Scottish Elections who do you think will take the majority of Seats?

[Fundays12]

As a Scot I genuinely have no idea who to vote for.

I dont trust the SNP and find John Swinney completely incompetent. I wouldnt trust him to run my household budget let alone the countries so he is out for me. I cant stand labour, the tories well are not my cup of tea, lib dems and green would never get my vote.

However i dont seem to be alone in having no idea who to vote for which leaves me wondering who will take the majority of seats across Scotland. What do others think will happen?

Yes snp will get in yet again due to the system splitting other parties and nothing will change for the better. We need a unicorn. some sort of deus ex machina.

it’s all over the west isn’t it? Overspent governments, worklessness crises, failing public sectors, youth in crisis. Perhaps AI will be the ‘disruptor’ and we can stop thinking politicians can improve things.

The issue is no politicians want to be honest with voters. We cannot afford the promises currently made. We certainly cannot afford further promises. We cannot afford the pay rises handed out to resident doctors to stop them striking. The reason why there are strikes in England and not in Scotland is that the Labour Party are grown ups and appreciate that we cannot throw around money that we don’t have. The SNP are still throwing around money that we don’t have. The public sector is significantly bigger per head of population in Scotland than in England, and those workers are paid significantly more than they are in England, and despite us getting more than £2k per head to spend of public services here in Scotland the SNP has frittered it all away.

I would have so much respect for a party that acknowledges the financial mess Scotland is in and tries to address it but none of them will. It’s worse than in England but England still has SEND overspend and a totally unaffordable welfare spending, but look what happens when they try to address it - total outrage. Scotland and the UK are both sunk until the general public realises how far beyond our means we are living, and accepts a lower standard of living accordingly.

I think I will vote tactically.
Constituency vote - Labour as the only party I think can beat SNP here
Regional - Conservative

Its alarming how many people dont actually pay attention to wider package the individual parties offer though. Its just a set mentality amongst our electorate of 'Tories bad, labour bad, Reform racist, Snp independence, and so on....'

I have no idea who to vote for - have given my 13 year old daughter the challenge of picking someone for me. She'll have to vote in the next round so it's good practice and honestly, I can't come up with anyone myself.

I'm socially super liberal but I'm Jewish so it's all a bit of a mess. I had such high hopes for SNP for years but everything around me is crumbling. Mostly, I hate them all.

At this point I'm going to end up voting for this delightfully insane man out of sheer exhaustion

https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117506/marc-richard-wilkinson

I agree with this tactic - constituency vote for whoever is likely to keep out SNP/Greens in your seat, then second vote Tory. We need a decent opposition to curb the worst excessives of the mad indy/green lot.

I’m wondering whether I should even bother voting.

I guess Lib Dem. Maybe SNP just to stop Reform getting in - but I’m struggling to find anything positive they’ve done for Scotland recently, plus I’m not a Nat.

Thinking about it, I tend to agree regarding Conservatives offering a decent opposition - there are several of their MSP's who have been indefatigable in making points be heard, even in the face of an appalling Presiding Officer.

If I had to list parties in order of preference I’d go:

Labour - good local MSPs
Tories - good opposition to some of the madder SNP policies
Reform - Mad with abhorrent views but not as mad as the others.
Lib Dems - Chuck women’s rights under a bus but otherwise ok.
SNP - Chuck women’s rights under a bus, mad Indy plans.
Greens - Chuck women’s rights under a bus, mad Indy plans, pretty much mad other plans and don’t seem to give much of a shit about the environment any more.

I was thinking 2nd vote Tory, for only the second time in my life (and I'm old!) for an opposition to keep the SNP and Greens in check. Labour have proved useless in Westminster, and have done much that I disagree with. Recent polls however are quite scary, e.g. this one, showing the SNP with a majority despite what I consider to have been a terrible abuse of power on women's rights, and failures on schools, violent crime and anti-social behaviour.

Some people really don’t care. They hate ‘the English’ and will do anything for independence so we are stuck in this doom loop of terrible governance. I just don’t know what it would take for these people to change their mind.

I can't believe Scotland is likely to vote in an SNP majority given the numerous disasters they have presided over. The dream of independence seems to keep people voting for them, despite the utter shambles in so many areas. Not sure who the alternative should be but a hung parliament would be better than 5 more years of the SNP.

Any ideas his accurate these polls are? Omg don't even get me started on schools. Scottish education policies pretty much favours bullies and whoever wrote them seems to lack the understanding children need to taught what is and isnt acceptable behaviour and a nonsense policy wont do.

You can justifiably criticize the SNP but all the other parties would be even worse.

No the other parties would not be worse than the snp! At least some of them wouldn’t. Much of the corruption of the snp is down to how long they have been in charge. We really have reached rock bottom with our choices though.

Worse for who? Take education. The SNP has made it impossible to permanently exclude violent and disruptive pupils. They have failed to amend the CfE which everyone admits has failed. Educational attainment is off a cliff and child mental health issues are soaring. Calls for the violence and disruption to be addressed are laughed off by the dire education minister.

How can any other political party make it worse? What would they do that is worse than what the SNP are doing? It’s not actually possible to be worse, is it?

I'm voting Labour because I'm a socialist at heart. But I'm not happy about it. They're the best of a bad bunch for me

No idea, though it is well-known that pre-election polls favour left-wing parties over right-wing parties, when compared to the actual results. Some people presumably don't want to admit that they will vote for a right-wing party. Some polls adjust for this bias but most don't I think.

I'm hoping they will actually get their wish for an independence referendum, then it can get hopefully knocked on the head by the electorate and put to rest.

I voted Indy last time but having seen the shower of incompetents in our government I'm very glad we didn't get it.

Interestingly, Scottish Labour have committed to single sex spaces and upholding the Equality Act in their manifesto. There's a thread about this in Sex and Gender discussions.

Yes it’s an interesting and positive change that will win them lots of votes. My regional vote isn’t going Labour this time though - there seems to have been some jiggerypokery with the Labour Edinburgh and East Lothian list and not even regular Labour canvassers are voting Labour in the region as a protest.

I still dont trust labour on gender, just look at how much uk labour are stalling on implmementing the EHRC guidance. I think Scottish Labour just want the votes.

As far as I can tell in Edinburgh, it’s a battle between SNP and Reform. And I guess that leaves me with SNP though I won’t enjoy it at all. It’s reminding me of voting in the states where I am rarely excited about the Democrats but very personally invested in voting against the Republicans. I don’t like it at all.

Which part of Edinburgh is it Reform / SNP?

From an email I get daily about news in Edinburgh - Edinburgh central

"The SNP are clear out in front at the moment, with around a 30% share of the vote, or a bit more. They’re in pole position to extend their 18 years in power at Holyrood, unless Labour can shift the dial in the next three weeks or so.
Those same polls show Labour and Reform UK jostling for second place (on around 15-20%), while the Conservatives, Greens and Lib Dems are a step behind (on roughly 10% each)."

But Edinburgh central and Edinburgh southern are a bit tricky to guess as the boundaries have changed since the last election - Edinburgh southern has been Labour (well, Ian Murray), since the dawn of time but SNP was more popular in some of the areas that are now Edinburgh Southern.

This shows Labour v Reform in Edinburgh Southern - https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/seatdetails.py?seat=Edinburgh+South

I hate voting 'against' things, I'd much rather vote for someone or something anyway. But this election isn't very inspiring.

Interesting. Do you have a link for the Scottish elections?