Jeremy's Den

04/04/2020

Sing A Song Of America

If the primates that we came from had known
That some day politicians would come out of the gene pool
They'd have stayed up in the trees
And written off evolution as a bad idea
Hell, I always thought the opposable thumb was overrated
(John Sheridan, Babylon 5: A Distant Star, 2259)

There is not much happening on the polling front in the UK right now, and what little happens is pretty depressing anyway, so this is as good a time as any to take a look at the events in the Former Colonies Of The Crown. 'Tis this time again, like every leap year, when the world braces itself for the Big American Election Circus, the one where everyone's fate is at stake from the White House's tenant to Daly City's dogcatchers. This year's Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd (that's American for 3 November). All 435 seats of the House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats so far are up for election, providing no more Senate special elections (that's American for by-elections) are triggered before Election Day. Gubernatorial elections will be held in 11 states and elections for the state legislature in 44 states. The latter are especially significant this year as the 2020 census is the start of the next redistricting cycle (that's American for Boundary Review). Redistricting is mandated by law to happen every ten years on the basis of census data and to be completed for the next elections, this time the 2022 midterms. All districts (that's American for constituencies) for the House of Representatives and state legislatures are to be redrawn, the sole obvious exception being the at-large seats for the six states that are entitled to only one Representative (and you already got it, that one is American for MP). In the USA this is a highly sensitive and politicized issue as redistricting is devolved to the states. In 36 states redistricting is processed by the state legislature and more often than not this results in heavy-handed gerrymandering. Two states use a 'political commission' outside the legislature and only six use a totally independent commission. So this year's elections will decide what the electoral maps for 2022-2030 look like.

There is no speculation in the USA about Covid-19 leading to rescheduling the elections, because it won't happen. Only the primaries and special elections due to be held before Election Day will possibly be impacted. Contrary to popular belief the date of the presidential election is not enshrined in the Constitution, only the process is. Article Two, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution devolves the responsibility of setting the date for Election Day to Congress and the famous 'Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November' (in plainer English, that's first Tuesday of November unless it also happens to be 1 November, in which case Election Day is moved to 8 November) is stipulated by law only since 1845. Before that it was pretty much a free for all with each state choosing their own dates as the election was held over a long period of time like in Medieval England, pre-1918. This law (Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 1 of the United States Code) has never been amended since and has fuck all chances of being amended any time soon as Inauguration Day, the day the President-elect assumes power (20 January since 1937, was 4 March before), is enshrined in the Constitution and can be changed only by a constitutional amendment that typically takes a year or more to ratify. A classic American legal oddity. More importantly the Constitution also states that the outgoing President's powers cease to exist at noon on 20 January. So it's pretty much loophole-proof and if everything goes tits up they would most probably resort to mandatory postal vote, as setting up a secure nationwide electronic voting system would take more than the few months remaining between an hypothetical full lockdown and Election Day. Postal voting is already fairly common and three states have already made it the only legal way to vote, to avoid the cost and bother of having to set up proper polling stations.

Before I start with the heavy stuff and all the charts, remember that colours are reversed in the Former Colonies Of The Crown, which is one of the lesser quirks of a country that uses 'short' tons that are neither tonnes nor tons and would be more appropriately called 'light' tons, if that makes any sense at all. And it's also the country where not just streets have no names, but districts don't have any either but just numbers. Anyway Republicans are red and Democrats are blue. Libertarians are yellow and Greens are surprisingly green, though it does not matter as neither bag enough votes to deserve their own line items in my stats. So they and the myriad of fringe candidates will be bundled as 'Others' and grey, because, ye ken, there are fifty shades of it.

Intelligence has nothing to do with politics
(Londo Mollari, Babylon 5: Point Of No Return, 2260)

You seek meaning? Then listen to the music, not the song
(Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5: Deathwalker, 2258)

The biggest headline material is of course the presidential election and at this moment the Democratic Party's primaries. The Republican primaries were just a formality as Donald Trump faced only token opposition and has already secured 94% of the primary vote and enough delegates to clinch the nomination at the Presidential Convention due to be held 24-27 August, Covid-19 permitting. The Democratic Party primary was a much more crowded affair with 29 candidates initially though only 11 ended up actually running (which, as you know, is American for standing). Then they fell like flies as the primaries went by until only two were left on 19 March: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. A lot has been said about Sanders being a socialist, which in the USA is something akin to 'atheist communist traitor to be exorcised immediately', but remember this is the USofA where Nigel Farage is considered mainstream right-wing. The closest approximation to Bernie's actual platform (that's American for manifesto) would be the SNP. No shit, Sherlock, just compare the Political Compass charts behind the links. Sanders is not even as far to the left as Corbyn's Labour was. And Biden would be something like a past-sell-date Ed Davey, which is as far to the left as you can go to be deemed 'electable' by the American MSM. As a starter, here is where both candidates stand right now after 30 states have already held their primaries:

Neither candidate has yet reached the 1,990 pledged delegates (those chosen in the primaries and committed to support a specific candidate) required to clinch the nomination on the Convention's first vote. But 1,677 pledged delegates remain to be chosen before primary season ends, so Biden needs less that half of these to get his majority. There is every indication he will get them and even more and will win the nomination on the Convention's first vote without any suspense. In the unlikely event of a massive Sanders surge that would deny Biden his majority, the Convention would go to a second vote where the pledged delegates for the other candidates are freed from their pledge and can switch to either of the finalists, and the superdelegates (the ex officio members selected from the Democratic Party's establishment) also get a vote. Both these categories would bring more support to Biden, so here it would end anyway. Forget what you saw in Season Six of The West Wing, you won't get a brokered convention as it would take at least three finalists anyway. So Biden will get to take on Trump head on, probably after also playing the 'Sanders unelectable' card during the last stages of the primary campaign. But nationwide polls paint a more nuanced picture, as the trends of the 2020 polling show:

Polls actually do show Biden doing better than Sanders but both still lead Trump by a significant enough margin, outside the polls' margin of error. But don't take that as a definitive prediction that Trump will bite the dust. Despite all what polls have to say now, the outcome of the election is a huge unknown. Will the divisive Democratic primary leave only some bruises or deep wounds? Will Biden's triangulation lead him to endorse some of Sanders's proposals? Will Trump's dismal handling of the Covid-19 emergency cost him votes in key states and key demographics? Knowing full well that the Christo-fascist demographic will support him no matter what because it's 'us and them' and 'them is unpatriotic'. Far-right propaganda blogs and Twitter trolls have already set the tone: Democrats are to blame for everything including Trump's U-turns and PR disasters. Won't end well. And even the current weighted average of the most recent polls is not that good for Democrats. Of course it shows both Biden and Sanders in the lead, but the projected results are definitely uncomfortably close to Clinton's performance in 2016, and anyway might move in unforeseen directions until early November.

