The difficulty of tactical voting in the Holyrood list vote
Speymouth
It is now less than a year to the next Scottish Parliament elections and once more social media screen space is being consumed with arguments about tactical voting in the regional list vote. Every time there’s a Scottish election this argument comes up, even though tactical voting on the regional list vote has never worked before, and no one has come up with a magic formula which would ensure that it’s going to work this time either. That’s because no such formula exists.
Even so, there are still those who make the bold claim on social media that for an independence voter to vote SNP in the constituency vote and also in the regional list vote they are “really” casting a vote for an anti-independence party. The short answer is that they’re not, a vote for the SNP is a vote for the SNP.
Anti-independence parties can only get elected to Holyrood because people vote for them. It really is that simple. The regional list voting system cannot magically transform a vote for the SNP into a vote for Labour, the Tories, Reform UK, or any other party. The only reason that anti-independence parties are represented in the Scottish Parliament is because people vote for them. If we want fewer anti-independence MSPs in Holyrood, and as independence supporters that’s something we can all agree on, the only way to do it is to persuade more people to vote for pro-independence parties and fewer people to vote for anti-independence parties. That’s democracy. It may be unwelcome news to some but there’s no quick fix, no magic bullet.
The system of voting used for Scottish Parliament elections is a hybrid system which combines elements of the first past the post system with a proportional element which ensures the final result is broadly in line with how the electorate has voted. Voting in the constituency vote is pretty straightforward. This uses the first past the post system. The choice for independence supporters in the constituency vote is easy. Only the SNP can win constituency seats, no other pro-independence party can do so, not the Scottish Greens and certainly not Alba, the Scottish Socialists, or any of the other smaller pro-independence parties. If your priority is to get a pro-independence MSP in your local constituency, there’s only one choice, and that’s the SNP. No other pro-independence party has any chance of getting elected in the constituency vote and if one is standing a candidate, voting for them will only split the pro-independence vote. In the constituency vote in the 2026 Holyrood election, tactical voting for independence supporters means voting for the SNP candidate even if you normally prefer one of the other pro-independence parties.
However, the method of counting votes in the regional list is much more complex than how votes are counted in first past the post systems like Westminster votes or Holyrood’s constituency vote, Likewise, that fact makes a tactical voting strategy far more complicated and difficult than tactical voting in a constituency vote – whether in a Westminster or Holyrood election.
In the regional list vote you still only have one vote, unlike voting in local elections, held under the single transferrable vote system, you do not order your parties or candidates in order of preference. The ballot paper for the list vote lists only parties not candidates, you simply put an X beside the party of your choice. How these votes are allocated is carried out according to a formula, and that’s what makes tactical voting in the regional list ballot almost impossible to carry out successfully.
The formula for allocating votes works as follows. To work out how many regional positions, or seats, each party wins, the number of votes each party gets in the regional ballot is divided by the number of constituency seats the party has won, then one is added.
One is added so that parties which have not won any constituencies can be included in the calculation for the regional seats.
After this calculation, the party that ends up with the highest result wins the first regional seat. To work out which parties win the remaining seats this calculation is done again, but each time any additional seats that have been won are added in. As there are seven seats per region, this is done seven times. This is why it can sometimes take a while to get the full results.
What this boils down to is that in order to vote tactically successfully in the regional list vote, you need to know in advance how many of the seven constituency seats each party has won in the region where you live and vote. Naturally that is unlikely even with a crystal ball, and even making a reasonable guess is exceptionally difficult as you need to know how well each party is going to do, not just in your own constituency, but also in all the other constituencies in the region.
So the best advice to any pro-independence supporter for voting in the regional list is to give your vote to the pro-independence party you believe in, but only, and this is an important caveat, if you sincerely believe that party has a realistic chance of winning a seat. Tactical voting in the regional list vote is a waste of time.
Voting SNP in the constituency and in the regional list vote is categorically not a wasted vote. A wasted vote is a vote for a party with no chance of winning. The SNP can and does win seats in the regional list vote, as do the Scottish Greens. These are currently the only pro-independence parties with realistic prospects of winning seats at the next Holyrood election. The Scottish Socialists have never recovered from their disastrous schism and the fall out from Tommy Sheridan’s conviction for perjury. Alba has never managed to come within shouting distance of winning an election under its own banner. It is currently engaged in a bitter on-going internal feud and its sole MSP is semi-detached, this and its lamentable showing in a strongly Yes area in the recent West Dumbarton council by-election, suggest that Alba is not on track to win any seats in Holyrood in 2026.
It’s your vote and your choice, but the best that can be said for voting for Alba or one of the minor pro-independence parties on the regional list vote is that it will add to the total number of votes cast for pro-independence parties, but it won’t get more pro-independence MSPs elected, and it may even prevent the SNP or the Greens from picking up a seat.
It’s worth remembering that the only time the SNP won an absolute majority in Holyrood, in the 2011 Holyrood election, they did so after campaigning for voters to vote for them in both the constituency and the list votes. In that election the SNP won 69 seats, 53 out of the 73 constituency seats and a further 16 regional list seats. Those regional list seats were crucial to the party’s majority.
Given that according to opinion polling the SNP’s support is down on what it has been in previous years, the SNP picking up regional list seats will be vital if we are to retain a pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election and thus to have a Scottish Parliament with a pro-independence majority when there’s another Westminster general election and we are faced with the nightmare of Nigel Farage and his far right English nationalists winning the next Westminster election and forming the next UK Government. Scotland’s escape from that dystopia will depend upon having a strong pro-independence majority at Holyrood AND voting for a large majority of SNP MPs at the next Westminster general election. Given this, it makes it all the more important that the SNP picks up Holyrood seats in the regional list vote.
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