Scotland Votes: North East Scotland Part 3: The Regional Seats

This post covers the NE Scotland regional seats rather than the constituency seats, which are elsewhere. Part 1 covers the rural seats in the area, whereas Part 2 covers the seats in Aberdeen and Dundee.

So now we move onto our favourite bit of projecting Scottish parliament elections at Britain-Votes: regional seats. Now on the notional figures the current seats in this region are as such:

Party	Const. Seats	Region Votes	Region Votes %	Add. Members	Total Members
SNP	8	112263	40.5%	0	8
Labour	0	54385	19.6%	3	3
Lib. Dem.	2	42217	15.2%	1	3
Conservative	0	42122	15.2%	3	3
Green	0	8834	3.2%	0	0

Additional Members
1. Richard Baker			2. Alex Johnstone
3. Marlyn Glen			4. Nanette Milne
5.			6. Alison McInnes
7.			Maureen Watt
			Nigel Don

Maureen Watt and Nigel Don currently hold two regional seats, but with the boundary changes these have been replaced by a notional seat for the Tories and one for Labour. In my constituency seats previews I called one seat as ‘too close’: Aberdeen Central. On paper it is a three way marginal, though I said the contest was only really between Labour and the SNP. There are therefore two scenarios: one where the SNP win the seat and one where Labour hold it. Let’s start with the latter.

Scenario 1: Labour hold Aberdeen Central

Party	Const. Seats	2007	U-Swing*	Regional Members	Total Members	Change
Labour	1	19.6	26.7	4	5	+2
SNP	8	40.5	45.8	0	8	0
Conservatives	0	15.2	13.6	2	2	-1
Lib. Dems.	1	15.2	11.9	1	2	-1
Greens	0	3.2	4.2	0	0	0

In this scenario the Conservative’s Alex Johnstone is re-elected with the first seat, he is followed by Labour’s Richard Baker, also an incumbent, and Jenny Marra, a former head of press for Dundee University and a former staff member to Labour MEPs. She is then followed by the re-election of Nanette Milne. Labour’s Lesley McMahon, a PhD student about to submit her doctoral thesis in economics. Alison McInnes, the incumbent Lib Dem regional MSP would then be elected. Lastly, but not least, Labour’s Greg Williams would be elected. Williams works for a local oil company, is a former Oxford student and has a Masters in medieval studies.

In this scenario Labour has the last seat. A swing of about 1%, however, would elect a SNP list MSP. With the top four candidates filling constituency seats in this scenario we have to go down to candidate number 5 on the SNP list: Mark McDonald, a former deputy leader of the SNP on Aberdeen council. A swing of about 2% from Labour to the Conservatives would elect Hugh Campbell Adamson, the party’s Angus South candidate. In order for the Lib Dems to get a second regional seat they would need to gain about 4% and beat the Tories, which would put them on about the same figure as 2007, a tough ask, but not impossible. Doing so would elect John Sleigh, the party’s candidate in Aberdeen South and Kincardine North. On these figures a swing of about 1% from the Labour Party to the Greens would elect their top candidate, Martin Ford, who has been a councillor in Aberdeenshire for 10 years as a Lib Dem and who has since defected to the Greens. Given this life story he may be able to swing some extra votes from his former party, but it’s hard to keep a track on the Greens as polling for such a small party is intrinsically unreliable.

Scenario 2: The SNP gain Aberdeen Central

Party	Const. Seats	2007	U-Swing*	Regional Members	Total Members	Change
Labour	0	19.6	26.7	4	4	+1
SNP	9	40.5	45.8	0	9	+1
Conservatives	0	15.2	13.6	2	2	-1
Lib. Dems.	1	15.2	11.9	1	2	-1
Greens	0	3.2	4.2	0	0	0

In the SNP’s dream scenario they take nine of the North East’s 10 constituency seats. In this case the seats go 1. Richard Baker (Lab) 2. Alex Johnstone (Con) 3. Jenny Marra (Lab) 4. Lewis MacDonald (Lab), the party’s incumbent MSP for Aberdeen Central, who has lost his seat in this scenario. 5. Nanette Milne (Con) 6. Lesley McMahon (Lab) and 7. Alison McInnes (Lib Dem).

With the Lib Dems now holding the final seat they would be in danger of losing a second seat in this region. A swing of 1% from Lib Dem to Labour would secure Labour a fifth seat and elect Greg Williams. A swing of about 3% would elect the Conservative’s Hugh Campbell Bannerman in current MSP’s Alison McInnes place, whereas a swing of 2% would elect the Green’s Martin Ford over his former party. The mathematics on the SNP getting an additional seat in this scenario are rather obscene, but suffice to say the SNP would need to gain a highly unrealistic number of votes to get a 10^th seat in the constituency. More than 10% likely. Their best chance of getting a 10^th seat in this scenario comes from winning Mike Rumbles Aberdeenshire West seat, which I currently have as a Lib Dem lean.

Overall Summary

There’s a lot for both the SNP and Labour to be cheery about here. For what it’s worth, I ran a quick test through the Britain-Votes seat calculator and found that if the SNP swept the board and won all 10 constituencies here (a possibility) the Lib Dems would be reduced to 1 list seat. For what it’s worth, Mike Rumbles, the constituency MSP in our scenarios is the number 2 on the Lib Dem list, so the old maverick would be gone. The SNP dominance in the region starts to become a problem for other parties when they rise above 8 seats because the SNP start to win more seats than their strict entitlement under the system for distributing regional seats. Securing marginal constituency seats is very important here, then.

*Methodology for calculating uniform swing based on an average of 3 polls taken in March as outlined in my first regional seat calculation for the Highlands and Islands.