Bear in mind too that nationwide presidential polls have to be taken with extreme caveats, even more than John Curtice can provide in his whole lifetime. The last batch of polls before the 2016 election credited Hillary Clinton with a 3%-4% lead over Donald Trump in the national popular vote and Democrats felt pretty confident she would win. In the end she won the popular vote by 2.1% and 2.9 million votes and lost the election. Because that's how this antique American invention known as the Electoral College works. Clinton actually lost the election by 77,744 votes out of nearly 137 million votes cast. That's Trump's total margin in three key states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) that Barack Obama had won in 2012 and would have taken Clinton just clear of the 270-vote hurdle in the Electoral College. The aggregate of state-level polls in the last week before the election had predicted that Clinton would win all three. Current state-level polling says only Michigan is realistically within reach of the Democrats but with only a tiny lead, with Sanders doing slightly better in Michigan and Wisconsin, and Biden doing slightly better in Pennsylvania. The massive paradox with the Electoral College is that Democrats could win the popular vote by a higher margin and still lose the election. Just imagine they increase their already solid margins in California, Illinois and New York and somewhat close the gap in Texas, Florida and Georgia but still lose them. Thus they could bag something like an extra 1.5 million votes and all these would be wasted votes as they would change fuck all in the Electoral College. Which is what projections based on state-by-state polling hint at right now:

The best extrapolation from state-level polls says that Biden would win, but not that convincingly, and Sanders would lose by a hair. But as usual there is more here than meets the eye at first glance. Biden would possibly gain Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio but lose New Hampshire. While Sanders would possibly gain only Michigan and Ohio and lose none. But all of Biden's possible gains definitely rate as Tossup (that's American for tied) so there is not yet a definitely clear path to victory for him. What Democrats actually need is to switch bigger key states like Florida and Pennsylvania, which Obama won twice and Clinton lost. But both now look like uphill battles and quite possibly totally out of reach. Even if Biden seems to have a stronger baseline and would destabilize Trump in more states than Sanders, odds still are he will fail in most if not all of the currently tied states and Trump will prevail pretty much the same way as four years ago.

The avalanche has already started
It is too late for the pebbles to vote
(Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5: Believers, 2258)

Sometimes, before you deal with a problem, you have to redefine it
There's no need to embarrass our leaders by pointing out the flaws on our side
That they're aware of and dealing with in their own way
Some people just enjoy finding fault with pur leaders
They're anarchists, troublemakers, or they're simply just unpatriotic
(Political Officer Julie Musante, Babylon 5: Voices Of Authority, 2260)

This year's Big Thing, next to the presidential election, is the swarm of Senate elections. 35 seats are up (33 scheduled 'Class 2' seats and 2 special elections) with 23 Republican incumbents and 12 Democrats. These seats were last up in 2014 when the Democrats lost nine seats and control of the Senate. All this has led to wishful speculation that Democrats might retake the Senate this year. Of course there are limits to this line of reasoning. The most obvious one is that these same seats had been up for election earlier in 2008, the year of Obama's first election and an excellent one for Democrats down-ballot, even in notionally Republican-leaning states. So some sort of backlash was to be expected in 2014, though the actual results looked like overkill, and changes in voting patterns over the last six years make it likely that 2020 won't be another golden year for Democrats. Here is my current assessment of the 35 races, based in part on the punditry's views and in part on state-level polls. The nine seats lost by Democrats in 2014 are in bold italics:

It appears right now that only Colorado can realistically be gained back by Democrats, with North Carolina a more distant possibility. Democrats also have a few less obvious opportunities for pickups (that's American for gains, and also a variety of cars, but that's a different story). Arizona is the most likely, for the seat that was once held by the late John McCain. Here the evolving demographics favour Democrats but they will have to rely on a strong GOTV drive targeting Hispanic voters, usually a low-turnout category. Democrats are optimistic about this because that's how they already gained Arizona's other Senate seat in 2018, which had been in Republican hands since 1994. What will also help Democrats is that their candidate Mark Kelly has huge name recognition as a former astronaut and now a popular author, while Republican candidate and outgoing Senator Martha McSally was appointed to the seat after McCain's death, not elected, and has a history of losing elections more often than winning them. Four-term veteran Susan Collins of Maine is also in the danger zone in a Democrat-leaning state. Collins has a strong record as a 'moderate Republican', which is somewhat to the left of Gengis Khan, but her unwavering support for Trump during the impeachment proceedings might well seal her fate with a slightly left-of-center and independent-minded electorate. Another upset Democratic gain could happen in Kansas, allowing for a serious serendipity factor. Republicans lost the incumbency bonus here with four-term veteran Pat Roberts retiring. Republican candidate Kris Kobach is also kind of an extremist even by Trumpian standards and already lost the Governor's election to a Democrat in 2018. Moreover a Democrat-backed independent nearly caused an upset in this very same seat in 2014, cutting the Republican lead by more than half on the previous election in 2008. So here's my current take on the possible outcomes of these Senate elections:

The 'Democrats Max' option, though not the most likely outcome, would in fact mean Democrats taking back control of the Senate as the two Independent Senators caucus with the Democrats (that's 'take the Democratic whip' in Westminster English). Of course we also are on shifting ground here as Senate races are always highly personalized and a massive opportunity for candidates' past sins to come back and fuck them in the arse. There is also a massive downpour of corporate funding in these elections, especially as there is no such thing as dark money in American elections since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. The 2018 Senate elections cost about 1.1 billion dollars, that's some 30.8 million dollars per seat or 24.9 million pounds at current exchange rate. The 2018 House of Representatives elections cost 1.7 billion dollars overall, 3.8 million dollars per seat or 3.1 million pounds. Just for comparison the full cost of the UK's 2019 general election was about 45 million pounds, or the equivalent of 1.8 US Senate seat or 14.4 US House seats. Also campaign spending in the UK is capped at £30k per candidate, and most candidates don't even use that much as actual spending is about £70k per constituency, while in the USA campaign money grows on magic corporate money trees and the floodgates are permanently open, you just have to ask. Quite mind boggling, isn't it? Finally there is one Senate race that isn't on the radars yet but could soon be: Texas. After all Biden-Democrat Beto O'Rourke came within 2.5% of unseating Christo-fascist Republican Ted Cruz for Texas's other Senate seat in 2018, and Texas's demographics are evolving in favour of Democrats just like Arizona's. So pundits will definitely be looking for advance warnings of a possible most unexpected upset there. Polls don't foresee it happening right now, but you never know....

With our basic freedoms at stake, no response can be too extreme
There may be some minor and temporary abridgments
In the traditionally protected areas of speech and association
But only until this crisis is over
It is going to take the efforts of every loyal citizen to keep us safe
Eternal vigilance is the price for freedom
(Political Officer Julie Musante, Babylon 5: Voices Of Authority, 2260)

Additional music: Tony Kaye, Chris Squire, 1971

The universe is run by the interweaving of three elements
Energy, matter and enlightened self-interest
(Ambassador G'Kar, Babylon 5: Survivors, 2258)

Last but not least, the House of Representatives elections for all 435 seats. Five seats are currently vacant and four special elections will be held in late April, May and June. Looks like a waste of taxpayers' money so close to the general election but, ye ken, no taxation without representation. And there has been worse some times in the past with both a special election and the regularly scheduled election for the same seat being held simultaneously on Election Day. Meaning the winner of the special election sat only on the proverbial lame-duck session between Election Day and the swearing in of the new Congress on 3 January, and the winner of the regular election sat on the next Congress. In most cases the same person won both elections but, believe it or not, it has happened, and not just once, that the two elections were won by different candidates. Last such case was in Michigan in 2018 when Democrats won both the special and the general in the 13th District, but oddly had selected different candidates for each election. But there also have been cases in the past were one party won the special and the other won the general in the same district. American logic. Right now, the trends of polls since the beginning of the year are definitely favourable to the Democrats, and the current weighted average of the six most recent polls confirms it.

