Where are all my No-mates?

[HamletsSister]

In despair. Absolutely in despair. Do we have to go through this again? And with such a long lead up to the referendum? Really? What happened to the settled will of the Scottish people?

@statisticallychallenged Will you help me get through this again? (Was Roseformeplease then).

But in the same ward youve got the snp mcmafia scandal so no hope tbf

Conservatives are the only hope

www.heraldscotland.com/news/14722000.SNP_send_bouncers_into_branch_split_by__Monklands_McMafia__feud/

Can't believe anyone would think this option was better

Actually derxa I'm your classic fairly centrist floating voter, who probably aligns with the lib dems better than anyone else right now, although I did vote labour in my student days. At each election I reexamine where all the parties are, what they're promising, and how likely they are to deliver before making a decision. At the minute, my biggest priority is removing the SNP because they quite literally threaten the existence of the country, but once that threat is removed, I'll go back to weighing up all the other issues.

Do any of you lovely No people know how the STV system works enough to be able to tell me where to put my vote in the council election to be as negative towards SNP as possible? There is one Tory, 2 Labour, 1 Lib dem, 1 green, 1 snp and 1 indy standing for 4 seats.

I'm a tradition labour voter but as much as it sticks in my throat, i'd vote for anyone except them. I voted no to brexit but really am ambivalent about it now. What will be will be and if we want to go back in and haven't fucked stuff up to much, then UK then then we can always re-apply to go back in (and have vastly more chance of getting in than an independant Scotland).

Do I just rank everyone except the SNP and Green?

but once that threat is removed, I'll go back to weighing up all the other issues. OK I misunderstood your stance.

Put a preference 1,2,3,4 in every pro union box do not give the snp or greens or independents a ranking.

Thanks Nippy, I suspected it wasn't quite as simple as that :o

Probably reading too much into everything.

I've been worndering about the council elections too. Three councillors will be elected to represent my ward, at the moment the three are Independent, Lib Dem, SNP.

Standing are the current three plus Green, Labour, Conservative. The independent candidate is the one who'd get my vote if it were a straight cross in the box, I am tempted to list Independent, Lib Dem, Conservative, Labour and just leave SNP and Green off totally.

I would put your pro union candidates in any order you see fit for council areas.

I'm going 1 conservative,2 labour, 3 lib dem, 4 UKIP (Yes I truly am that desperate and not giving the rest any vote.

I know the pro union vote will be between Tory and Labour in my area so by putting those 2 first I know my vote will transfer.

Be careful of ranking independent candidates. Some of them are pro Indy and have the sole purpose of trying to push unionist parties further down the ranking.

There is lots of false info going round the yes camps to vote all candidates as they thought voting someone last harms them, but I've looked In to it and it is not the case otherwise I would advocate doing the same to the snp. Just let them carry on voting for the unionists hahaha.

Yes trixy malixy I know that to be the case for many of the independents so yes be careful.

Once I see what we all vote in the council elections I'll put together a tactical voting spreadsheet for the general elections if I can and publish it on here. Then we have just under a month to get it out to our communities. Who is up for it?
There is no point in relying on the outcome of the last elections to give us an idea of voting strategy as voting is so fluid at the moment.

We need to target any seats or communities where the tories, the lib dems or labour have a chance of swinging it and make it clear that it is for one purpose... maximum damage to the snp.

Council election voting won't tell you much where I am, or in lots of Central belt. I am voting for 4 seats and the candidate list has 2 each of SNP and Labour and only 1 for everyone else.

Couple of interesting links on recent elections at different polling levels and current polls. I think 2016 Holyrood constituency vote would be a good start for tactics. In most of the Glasgow area (excluding East Ren) Labour is the only realistic opposition (even at current polling), but everywhere else it is more complicated and there is a bit of a gamble choosing between LibDem and Con. If I were a betting woman I would be backing LibDem in East Dumbarton and Con in Moray (may just be bias from shouting at Angus Robertson and John Nicholson on the telly).

Sorry. Links below

ukpollingreport.co.uk/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Scotland

Fwiw I confess to voting SNP in Holyrood 2016 to try and bang Kezia and JC's heads together but I voted Labour in 2015 and will do so again in 2017 GE.

Perhaps I should use a combination of Hollyrood 2016 and overall first choice votes in council elections? Which polls have you been using howabout? Could you post links please? I feel there might be a pull towards the conservatives for people who needed to see strong opposition to sturgeon and I would be worried to only use 2016 data in case unionist vote share any area was firmly labour and is now firmly conservative or the other way round. I would be concerned in case my actions were splitting the vote instead of unifying it iykwim.

Thanks for posting the polls. Those are the ones I was looking at. It is such a shame they are not clearer on voting intentions by constituency. I guess like they said the areas which were more brexity may swing more easily to the tories. Than towards labour or the lib dems.

If you plug any constituency into wiki it gives run down of results for 2015 and 2010 backwards. DD1 was addicted to it yesterday afternoon and we identified most of the target seats per the polling link above.
Holyrood result per wiki link above.

Differential turnout is the other thing to watch as it was very high in 2015 on the back of Indyref1 but low for EU ref and Holyrood in comparison. High turnout favoured SNP in 2015 but possible the 1/3 Brexit/SNP could stay home for the GE. Of course so could the despairing Labour voters.

They might, but also they might well just bite the bullet and go along with it hoping Nikki will give them their say on Europe, which of course she will not.
The nationalists seem much less sceptical of who they are following and where they are following them to, which I do worry about. I'm a slut when it comes to voting, I just vote for whoever I think is doing well at the time I would never follow anyone blindly. I can see faults in them all the conservatives overspend on their election campaign was erm... I agree that this will be partly why they have called the snap election, as well as to shut the snp up.
I've noticed they do that on Wikipedia. It is quite interesting really.

Is this significantly concerning for no voting labour voters?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/23/jeremy-corbyn-danger-union-nicola-sturgeon-speak-scottish-conference/

Oh yes, another reason I won't vote Lab or SNP this time - I suspect Corbyn would be eventually fine with a coalition with the SNP whilst they destroy the UK. McDonnell is rumoured to be all for it.

It is very tricky isn't it. On raw figures my seat would be most likely to stay snp; they had a 5k majority last time with labour, who they took the seat from, next. Tories got about half the votes of labour, lib dems half of the Tories.

But

2010 the results were labour, lib dem. The snp victory was almost entirely a swing from lib dems who dropped 12k votes. It's also the seat which contains Ruth Davidson's holyrood constituency.

On the upside - pro U.K. people can take comfort that the split anti independence vote at elections gives the SNP more seats from which to muck up governing Scotland but that's bad for the SNP in 2 ways: it gives them false confidence in the strength of the independence vote for the same reason, and also, the longer they misgovern Scotland the more people will fall out of love with them and their inability to execute.

My family member who's staunch labour and a JC supporter was saying that she's been in housing talks with some of JC's team and the inexperience and pie in the ski nature of their policy drives was shocking. The SNP have spent a lot on media training their people, but their lack of executive experience is showing over time.