A Look @: South Scotland (Part III)

This post looks at the list seats in the region. To find the constituency seats in the east of the region click here and the west here.

Here is the notional 2007 result for this regional list (AMs in Italics notionally lose their seats as a result of the boundary changes):

Party	Const. Seats	Region Votes	Region Votes %	Add. Members	Total Members
Labour	3	81326	28.8%	2	5
SNP	2	80668	28.5%	3	5
Conservative	4	62972	22.3%	0	4
Lib. Dem.	0	28001	9.9%	2	2
Green	0	9494	3.4%	0	0
Senior Citizens	1.9%	UKIP			0.5%
Solidarity	1.2%	Socialist Party			0.4%
BNP	1.2%	Christian Peoples			0.3%
Christian Party	0.8%	Scottish Voice			0.2%
SLP	0.6%	Independent			0.2%
Additional Members
1. Jim Hume			2. Christine Grahame
3.			4. Michael Russell
5.			6. Adam Ingram
7.			Alasdair Morgan
			Aileen Campbell
			Derek Brownlee

The South Scotland top-up region has been quite affected by the boundary changes. Not only do a couple of constituency seats flip the region has lost the old Cunninghame South seat to West Scotland and gained Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley, whose predecessor seat (Kilmarnock & Loudoun) was contained in the Central Scotland region for the first three Parliamentary elections.

Despite all this the notional total seat allocation is the same as the South of Scotland result in 2007. Back then the SNP did not win any constituency seats but took five of the seven regional seats to compensate for that. They now notionally hold two constituencies; Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley, which has been moved to the region, and the new Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale constituency. Labour notionally lose the Dumfriesshire to the Conservatives but they essentially take the sole regional seat the Tories won in 2007 in return. The Liberal Democrats are compensated by the fact they notionally cede the Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale seat to the SNP by getting an extra regional seat.

All that is only really relevant if the vote share remains the same in 2007…of course, that not happening is about the only certainty in this Scottish Election! In the constituency previews I only left one seat as Too Close; Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley, which the Scottish Nationalists notionally hold. Labour require a 2% swing to take it so it is very much in the balance between the two largest parties in Scotland. Of the other seats two that are Conservative held are probably the most contentious calls. I have left both Ayr and Galloway & Dumfries West with the Tories because on the pre-April polling they just stay out of reach from Labour and the SNP respectively.

Of course, as I am over 300 miles away from either constituency I could be missing something but it seems that, if anything, the local circumstances will help the Conservatives out perform their national performance here. In addition, I have placed Dumfriesshire back in the Labour column, as a notional gain from the Conservatives here is looking very likely, but left Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale with their notional holders; the SNP. The Liberal Democrats don't look likely to overturn a 1000 vote deficit at this election, even with an incumbent MSP as their candidate.

As Chris has mentioned, we are using the average of the last Scottish poll conducted by YouGov, ICM and Ipsos MORI before April 1^st to calculate the swing in these regional posts.

Here is how the regional seats could pan out if the Scottish Nationalists hold Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley:

Party	Const. Seats	U-Swing	Regional Members	Total Members
Labour	4	35.9	2	6
SNP	2	31.2	3	5
Conservatives	3	21.1	1	4
Lib. Dems.	0	6.6	1	1
Greens	0	4.4	0	0

Seat 1: Aileen Campbell (SNP), Seat 2: Adam Ingram (SNP), Seat 3: Claudia Beamish (LAB), Seat 4: Jim Hume (LD), Seat 5: Joan McAlpine (SNP), Seat 6: Graeme Pearson (LAB), Seat 7: Derek Brownlee (CON).

The Scottish Nationalists take the first seat so assuming Christine Grahame 'holds' Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale and Aileen Campbell does not gain Clydesdale then the latter will win the first regional seat. The SNP also win the second seat and as I don't think Adam Ingram will win Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley he will return to Parliament on the regional list. Both Ingram and Campbell are currently regional MSPs with the former first elected in 1999 and the latter in 2007. As Labour's #1 candidate Elaine Murray is likely to 'gain' Dumfriesshire to remain as a constituency MSP the third seat will fall to Claudia Beamish. Beamish recently enjoyed a stint as the Chair of the Scottish Labour party and she contested the Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale constituency at the General Election last year.

The next seat would go to the Liberal Democrats, and as a result Jim Hume will be returned for a second term in the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Nationalists would take the fifth seat which would see their fourth candidate Joan McAlpine elected. She is a columnist for The Scotsman and writes the respected Go Lassie Go blog. Under this scenario the sixth seat heads to Labour which would send former police officer Graeme Pearson to Holyrood.

The final seat would go to the Conservatives so their top candidate Derek Brownlee would win re-election. He was 5^th on the Tories regional list in 2003 but because candidates above him on the list also stood and won constituency seats he was first in line to enter Parliament if a Tory vacancy in the region arose. Sure enough, David Mundell resigned in 2005 following his election to Westminster in that year's General Election and so Brownlee became an MSP. In 2007 he won his seat outright and he would just sneak in again under this scenario.

As is often the case in Scotland's regions the race for the last seat is very tight and Brownlee would just win it ahead of Labour and the SNP. A small swing to either on the above figures would see Marie Rooney elected as Labour's third regional MSP in South Scotland or Aileen McLeod become the Scottish Nationalist's fourth.

So, what happens if Labour manage to gain Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley?

Party	Const. Seats	U-Swing	Regional Members	Total Members
Labour	5	35.9	1	6
SNP	1	31.2	4	5
Conservatives	3	21.1	1	4
Lib. Dems.	0	6.6	1	1
Greens	0	4.4	0	0

Seat 1: Aileen Campbell (SNP), Seat 2: Adam Ingram (SNP), Seat 3: Joan McAlpine (SNP), Seat 4: Jim Hume (LD), Seat 5: Aileen McLeod (SNP), Seat 6: Claudia Beamish (LAB), Seat 7: Derek Brownlee (CON).

Basically, the end result is exactly the same; Labour's constituency win loses them a regional seat and the Scottish Nationalists are compensated for their loss with an extra list MSP. Although this change wouldn't affect the eventual shape of the Parliament vis-à-vis the previous scenario it would matter to the candidates involved. Graeme Pearson is the unlucky regional candidate who loses out if his party gains the extra seat. Aileen McLeod would have just lost out in the last scenario but she is reasonably comfortable in winning a seat if her party only manage to win one constituency in the region.

As above, the Tories are far from safe in the final seat with Labour's Graeme Pearson very much in with a chance if his party slightly out-perform the swing used in these scenarios. The SNP's SIXTH list candidate Paul Wheelhouse is also in contention for this last seat.

The key thing to remember with the seat allocations in Scotland is that because there are top up seats any constituency losses are generally cancelled out in the regional list, therefore the regional vote share is very important. Essentially, the eventual accuracy of these regional posts is reliant on the accuracy of the Scottish Parliament Election polling, which has been historically been quite unreliable! In previous elections the SNP have been over stated and the Conservatives understated so it remains to be seen if this has been rectified. This is also the first Scottish election taking place with Labour out of power in London so that is another potential spanner in the works.

This is a roundabout way of saying we can only work with the data we have. If you think, for example, that the Tories will yet again be under-estimated by the polls then you would have reason to think that Derek Brownlee is a bit safer than he looks in this analysis. You can even use the general rule of thumb that a party gets a seat for every 6% they poll in a region. It's by no means a 100% accurate way of looking at things, but it does indicate how vulnerable the fourth Tory seat is if they poll just 21% of the regional vote.