Interestingly the current projection of voting intentions is strikingly similar to the result of the 2018 elections, pretty much the same situation we have with presidential polls. This is based on nationwide generic polls which have been criticized in some cases as unreliable because of regional discrepancies in voting patterns, but many pollsters rely on much larger samples that is usual in other countries, to account for the much larger electorate. Democrats might also benefit from a serendipity factor here as more Republican Congressmen-women (that's the other American wording for MPs) are standing down than Democratic ones, so Republicans lose the incumbency bonus in about three times as many seats as Democrats, many of them being fortuitously marginal seats in states where the demographics favour Democrats like Georgia or Texas. The seat projections, based on my usual mix of uniform and proportional swings, show very little change from the outgoing House. Democrats are predicted to gain four seats: one each in Georgia, Minnesota, New York and Texas. Republicans would gain only one seat, and this would be only a virtual gain, for a seat in Michigan currently held by an independent who was elected as a Republican and later left the party in opposition to Trump's policies. Even the lower end of the projections, which looks unlikely on the basis of current polling, would still deliver a Democratic majority. The solid Democratic lead in the popular vote also seriously dampens the effects of gerrymandering, which is much more common in Republican states, and in some cases would probably totally annul them. As I stressed in an earlier post about Boundary Reviews in the UK, gerrymandering is far from an exact science and even the most heavy-handed examples can backfire.

But dummymandering is not the only case where supposedly astute gerrymandering goes tits up. An ad absurdum case of gerrymandering led to an unprecedented situation in Pennsylvania in 2018. The Republican gerrymander of the state's districts was so atrocious that it was struck down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in January 2018 and a new more neutral map was drawn for use at the general election. And that's where the fun starts. Two special elections were held on Election Day and had by law to be fought on the old court-annulled map while the general election was fought on the new map. So two Representatives were elected in the specials for districts that de facto no longer existed except for the duration of the lame-duck session, and both were simultaneously elected for different districts based on the new map. Only in America.....

But even stranger things can happen if one of the candidates dies before Election Day, which sadly cannot be ruled out this year. You'd think the obvious thing to do is for the deceased's party to select another candidate and move on. But it doesn't always happen that way. If the 'event' is too close to Election Day (within four weeks in most states, but can be up to six weeks, or more practically if the ballot papers have already been printed) then we get another Great American Success Story: the dead person is not replaced and their name stays on the ballot so the electorate can knowingly vote for a corpse, and sometimes elect them. Of course something has to be done then and you guessed it: a special election and the fun starts again..... The only case I haven't seen covered is one of the presidential candidates dying, but then I guess it would trigger the 25th Amendment. The Vice-President-elect would be sworn in as President and then nominate his own VP. And here we land in the alternate reality where everybody would sorely miss Trump as Mike Pence would then become President and he is an even worse shithead.

But, as they say, God only knows....

The future is all around us
Waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation
No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us
We know only that it is always born in pain
(Ambassador G'Kar, Babylon 5: The Hour Of The Wolf, 2261)

Additional music: David O'List, Keith Emerson, 1968

Prophecy is a guess that comes true
When it doesn't, it's a metaphor
(Vir Cotto, Babylon 5: The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, 2262)

So, to wrap it up, here's my prophecy for today: this year's elections will not alter the balance of power and will end up as an odd mix of the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 mid-terms for Congress. And of course I will have a different one next time I tell you something about the USA, as we get closer to Election Day and new batches of polls totally contradict the ones we have today.

Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination hands down on the first ballot with about 2,300 delegates.

Joe Biden wins the popular vote by 3%, but gains only Arizona and Michigan while losing New Hampshire. Donald Trump gets re-elected 283-255 by the Electoral College.

Democrats over-perform polls and stage a few upsets in the House of Representatives elections. They keep control of the House with a slightly increased majority, 245-190.

Republicans succeed in mobilizing their base in Senate elections and lose only Arizona and Colorado, while taking back the Alabama seat they lost only by inadvertence in 2017. Senate stays under Republican control 52-48.

Be seeing you.....

Without the hope that things will get better
That our inheritors will know a world that is fuller and richer than our own
Life is pointless and evolution is vastly overrated
(Satai Delenn, Babylon 5: A Voice In The Wilderness, 2258)

Woodstock arrangement by Jimi Hendrix, 1969

20/03/2020

The Scottish Play - Act I Of MMXX

It's shite being Scottish
We're the lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking Earth
The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization
Some people hate the English, I don't, they're just wankers
We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers
Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by
We're ruled by effete arseholes, it's a shite state of affairs to be in
And all the fresh air in the world won't make a fucking difference
(Ewan McGregor as Mark "Rent Boy" Renton, Trainspotting, 1996)

For some time now, Nicola Sturgeon has accustomed us to what the French call douche écossaise (which technically is what English speakers would call 'contrast bath therapy'): alternating episodes of finely calculated boldness and extreme legalistic caution. But boldness seemed to have become more frequent in recent times. Which is why I had high hopes for her Dynamic Earth Announcement on Brexit Day and I suppose I should only blame myself for setting the bar too high. But on the other hand I can't help reaching the conclusion that it was a massively missed opportunity as there were a couple of ways to poke the English bulldog and challenge them to call our bluff. With Nicola speaking on a symbolic day and the Referendums Act 2020 having received Royal Assent just two days before, it was not extravagant to expect a game-changing proposal. And then there was none and many felt let down by her failure to endorse an alternate strategy to the SNP's Plan A. In a way we are lucky that Boris Johnson did not accept Plan A (granting a Section 30 Order) because, if he had, there would probably have been enough strings attached to fit the Edinburgh University Symphony for a whole season, and the terms would have made the 1979 Devolution Referendum look like a shining example of true democracy. Then the predictable failure of Plan A should have been an incentive to move on and boldly go where no FM had gone before. As King Solomon and Pete Seeger said, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose....

