{"id":3472,"date":"2011-03-02T18:23:53","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T18:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=3472"},"modified":"2011-03-02T18:23:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T18:23:53","slug":"what-to-vote-in-eastwood-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/what-to-vote-in-eastwood-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What to vote in Eastwood"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n
\nEastwood High School<\/a>
\nOriginally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

The old Eastwood constituency used to be a Lab-Con marginal: Back in 2007<\/a>, Ken Macintosh MSP from Labour won the seat with 35.8% of the vote, ahead of the Tories’ Jackson Carlaw MSP who got 33.6% and the SNP’s Stewart Maxwell MSP who got 18.9% (with LibDem Gordon MacDonald far behind on 8.6%). The three top candidates all got elected anyway because of the list system used for Scottish parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n

However, this time Eastwood has had a chunk chopped off, and the result is a much more conservative constituency (details from this boundary report<\/a> [PDF]):<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n
Conservative<\/td>\n12,825<\/td>\n41.1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Labour<\/td>\n9,337<\/td>\n29.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
SNP<\/td>\n4,912<\/td>\n15.7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Liberal Democrat<\/td>\n3,141<\/td>\n10.1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The bits that were cut off are Neilston, Uplawmoor and Barrhead, and they’re now in the Renfrewshire South constituency, which is notionally a safe Labour seat with the SNP as the main contender.<\/p>\n

\nAccording to Labour<\/a>, Ken Macintosh MSP will contest Eastwood again, and he’ll be joined by his old foes Jackson Carlaw MSP<\/a> and Stewart Maxwell MSP<\/a>. (I haven’t been able to find out who the LibDems are putting up, but I’d be surprised if any sitting MSP would be willing to run in a seat with so few LibDem voters.)<\/p>\n

So it’s in effect an interesting contest between three MSPs: the one who won it last time, the one who won it notionally, and the one whose party has been in power for the past four year.<\/p>\n

The boundary report is expecting Labour to get 0 top-up seats, the SNP 4, the Conservatives 2 and the LibDems 1 in the West of Scotland region, bringing the number of MSPs up to Labour 8, SNP 5, Cons 3 and LibDems 1.<\/p>\n

In other words, Labour is getting too many constituency MSPs, which means they’ll get no top-ups, whereas the SNP, the Tories and the LibDems will get topped up.<\/p>\n

What this means is that if the Conservatives, the SNP or the LibDems win Eastwood, they will lose a top-up seat, and the total number of West of Scotland MSPs will remain Labour 8, SNP 5, Cons 3 and LibDems 1.<\/p>\n

If, on the other hand, Labour win it, they have no top-up seats to lose, so the Conservatives are punished instead: Labour 9, SNP 5, Cons 2 and LibDems 1.<\/p>\n

So to some extent the only thing that matters for the constituency vote is whether to vote Labour or not. A vote for Labour is a vote for Labour, whereas a vote for anybody else is a vote against Labour (and for the Conservatives in their prediction, but it could just as easily be for anybody else – this depends fully on the number of list votes).<\/p>\n

The choice is therefore quite easy: If you want to see Labour in power in Scotland, vote for Ken Macintosh; if you want to see the SNP remain in power, vote Conservative, SNP or LibDem – it really doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, using your list vote is of high importance, but I’ll discuss that in a another blog posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eastwood High School Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay The old Eastwood constituency used to be a Lab-Con marginal: Back in 2007, Ken Macintosh MSP from Labour won the seat with 35.8% of the vote, ahead of the Tories’ Jackson Carlaw MSP who got 33.6% and the SNP’s Stewart Maxwell MSP who got 18.9% (with LibDem Gordon MacDonald far behind on 8.6%). The three top candidates all got elected anyway because of the list system used for Scottish parliamentary elections. However, this time Eastwood has had a chunk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,124,130,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-neighbourhood","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}