[SCOT goes POP!] If Alba are going back to begging for "tactical" votes, the basic arithmetic of the situation is going to make it very hard to convince people

[ALBA-Bot]

If Alba are going back to begging for "tactical" votes, the basic arithmetic of the situation is going to make it very hard to convince people

The Alba Party's suspended General Secretary broke his radio silence on Twitter at the weekend. 

SNP on course to win 3/4 of constituencies. This means touch & go for pro indy majority as SNP list votes won't deliver seats. Meanwhile Alba remain within touching distance of a breakthrough - if SNP voters back Alba on the list it guarantees keeping unionists out of Bute House. https://t.co/eMJpgr2fcz

— Christopher McEleny (@ChrisMcEleny) February 15, 2025

"if SNP voters back Alba on the list"

Oh, if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans. What matters is that at the moment almost every poll is projecting Alba on zero seats, so it's actually Alba list votes that are wasted. https://t.co/qYJhI7mHQy

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) February 16, 2025

First of all, of course, there's the little psychodrama here of why McEleny has suddenly started posting supportive tweets about Alba when he appears to be firmly on his way out of the party, unless his ally Ash Regan pulls off a major surprise in the leadership election.  I suppose it's possible that the MacAskill leadership might shy away from expelling McEleny from the party altogether simply due to his apparent closeness to Alex Salmond (the "telepathic link" and all that) - it would look like they were questioning Mr Salmond's judgement.  However, it does seem practically certain that McEleny's removal as General Secretary will be upheld on the grounds of "gross misconduct" - and if you find someone guilty of gross misconduct in 2025 you can hardly run them as a Holyrood list candidate in 2026.  My guess is that if McEleny is left with no role in the party, and has no means of using the party as a vehicle for his ambitions to become an MSP, he'll leave voluntarily.

But let's take his tweet about the 2026 election at face value.  It suggests that Alba are in a right old strategic muddle, because it implies that once again they will not be trying to win votes in the normal way by persuading voters that they are the best party, and will instead be begging for votes on a tactical basis.  OK, it's perfectly understandable that they don't think pitching themselves as the best party is a viable option, given all of the very public in-fighting, and the McCarthyite purges, and the deeply unattractive personalities at the top, and the half-baked policy platform.  (Even though I was an elected member of the Alba NEC for a year, I still don't have a scooby whether the party wants to rejoin the EU or not - all you ever hear is the holding position about joining EFTA for the time being.)

But if you're going to pitch for tactical votes on the list, you have to do that coherently.  You can't say to voters that they need to vote for different parties on the constituency ballot and the list ballot, and then announce that in some areas you're standing on both the constituency and the list and want votes for both.  As I've mentioned before, I heard McEleny suggest as recently as August that the plan was to stand in at least eight constituency seats, and I've since discovered that others have heard him say exactly the same thing on other occasions.  

And even if it wasn't for that hopeless incoherence, the raw arithmetic just doesn't support Alba's pitch for tactical votes anyway.  Here is the seats projection from the new Norstat poll broken down into constituency and list seats - 

Constituency seats: 

SNP 54 

Conservatives 10

Liberal Democrats 5

Labour 3

Greens 1

List seats:

Reform UK 15

Labour 15

Greens 9

Liberal Democrats 8

Conservatives 8

SNP 1

So of the three largest pro-independence parties, the only one whose list votes are entirely 'wasted' is Alba.  The SNP's list votes do produce a small return, but the one pro-indy party that leaps out as getting proper bang for their buck on the list is the Greens.  So as a rational voter, there are only really two options to choose between.  Either:

1) You can take the same view as I always have, which is that the Holyrood list system can't be 'hacked' because there's too great a risk of tactical votes backfiring and producing the opposite effect from the one you expect.  That would lead to the conclusion that you should always vote for your first-choice party on the list regardless of circumstance.

OR 

2) If you insist on taking a big risk with a tactical vote, you would identify the pro-indy party with the best statistical chance of converting tactical list votes into list seats.  At the moment it's impossible to escape the conclusion that party is the Greens.  There are Alba list votes going completely to waste which could actually have a chance of producing extra pro-indy list seats if they transferred en masse to the Greens.  

There is no planet on which Alba is the best statistical prospect for a tactical vote.  I suppose their get-out clause would be "ah, but the Greens aren't really a proper pro-indy party, are they".  That's a tough sell, a) given the Greens' track record of full involvement in the 2014 Yes campaign, and b) given McEleny's own argument that the pro-indy majority is under threat and on a knife-edge.  In a crisis situation, are independence supporters really supposed to muck around on the basis of purity tests?  

Source: If Alba are going back to begging for "tactical" votes, the basic arithmetic of the situation is going to make it very hard to convince people