As I see it Brexit Day was definitely the time to raise the bar and explicitly support Joanna Cherry's Plan B: pass a motion in Scottish Parliament to hold a consultative referendum and wait for the English Government to challenge it in court. But then who would seriously expect Nicola to endorse Joanna's proposals? The various incarnations of the Scotland Act never explicitly ruled out a non-binding referendum being held without a Section 30 Order so it is definitely worth trying, and I venture we have even odds of it being validated by the Court of Session. And anyway not trying because you fear it might fail is not a valid option when there are strong hints it might succeed if you tried. Even Chris McEleny now backs down on his earlier self-billed Plan B, which in my opinion was never a plan at all as it would have been dangerously close to UDI, and grudgingly endorses the 'Cherry Option' as the real Plan B. Interestingly YouGov's last Scottish poll (which does not include voting intentions) shows that 49% of respondents support the 'Cherry Option' while 51% want a Section 30 Order. Their most significant finding is that 40% of Labour voters, 20% of LibDem voters and even 5% of Conservative voters support the 'Cherry Option'. Also 55% of respondents think IndyRef2 should happen within five years, including 12% of Conservatives, 48% of Labour and 35% of LibDems. Food for thought for the Unionist party leaders. But support for holding the referendum does not (yet?) translate into the same level of support for Independence, as the most recent polls show a statistical tie between Yes and No.

The summary above is the weighted average of the last four polls, all conducted after the general election and the last one after Brexit Day. Admittedly YouGov's poll does not use the standard 2014 question but it is close enough, in my view, to be considered valid and included in the sample. At least it is not as massively and deliberately misleading as previous Scotland In Union 'polls' were. No surprise in these results as Independence is still a work in progress, we all know that without needing a poll to hammer it home, unlike Gordon Brown who reads Scotland's state of mind from YouGov surveys. Now more than ever, every contribution is welcome and I fully support the view that AUOB's marches for Indy are a key component of our March To Indy and do gain us votes, notwithstanding some sour souls wanting us to believe otherwise. Of course you might want to forget about Kenny MacAskill's arrogant dismissal of the marches and hope that he shuts the fuck up but it is not to be. Expect to hear more from Maverick Kenny in all Scottish fish-wrappers as time goes by because, ye ken, nothing screams 'great clickbait' louder than some juicy Sturgeon-bashing delivered in a condescending tone. Ironically massive coverage of Covid-19 has saved us from lots of bullshit about IndyRef2 during Alex Salmond's trial, but it does not invalidate the new media rule that says 'every Salmond is deemed guilty until proven innocent' and the English common wisdom that any SNP member doing a bad thing is conclusive evidence that Independence is bad. Worst part here being of course that some within the SNP and the broader Yes movement have ulterior motives that will make that sort of cooshite sound credible.

General election prospects look good right now for the SNP though we haven't had any dedicated Scottish poll since the election. But subsamples of UK-wide polls, as always to be handled with the utmost Curticean caveats, have the SNP on 45%-50% of voting intentions, as good or better than the December election. The question now is what will happen to the other parties' votes. I think the major flaw in my esteemed colleague James Kelly's and others' approach is the implicit core belief that the Unionist vote is genetically engineered to coalesce around the Scottish Conservatives. I believed that for a while too and there is a paper trail in my blog to prove it. But the results of the December election and the Scottish subsamples of the 2020 polls prove this wrong, at least at this moment. Boris Johnson will definitely not be happy with Jackson Carlaw. Poor things.

Just look at the numbers. From the 2017 election to the current polls, the left-wing bloc (Greens, SNP and Labour) is stable on 64-65% while the right-wing bloc bags 34-35%. The election results and current polling show movement within each camp and hardly any crossover from one camp to the other. The Conservatives lost ground to the LibDems at the 2019 general election, most probably as the Brexit Effect, and have not fully recovered since. Labour fared poorly at the general election and now do even worse in polls because a significant number of pro-Indy Labour voters have switched to the SNP. Current Scottish Parliament polling goes pretty much in the same direction. We have had two Holyrood polls this year: one from Survation for Progress Scotland, conducted 20-22 January, and one from Panelbase for Scot Goes Pop, conducted 28-31 January. Both also polled a future Independence Referendum (see above). So here are the voting intentions and my seat projections for both polls and their weighted average, and how the average projection compares with the 2016 results by region (click on the images for larger and clearer versions):

Interestingly the Panelbase poll is as close as we can possibly get to 'Both Votes SNP' with only a 3% gap between the two votes, and it does not hurt the Greens as the combined vote for pro-Indy parties is significantly up on the 2016 results. Another result worth highlighting is that there is no 'Unionist Coalescence' around the Tories here either. The best case for the Conservatives in Scotland is in fact their Holyrood vote aligning with their Westminster vote, something we have already seen earlier for other parties, and it can't be labelled an outstanding success whichever spin you put on it. But even that would be a startling achievement for Conservatives in Scotland, seeing how most of their lot couldn't find their own arse even with a hunting dog and a Ouija board. Then of course the most important point here is that both polls predict an outright majority for the SNP and a strengthened pro-Independence majority. The pro-Indy majority would even be stronger than after the historic 2011 election which defeated the in-built purpose of AMS for the first and so far only time. This clearly hints at the best strategy for the SNP: gain and keep pro-Indy Labour voters and go strongly after the Conservatives especially in their weakest seats. The last three Labour-held seats are definitely predicted to fall and the Tory-held Ayr and Edinburgh Central (more on this one later) are the next most likely gains, with Oliver Mundell's Dumfriesshire seat also quite close to the immediate danger zone. Then the SNP should have a selective strategy for the regional votes. Actively pursuing Both Votes SNP might be futile and even counter-productive in some cases but it's definitely worth trying in some regions (more on this later). Let's hope Sturgeon Central will weigh all the options and not flunk it. Anyway here is the breakdown of seats by region as projected from the weighted average of our two polls, with some interesting upsets on the list seats thanks to the unfathomably odd workings of AMS:

The next Holyrood campaign will have some predictable moments. Even the atheists within the SNP will pray that nobody brings up the Gender Recognition Act during the campaign but of course everybody will and expect the media to make good clickbait out of it. Labour will campaign against holding Indyref2. Labour will campaign for holding IndyRef2. Jackson Carlaw will do his best to convince us the Conservatives are not a single-issue party so he will have two. First will be 'No To IndyRef2'. This one has been asked and answered already but it does not hurt to try again, or does it? Trying thrice and expecting a different result would be a sign of madness, trying twice will be just a sign of daftness. Then of course he will make all sorts of points about the alleged managerial incompetence of the Scottish Government. Which is a bit rich coming from a lad who supports an English Government ready to waste billions on HS-To-Nowhere and the Portpatrick-Larne-Euphemism, and who contemplates scrapping NHS England's targets because they're chronically unable to meet them. Does Union Jackson really think we all just fell off a turnip cart? Surely he must if he believes Scotland will elect a First Minister whose last two forays into the private sector ended in administration. Then of course that whole line of attack might totally fall flat on its face when people consider the way the Scottish Government handled the Covid-19 emergency, and even Jackson might find it awkward to stick to these talking points after he expressed his trust in ScotGov's ability to handle the crisis. Bugger. But the best part is bound to be Jo Swinson's newfound love for hustings on the 7B to Kelty. Will she play it as 'FM Jo', seeing how successful her 'PM Jo' persona was? Will she have her Nicolson Moment telling amazed voters 'I am the only one who can beat the SNP here in East Dunbartonshire'? Sorry John, couldn't resist; Again. Then of course the main campaign guideline should be the SNP living up to the polls and making this election yet another resounding success. Yes We Can.

