as being "tactical". It's not impossible to vote tactically under STV, especially if someone confuses their system, but it is harder. A tactical vote is, broadly speaking, one which doesn't match a given voter's genuine preference, often because of a perception that their preferred party "can't win". FPTP is well known for inducing an element of tactical voting, given only one candidate can win the seat.

Leith Walk (Edinburgh) By-Election, 1st Preferences;

SNP - 35.7% (+1.3)
Green - 25.5% (+5.8)
Lab- 15.5% (-7.0)
Con - 10.7% (-3.7)
LD - 8.6% (+4.8)
Ind x2 - 1.7% (-2.8)
UKIP - 1.2% (+1.2)
Others x3 - 1.1%

SNP win at stage 11. Breakdown of Independents and Others;
Ind (Illingworth) - 1.5%
Ind (Scott) - 0.2%
Socialist Labour - 0.8% (+0.2)
For Britain Movement - 0.2% (+0.2)
Scottish Libertarian - 0.2% (+0.2)