Alba were trying to be a decoy list, which is a known issue with mixed-member proportional systems. Happily the electorate realised that they were trying to cheat the system / thought Alex Salmond was a creep so nothing bad happened. But it's still a weakness.
Regarding the SNP's "both votes SNP" tactic, it has intellectual honesty and it acts as a floor on how many seats other parties are going to win. As soon as the SNP don't win every constituency in the region, a high vote tally on the list makes it possible for them to e up their losses there.
AV is better than FPTP for the constituency part, and maybe the SNP would be advised to consider it to avoid tactical voting that means that we don't know how much support parties actually have in a constituency. (I believe this year many Labour supporters voted Tory in Tory-favoured seats, and vice-versa; but this sort of tactical voting was only possible because things hadn't changed that much since 2016. When the SNP first won a majority in Holyrood, it was because they surged so much that nobody was expecting it.)
But STV has a problem in more rural areas: while it's easy to divide Glasgow's 16 seats into 4 STV constituencies, that's a tougher ask when you take a large constituency and, by dint of it and its neighbours electing 3 or 4 MSPs, multiply its size by 3 or 4. There's already a problematic divide between urban and rural Scotland, and I fear that STV might exacerbate that divide further.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-05-12 03:39 am (UTC)Alba were trying to be a decoy list, which is a known issue with mixed-member proportional systems. Happily the electorate realised that they were trying to cheat the system / thought Alex Salmond was a creep so nothing bad happened. But it's still a weakness.
Regarding the SNP's "both votes SNP" tactic, it has intellectual honesty and it acts as a floor on how many seats other parties are going to win. As soon as the SNP don't win every constituency in the region, a high vote tally on the list makes it possible for them to e up their losses there.
AV is better than FPTP for the constituency part, and maybe the SNP would be advised to consider it to avoid tactical voting that means that we don't know how much support parties actually have in a constituency. (I believe this year many Labour supporters voted Tory in Tory-favoured seats, and vice-versa; but this sort of tactical voting was only possible because things hadn't changed that much since 2016. When the SNP first won a majority in Holyrood, it was because they surged so much that nobody was expecting it.)
But STV has a problem in more rural areas: while it's easy to divide Glasgow's 16 seats into 4 STV constituencies, that's a tougher ask when you take a large constituency and, by dint of it and its neighbours electing 3 or 4 MSPs, multiply its size by 3 or 4. There's already a problematic divide between urban and rural Scotland, and I fear that STV might exacerbate that divide further.