Of course I have a few things to say about the SNP's new self-inflicted mess: the Edinburgh Central selection fight between Angus Robertson and Joanna Cherry. Long ago when Angus and Joanna both started sending smoke signals that they contemplated standing in Central, I suggested a possible way out of the shambles, with one of them standing in Central and the other in the neighbouring Southern where incumbent Daniel Johnson is squarely in the danger zone thanks to Labour's dismal performance in the latest Holyrood polls. I did not say it explicitly but the idea was Joanna For Central and Angus For Southern. But it won't happen as both are stuck on Central Or Bust, and the Joannistas have effectively blocked an alternate solution anyway with Catriona MacDonald now seeking selection in Southern. The sad side of the whole bùrach is that it was never about who could best represent their constituents but always about the SNP's ongoing internecine feud, 'that or a fight among themselves' as the late DCI Jim Taggart once said: Eckites vs Nicolistas and now the 'woke lobby vs TERFs' inflammatory arguments have quite expectedly barged in to spice up the broth. Turf war turned into TERF war if you allow me my Lousy Joke Of The Week here, and everybody will get hurt.

In the grander scheme of things what is happening here is in fact pretty transparent: Joanna launches Stage One of her leadership challenge to Nicola and for this she needs to sit in Holyrood; then the SNP's establishment launch their preemptive counter-strike with Angus hastily announcing his candidacy. And it's already getting nasty. And it's gonna hurt. Since this is now primary season in the USA, I suggest the SNP's spads sit back and consider what happened in past American primaries. The divisive Democratic primary between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy in 1980 paved the way for Ronald Reagan's election. Later a bitter Republican primary between George Bush I and Pat Buchanan in 1992 drove millions of Republican voters to switch their allegiance to Ross Perot and got Bill Clinton elected on just 43% of the popular vote. The latter might well provide the blueprint for the forthcoming election in Central, just factor in the Green Punks again fielding a vanity candidate there and snatching enough disgruntled SNP voters, and whichever goat with a blue rosette (insert Miles Briggs here) bags the seat. When it happens, remember you read it here first before equally cursing both Joanna and Angus.

Against this background, I think the SNP's internal politics have reached a new level of absurdity. The outcome of the next Holyrood election, and possibly the very future of the party, might very well depend on how we feel about gender self-identification. Forget independence, Brexit, immigration, NHS, taxes and all that stuff. It's Woke vs TERF that defines us now, let that sink in. Of course peak absurdity was reached on Saturday with that totally moronic idea that sitting MPs should be banned from standing for a Holyrood seat. There's nothing even remotely principled about this, on top of the zillion reasons why only someone with an IQ below room temperature could have come up with such nonsense. It's 100% personal, a one-shot gun aimed squarely at Joanna Cherry. Besides it's not like there is no precedent, both Alex Salmond and John Swinney stood for a Holyrood seat and won while being MPs, Big Eck even did it twice. And both spent years double-jobbing while Joanna has already pledged she would resign her Westminster seat if elected to Holyrood.

As I write this we still don't know for sure if it was ever for real as it was in fact never tabled at the SNP's NEC, or if it was just a trial balloon from An Anonymous Source At Bute House, re-imagined by an over-zealous journalist at The National harbouring massive ulterior motives of her own. Either way it's appalling to see how many people were ready to endorse it without thinking it through, simply because they have been brainwashed into believing Joanna Cherry is Evil Incarnate. And they don't even realize that there are now three to six Unionist seats that rate as eminently gainable, and de facto nine SNP open seats (seven 'officials' plus Derek MacKay and Mark MacDonald), so ample room for everyone including all other sitting MSPs, all newcomers willing to stand, and the possibly two or three MPs contemplating a Holyrood candidacy. Sad times indeed for a once truly open-minded and enlightened party. And I won't even start questioning Nicola Sturgeon's own ulterior motives as I would then have to ask who has become Nicola's Dominic Cummings.

Finally we have the new breed of elephants in the room, or dead cats on the table depending on your perspective: the pro-independence New Party(ies) competing with the SNP and Greens for the regional lists vote. John Hutchison from Fort William recently wrote to the National asking for someone to do the math and I'm happy to oblige. George Kerevan in his Notional column has steadily advocated the creation of such a party. So I must first address a major flaw in George's approach: that the New Party could snatch up to 150k 'wasted' list votes from the SNP without damaging the SNP's or the Greens' prospects for list seats. This is clearly first-class delusion and is definitely not how AMS actually works, and George obviously knows it but won't admit it as it would wreck his whole point that the New Party would bag pro-Indy seats on top of those already bagged by the SNP and the Greens. It's fairly easy to simulate such a scenario, all it takes is to replay the 2016 election with the New Party on 6.5% and the SNP on 35.2% of the list vote in any simulation engine, with the constituency votes and all other parties' list votes unchanged, and see what happens. Which would be SNP 61 seats, New Party 8 seats, Greens 3 seats, Conservatives 28 seats, Labour 24 seats, LibDems 5 seats. So the pro-Independence majority would be stronger by three seats but the New Party would have snatched three from the Greens, two from the SNP and only three from the Conservatives. George should have thought this through and done the math himself before writing that line. It can be easily done with Election Polling, you just have to use the 'Brexit Party' slot to simulate the New Party.

Of course I tried more elaborate options based on the 2016 results and how the New Party could have impacted them. First assumption is that the New Party would not actually have come out of the blue but that an embryonic New Party already existed with some minor lists representing 'alternative pro-Independence' views (Solidarity, RISE, Scottish Libertarians) despite their ideological differences on other issues. Here we have an hypothetical baseline of 26,930 votes or 1.18% of votes cast. Then I simulated nine options numbered from 3a to 6c meaning the New Party would progress from the baseline to 3%, 4%, 5% and finally 6% with the added votes coming from different sources including both other parties and abstentionists. So here are my scenarios with a breakdown of the hypothetical New Party votes by origin and then the resulting number of votes by party with the increased turnout shown by the labels on top. Of course only the changes in the list vote are shown here as it is understood the New Party would not stand in the constituencies, and all figures are in kvotes.

Then here is how these numbers of votes translate into shares of the popular vote for a more direct comparison with the 2016 results. In these scenarios the New Party's votes would not be evenly spread across all regions as their theoretical baseline is not. They would have a peak in Glasgow and lows in the North East and South, while Central and West would be the closest to their national average. Remember that the most successful 'alternative pro-Indy' list ever at the national level, the Scottish Socialist Party, were basically a Two Hit Wonder. They bagged 2% of the national vote and one seat in 1999 thanks to a 7.2% peak vote share in Glasgow, then 6.7% of the national vote and six seats in 2003, and then lost almost all the votes and all the seats in 2007 and were never seen again in Holyrood. Uncoincidentally my simulations for the hypothetical New Party are not very far from what the real-world SSP achieved at their peaks.

Final step is of course my seat projections for the various options and how they translate in number of seats for the Pro-Indy Bloc vs the Unionist Bloc. The results show that the supporters of a New Party in 2021 should be more careful what they wish for. The twisted AMS we have in Scotland works in wildly mysterious ways and getting votes does not mean you will get seats. And it may even be counter-productive if some of your votes are snatched from other parties with whom you supposedly share a common vision. Then you might object that the results would be different if the New Party relied more heavily on abstentionists finding their way back to the polling places, and less on other parties' voters making different choices. But remember George Kerevan's alternate scenario did not even include abstentionists but just the SNP's 'wasted votes' and it did not turn out to be better than my own approach. And even if the New Party drew all their votes from abstentionists, it would still reduce the other parties' share of the votes, which is in the end the deciding factor in the allocation of list seats, rather than the number of votes. QED.

The conclusion is quite clear: if the New Party is anywhere between 3% and 5%, which seems like a reasonably credible scenario, they actually weaken the pro-Indy camp. And even in the not-so-likely case where they reach 6%, most of the New Party's seats would be taken away from the SNP and the Greens and not from the Unionist parties. Whichever way you crunch the numbers, it delivers similar results. Food for thought. Especially as an 'alternative pro-Independence' option already exists: SNP in the constituencies and Greens on the regional lists. My own position here has evolved since 2016 as I am no longer convinced 'Both Votes SNP' is the right strategy. Rather it has to be a case-by-case approach similar to tactical voting. It is reasonable to assume the SNP will hold all their constituency seats and possibly gain some (see current polling above) so the choice becomes between 'Both Votes SNP' in regions where the SNP can bag list seats (that would be South, Highland and Islands and possibly North East) and a split SNP-Greens vote in other regions where the infamous AMS means the SNP has fuck all chances at bagging a list seat while the Greens can (Glasgow, West, Central and Lothian). And the next Holyrood polls will tell us more about the most efficient way to maximize the number of pro-Indy MSPs without resorting to extreme counter-productive options.

I also replayed the simulations on the weighted average of the last two Holyrood polls I mentioned earlier, which are more favourable for the Yes camp than the 2016 election, just to check if starting from a higher baseline would alter the results. Spoiler alert: it doesn't. But let's go through all stages anyway. The underlying hypotheticals have to be somewhat different as we have no real data here and current polling shows that the voting intentions for 'alternative pro-Indy' lists are basically 0%. So my 3a to 6c scenarios now factor in the New Party snatching virtual votes from the left-wing parties in different combinations. So here we go with Stage 1 and Stage 2, the breakdown of the hypothetical New Party vote by origin and the resulting list vote shares for all parties:

On these numbers the pro-Independence parties would still bag a stronger majority than in 2016 as the polls are really favourable. But it still could be reduced if the New Party stays in the low-to-mid range of hypotheticals on 3-5%. And again their best simulated result would see them taking away more seats from the other pro-Indy parties than from the Unionist parties. Stage 3 and Stage 4 below, the projected breakdown of seats by party and for Indy vs Union blocs in my nine hypothetical options:

In case you missed it, the most significant result here is that the New Party's first and constant impact would be to deprive the SNP of a majority, though they would be just one seat short. This is most probably what the New Party supporters actually wish for as weakening the SNP is not even an ulterior motive here but a fairly transparently obvious one. Then I expect even the most rabid Independence purists can understand that weakening the SNP, no matter how bad we feel about their shortcomings, would be handing out oven-ready ammunition to the Unionists in Westminster to deny Scotland our right to self-determination for all of eternity. So be careful what you wish for even if my Evil Twin whispers to my ear that the SNP already do a pretty good job at undermining themselves anyway.

Of course all this does not directly cover the hypothetical so-called 'Wings Party', which might be a credible alternate option if Stu Campbell had anything serious in mind beyond his fifteen minutes of the news cycle, and had not already alienated part of the Yes camp through his arrogance and questionable stance on some issues other than independence. I think the Wings Party would totally fail to attract voters from the radical left parties and would have to rely on a smaller voter base consisting mainly of discontent 'soft SNP' or 'soft Green' voters and possibly a few from Labour. So his possible performance would be somewhere in the low-to-middle range of my simulations on some 3-4%. Exactly where the 'alternative pro-Indy' strategy backfires and ends up hurting the Yes camp. Of course you may think I'm a wee smitch biased here and that the Wings Party would fare better, but I honestly fail to see how unless enough voters prove to be as thick as your granny's soup and fall for the cunning tricks of a lad whose first priority will always be to demean the SNP. Then strangest things have been known to happen, haven't they? Now it's up to the SNP to make their case, though I'll be more than happy to lend a hand occasionally. One key point is that Scotland definitely needs one big pro-Independence party, no matter how the smaller pro-Indy parties fare, because safety is in numbers, it's as simple as that.

There are very few cases in history, if any, where splinter groups actually helped The Cause. Here some would probably argue that we had such a case in Scotland: Margo MacDonald's independent candidacies in Lothian from 2003 to 2011. Then I would counter-argue that she was standing quite clearly against the SNP. No matter how much respect we have for her and her integrity, outwith the conspiracy theories, she was definitely not trying to help. Not the Scottish Government, that is. Margo's electoral history also gives some clues about the sort of voters' coalition an alternate pro-Indy New Party would need. She initially got significant support from discontent SNP fundamentalists and some from the radical left but failed to attract Greenish voters as the Greens did significantly better in Lothian than nationwide at every Holyrood election. Then she lost SNPish voters both in 2007 and 2011, probably because they felt strengthening the SNP government was more important than making a point about the path to independence, and she came dangerously close to the de facto threshold for a list seat. And the lack of a proper 'alternative pro-Indy' candidate in Lothian after her death clearly helped the Greens more than any other list as the radical left(s) qualified for endangered species status. The history of Margo's political adventure also shows that the 'alternative pro-Indy left' needs an iconic and preferably charismatic figure on the leaflets, and I doubt Colette Walker could ever be 2021's Margo MacDonald.

That's it for now. The game has just begun and the juicy bits are yet to come, so stay tuned.

Taggart: International? Scotland is not good enough for Edinburgh?
In Glasgow we don't put things on periscopes
Livingstone: Aye.... people would knock them off
(Mark McManus and Neil Duncan in Taggart, episode Death Call, 1986)

25/02/2020

The Great Gerrymander of 2020?

223 years ago today the Last Invasion of Britain was repealed at the battle of Fishguard and it's also Ed Balls's 53th birthday and Dominic Raab's 46th

It was a dark and stormy night, the rain fell in torrents except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (though it is not in London that our scene lied), and it had been ten weeks since the election, with nine new polls showing the Conservatives leading by 17% average. No buyers' remorse here, contrary to what happened in 2017 when we had eighteen polls in the first ten weeks after the election, sixteen of them with Labour leading by about 4% average. So it looked like as good a time as any to go back to another and possibly game-changing election issue. A year ago I discussed the impact the Sixth Periodic Boundary Review would have had on the 2017 election results. The proposed boundary changes were never sent to Parliament and never implemented, so the 2019 general election was fought on the same boundaries as in 2010, 2015 and 2017. These boundaries are the result of the Fifth Periodic Review that was held between 2000 and 2007. The obvious conclusion here is that these boundaries no longer reflect the current distribution of the electorate, so some sort of boundary changes is both legitimate and necessary. Then the real question remains the same as last year: would a seemingly neutral boundary review result in massive gerrymandering in favour of the Conservative Party? The obvious answer is that we don't know as there is every reason to believe the 2018 review will never be implemented and the Government will request another set of proposals before acting on the matter. But there is also every reason to believe that new proposals would not be massively different from the previous ones, as the Conservatives have a vested interest in passing a very similar set of boundaries, and their massive majority allows them to do just that. So it is quite legitimate to start by assessing how the proposed 2018 boundaries would have influenced the result of the 2019 election. Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus has published the full notional results for the 2017 election on the initial proposals published in 2016, and the 2019 election on the slightly amended final proposals published in 2018, and I will rely on his data.

The Guardian recently published a reader's letter arguing that first-past-the-post (FPTP) is rigged in favour of Labour. The problem is that the alleged 'evidence' here is based on past elections that were fought on different boundaries and voting patterns, so it basically proves fuck all. What the letter totally misses is that FPTP favours the winning party no matter who they are, and also that the winner's vote share is just one factor. The winner's lead over the second party is just as important, if not more, and the different sizes of majorities are also the result of how the battleground seats (those with the closest results at the previous election) behave under any national swing from one party to the other. Recent results definitely go that way. The Conservatives bagged 48.8% of the seats on 42.3% of the vote in 2017, and then 56.2% of the seats on 43.6% of the vote in 2019. While Labour bagged 40.3% on 40.0% of the vote in 2017, and then 31.1% on 32.2% of the vote in 2019. What the numbers actually say is that FPTP delivered a 42-seat bonus for the Conservatives in 2017 and an 82-seat bonus in 2019, compared to what proportional representation (PR) would have returned. A higher Conservative lead, flawed boundaries and unexpected upsets in marginal seats definitely played a part here and the hypothetical implementation of the proposed 2018 boundaries would only have made it worse. Here are the actual and notional results for the 2017 and 2019 elections, as there is an alternate reality somewhere where the initial proposals were used for May's failed snap election of 2017 and decisively changed the outcome, and the final proposals were enacted for the 2019 snap election and only made an awful result even worse.

In 2017 the new boundaries would have changed the result from Conservatives 9 seats short of a majority to an 16-seat Conservative majority, and in 2019 the Conservative majority would have risen from 80 to 104 seats. So a gerrymandering bonus of 25ish seats for the Conservatives, the biggest notional change since the Third Periodic Review that was implemented for the 1983 election and would have delivered 20 more Conservative seats if its boundaries had been used for the 1979 election. Other Periodic Reviews conducted after 1945 notionally displaced fewer than 10 seats and not always towards the winner of the previous election. Moreover this would have been a massively symbolically significant victory for the Tories as they would have bagged more than twice as many seats as Labour, an exceptional occurrence in the last 75 years. Even the Attlee landslide and the Thatcher landslide did not deliver a similar result (though Attlee missed it by just two seats), only the Blair landslides did. The comparison of vote shares with shares of seats at the last two elections also clearly shows how gerrymandering would distort the results one step beyond the usual FPTP distortion.

Of course the impact of gerrymandering is quite different in Scotland as FPTP massively helps the SNP here, but the changed voting patterns between 2017 and 2019 also deliver some surprising results. The altered boundaries would have worked quite as intended in 2017, protecting both the Conservatives and Unionist Labour while hurting the SNP. Also hurting the Liberal Democrats was probably seen as acceptable, yet not really unwelcome, collateral damage. The situation would have been quite different in 2019, similar to what Americans call dummymandering, one that helps the gerrymanderer at a specific point in time but bites him in the arse when voting patterns change. The main reason why it can happen is when many seats in a given area are marginals and gerrymandering can't significantly lower the number of such seats, a well known situation in Scotland where even smallish swings can switch many seats and bigger swings even more. So the tory dummymandering of Scotland would have increased the SNP's share of seats in 2019 from 80% to 87% and I'm not even counting Neale Hanvey as SNP here though he obviously is in anything but official denomination.

Now it's worth having a closer look at the Scottish Gerrymander. But first bear in mind that the Boundary Review rests on two major principles: reduce the number of seats stretching over several Council areas, draw new seats based on 'community of interest'. The Scottish Gerrymander dismally fails the first test: 47 old seats were fully within one Council area and only 34 new seats do, 11 old seats stretched over two Council areas and 17 new ones do, just one old seat stretched over three Council areas and two new ones do. Then you might wonder what the actual 'community of interests' between Polbeth and Sighthill is, as both would be part of the new Livingston and Edinburgh Pentland constituency which covers a small southwestern part of Edinburgh City Council and a large southeastern part of West Lothian Council, while its predecessor seats (Livingston and Edinburgh South West) were both within one Council area. Then the real rationale behind this was obviously to pit SNP MPs Hannah Bardell and Joanna Cherry against each other and force Cherry out of Westminster. Now let's see what a seat by seat breakdown says (click on the images for larger and easier to read tables).

So seven Scottish seats would be abolished (six SNP and one Conservative, highlighted in red), and it's certainly no coincidence if several high profile SNP frontbenchers would find themselves without a seat, while losing Wee Andy Bowie too would certainly be considered an added bonus by the diehardest Boris cultists. We would also have one 'new' seat (Falkirk South), meaning it has no obvious predecessor seat as it is stitched together from 'leftovers' form other recarved seats, and finally five of the redrawn seats would notionally change hands (highlighted in yellow). For these seats, the notional MPs are the runner-ups (or should that be runners-up?) in the predecessor seats in December. Though of course candidacies would have been different if the boundary changes had been enacted and a couple of newly elected SNP MPs would not even have been candidates. I think we can safely assume Ian Blackford would have stood in the new Highland North and unseated Jamie Stone, and that Joanna Cherry would have stood in the redrawn Edinburgh South and unseated Ian Murray. I also venture Neil Gray would probably have moved some miles to the North East from Shotts to Falkirk and secured the orphan Falkirk South for the SNP. Then I have a hunch John Nicolson would have chosen a rematch against Jo Swinson in the redrawn and more SNP-friendly East Dunbartonshire, saving himself the embarrassing slip-of-the-tongue moment. Just kidding, John, love ya. Finally Philippa Whitford would have found an obvious landing pad in the new Ayr and Carrick seat, notionally Conservative Bill Grant's seat in 2017 and now an open seat after Grant's decision to stand down. So the artfully crafted scheme to unseat prominent SNP figures would certainly not have worked as planned, with only Glasgow North's Patrick Grady left without an obvious Plan B, except now becoming the next MSP for Glasgow Cathcart after James Dornan's retirement.

A textbook case of the Boundary Review's flaws is the situation in Edinburgh, highlighting both the anti-SNP bias and the dummymandering factor. An early proposal, published in 2013 as part of the original Sixth Periodic Review, already reduced the Capital City's seats from five to four but all were neatly within the Edinburgh City Council boundaries. If this proposal had been used at the 2015 election it would have delivered four SNP MPs, as Ian Murray's Edinburgh South was abolished and split between the new Edinburgh East and Edinburgh South West constituencies. Then the resurrected 2018 Review produced two sets of proposals, an initial one in 2016 and a slightly amended final one in 2018. Both proposed four seats within the Edinburgh City Council boundaries but with the added monstrosity of a West Lothian seat protruding into Edinburgh in clear violation of two of the Review's basic principles as I already mentioned. Bear in mind that all Edinburgh seats have been neatly within the city's boundaries since 2005. So the 2018 Review's proposed boundaries are something of a 'once in two generations' monstrosity.. If the 2017 election had been fought under the initial proposal, it would have delivered two seats each for the SNP and Labour, with the new Edinburgh East seat carefully carved to inject enough Labour voters from Liberton and Gilmerton to unseat Tommy Sheppard while protecting Ian Murray in the redrawn People's Republic of Morningside seat. Then the notional 2019 results would have made the gerrymander backfire into dummymander with all four Edinburgh seats going to the SNP. Aye, ye ken, even the best-laid schemes....

The Guardian is now using the Labour leadership race to again push for proportional representation (PR) instead of the centuries-old first-past-the-post (FPTP) and urge Labour to endorse it without actually making a case for it, other than the odd point that it would weaken 'nationalists', insert SNP and Plaid Cymru here but of course mostly the SNP, just as you thought The Guardian had truly renounced their past insidious SNP-baddery. Anyway, and regardless of the likelihood of any system being ever used in the UK, I tried five options.

Proportional representation (PR): using the famous d'Hondt method but not based on a single UK-wide list which would be unacceptable for a fuckload of obvious reasons. Instead I used regional lists in twelve constituencies duplicating the ONS statistical regions and the now defunct European Parliament constituencies. Note that regional PR is more favourable for the two or three biggest parties as it creates a de facto threshold for representation even without such a provision in the electoral law. The first party does not need a majority of the popular vote to bag a majority of seats. Under current voting patterns, around 47% would be enough;

Majority Bonus System (MBS) (which is in fact two options here): the system used in Greece until last year and at some elections in Italy. With two simulations here; one with 600 seats filled on regional PR and 50 allocated en masse to the first party; one with 550 seats on regional PR and 100 allocated to the first party;

Additional Members System (AMS): the one infamously used at the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections, providing levelling (or compensatory) seats on regional PR for the losers of the FPTP vote. Here I simulated two thirds of seats filled on FPTP and one third on regional PR, the same proportions as the Welsh Senedd;

Mixed Membership System (MMS): with 325 seats filled on FPTP and 325 on regional PR. I used a true MMS with the PR seats allocated in a totally separate count regardless of the results of the FPTP vote. This is quite different from the allegedly 'mixed member representation' used in Germany and New Zealand, which is tweaked to deliver a similar result to pure PR, or from AMS which factors in the FPTP seats in the allocation of the additional PR seats.

The only options I did not try are Instant Runoff (IR) and Single Transferable vote (STV), as nobody has the fuckiest where the second and further preferences would go. Trying to approximate IR by some odd extrapolation of the winner-runner up combinations on FPTP would only be a very approximate approximation, and certainly widely and wildly off. So here is what the other options would deliver, in numbers and shares of seats. All based on the 12 December results though it's quite certain that voting patterns would have been different under a different electoral system, but that's all we have.

The proponents of PR quite clearly support it only to avoid any party ever getting a majority and to impose coalitions that the electorate don't actually want. For example, in the run-up to the last German general election, only 25% of the electorate actually wanted a CDU-SPD Grand Coalition and yet that's what they got in the end. In the UK last December the only mathematically viable option would have been a Con-Lib coalition. And we all know that, even if we loved to jibe at the LibDems' unique talent for betrayal and their appetite for ministerial cars, it would never have happened under Johnson's leadership. Foreign examples also demonstrate that coalitions can be the recipe for impotence as in Germany where Grand Coalition partners give up on their most divisive manifesto pledges and the Grand Coalition amounts to little better than a long-term caretaker government with no ambition for reform. In other contexts it can also be a recipe for extremism as in Israel where coalescing the fifty shades of racist theocratic far-right around Likud led to each coalition partner fuelling the worst instincts in the others, if they ever needed it. Back to my simulation, AMS here delivers an unexpectedly close result to PR. The reason is that there are many more seats up for grabs on the regional lists than in the real Scottish and Welsh elections, so the FPTP winners have significant opportunities to also bag list seats.

In my view, the best option is MMS as it can deliver a majority if the first party has both a strong plurality of the popular vote and a convincing lead over the second party, which is exactly what happened at the 2019 election. But the Conservatives would have bagged only a 10-seat majority under MMS, meaning the would be in a weaker position than under FPTP and would have to seek compromise in some cases. Bear in mind for example that only 330 out of 365 Conservative MPs voted for Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement Bill at the third reading. Even though there was no open rebellion, 10% of Tory MPs expressed discontent by not showing up to vote despite support for the WAB being carved in stone in the Tory manifesto. If Johnson had had a 10-seat majority instead of 80 seats, he would certainly have been forced to negotiate with his own 'soft Brexit' MPs and amend the WAB. For example by reinstating the provisions that were scrapped between the initial pre-election draft of the bill and the final draft that was tabled after the election. Just sayin'..... In different situations where the results are less one-sided than in 2019, MMS would nit deliver a majority, as the projections for the 2010, 2015 and 2017 elections show. So it can be seen as a perfectly acceptable compromise solution even for PR supporters, as it delivers a majority only if the popular vote goes strongly in one direction, and on more ambiguous results delivers a hung Parliament and a coalition.

For simplification 'Others' above include the 18 Northern Ireland seats, the Speaker and Plaid Cymru. Which is why the numbers are almost the same under FPTP and MMS, as Plaid Cymru is the least impacted by the switch to MMS, bagging three MPs at each election instead of the three or four they bagged under FPTP. I kept separate lines for UKIP and the Greens as both can be significantly impacted by the switch from FPTP to MMS, especially at the 2015 election that saw a more fragmented vote than 2010 and 2017. Under MMS we would still have had the Con-Lib coalition in 2010 but the stronger LibDem representation might have resulted in some changes in policy. Or not... More significantly both the 2015 and 2017 elections would have made the continuation of the Con-Lib coalition the only viable option. And you never know what might have happened then. No EU referendum? No Brexit? We will never know but one can dream, can't he? Anyway it would be daft to expect any significant electoral reform in the foreseeable future, whoever is in power, and for once that really means never-in-a-generation and probably never-in-a-lifetime. But I certainly don't rule out the current Tory government enforcing the 2018 Boundary Review or something very close. They have the votes to pass it no matter what, and losing only 13 seats under the new boundaries is very easy to manage with the natural attrition we witness at every election, with MPs standing down because of age, stress or any of the usual excuses. They could easily promise a seat to all incumbents willing to return and accommodate a batch of newcomers on top of that. So watch out for the new boundaries coming up in Commons, we only don't know when. Time will tell, but when it happens, remember you read it here first.

It's a good rule in life never to apologize
The right kind of people never want apologies
And the wrong kind take advantage of them
(The Orville, episode Pria, 2017)