04/05/2016 Scotland 2016

In just over eight hours the polling stations will open for Scotland's

The politicians have made their pitches, now it's time

We discuss who has run the best campaign.

On the eve of poll, we discuss who's run the best campaign and read

And Ken Macdonald's here to take our hands and lead us

through the complexities of the voting system.

Tomorrow night the results will flow into this studio. And the regional

list MSPs will be using the Victor D'Hondt system.

Tomorrow for the third time in nineteen months Scotland goes

to the polls and when we're done with this one there's

the Euro referendum just around the corner.

So are we all suffering election fatigue?

That will become clearer by this time tomorrow night

You have the chance to vote on a host of new tax and welfare

powers that are being devolved from Westminster to Holyrood.

In a moment, we'll discuss how the parties' campaigns have gone.

But first, Andrew Black on their final day trying

Throughout this election campaign, the SNP has been seen as the front

runner. Today Nicola Sturgeon made a final push to make sure expectation

becomes reality. I am asking people to elect an SNP government with me

as First Minister so we can put record sums in our health service

and the government that stands up for Scotland. If you want that

government, that SNP government, you cannot assume somebody else will

vote for it, you have to vote tomorrow. But not everyone backs the

SNP's vision for independence, something their opponents have tried

to exploit. The SNP's nearest rivals, labour, face a tough

election night, but leader Kezia Dugdale says her party was fighting

austerity unlike others. Every single Labour MSP you send into

Parliament will do that. We will get the richest 1% to pay their taxes

and invest in Scotland's future by spending more money on education to

ensure every child can fulfil their potential. That is what you get when

you vote Labour. Snapping at Labour's heels are the

Conservatives, hoping to become Holyrood's main opposition. Outside

their rally a small group of protesters gathered. We stand for

equality and freedom of choice. But inside the party reckons it is

hitting the right note with voters. We want to be the strong opposition

our country needs and deserves and we want to hold the SNP to account

and to make them focus on the things that matter like schools, hospitals,

public services and the economy. We've finished second tomorrow? Yes.

Elsewhere the Liberal Democrats say they have been working hard to bring

back the voters and they say there will be a jump in their ratings.

More people are coming back to the Liberal Democrats. That is because

we have a positive vision for the future. That has been the big

highlight of the campaign, that we have turned the tide. The Liberal

Democrats are back to their best. And the Greens are also trying to

stay positive, they are hoping to increase their number of seas with

an alternative offer to voters. The Greens have been successful not by

standing across the chamber and pointing and saying everything they

do is terrible. That does not achieve anything. We are

constructive wherever we can be challenging wherever we can beat and

pushing the government to go beyond its comfort zone and that has got

results. Ukip is hoping to win its first seat in Holyrood. We want to

make sure Scotland is open for business. People will not come here

and build businesses if they are going to be overtaxed in Scotland.

And said the campaign is all but over. To use that cliched phrase,

To use that cliched phrase, tomorrow it really is up to you.

Well, joining me now are a quartet of former political party special

In Edinburgh formerly of the Liberal Democrats

is Sam Ghibaldan and here in the studio for Labour

is Simon Pia, for the Conservatives is Andy MacIver and for the SNP

Andy McKeever, policies aside, who in your review has run the best

campaign? All the campaigns have been reasonably solid. These days

the most important thing is not to make any major mistakes and

everybody has achieved that. They have all been relatively solid, if

fairly unspectacular. None of the leaders have performed brilliantly,

they have been a bit lacklustre. But the campaign is marked out more

about external circumstance than anything else. Labour have had

difficulties during the campaign. They are more down to events

surrounding the Labour Party rather than Kezia Dugdale herself who has

not made any mistakes. Is anybody head and shoulders above the rest? I

think they have all been pretty solid. Kezia Dugdale has had a hard

time and luck has not always been with her. Frank Field the senior

Labour MP said he could see Scotland being independent and that is bad

luck. There is something about that that typifies the whole labour

campaign, it has been difficult for them and they have not made a huge

amount of progress. I suspect they will look back at this and not be

happy about the way it has gone. Would you agree? Even if Barack

Obama had been a Scottish Labour leader, you would have had a very

tough gig in this campaign. Kezia Dugdale was thrown into this and I

think she has performed well considering everything. There have

been a few glitches, she has made some mistakes, she has recognised

the way the initial tax argument was presented there were a few glitches.

A few silly things were known at her from the past that were irrelevant.

But she dealt with it in a calm and Stuart manner which bodes well for

the future. The Scottish Labour problems I'm 15 years in the making.

This is the sixth leader in ten years and even if Labour is not

going to win this election, but the idea of dumping Kezia Dugdale

overboard is a rash decision to make. It is a trend in votes, since

99 it has been going down and it is not at the bottom. It is the way the

whole party is. It is not an individual fault. Talking about the

SNP campaign, do you think there is a danger they might not get their

vote out, the public? The SNP have had a strategically successful

campaign because they have been dull, unusually for the SNP. They

have been really dull because they do not want to put any energy in

this campaign and they are well ahead and they want to stay ahead.

You might say that as a Lib Dem I might say that. Willie Rennie has

been confident in debates and he has successfully put over his key

message of increasing investment in education and mental health. The

other thing he has done which is a big advance for the party is he has

stopped the rot. Post the UK coalition he has moved things onto

the fact at least there is an acceptance of the Lib Dems again

now, a kind of recognition they have something serious to say. He has had

some success that way. Do you think that is true, the Lib Dems are

coming back? We will know tomorrow night, but it is extremely unlikely.

I think he has had a reasonably good campaign, but whether anyone is

listening we will have to wait and see. I think the Liberal Democrats

have still not got the trust of the Scottish people and I think tomorrow

night they will get the five seats they have got. They might pick up

one or two, but they will be in the same position by Friday as they are

now. I would not contradict that there were only be a small increase

in seats, but this is a two election strategy for Willie Rennie. As a

smaller party he needs time to build recognition and public confidence.

He is building a solid base to move forward through the next Parliament

and into the 2021 election. What about the SNP campaign? Have we seen

them plateau this time around? I think this is peak SNP. I think this

is the last time we will see a majority government. I think they

will be in a minority government from 2021. They are brilliant

strategists and have run a good campaign. They have got a broad

church from free marketeers to Marxists and they have to keep them

together and they have done that in this election. Timid moves on tax,

but slight moves, not enough to rock the boat for middle classes, Chuck a

bit more money at public services, but no major reforms. Sam is

correct, it is a pretty timid campaign. Governments always run

timid campaigns, that is how you get elected. Let's keep going,

everything is fine. It has been Nicola, but the other thing is do

not mention Alex. And what about the Conservative campaign, Simon? We

said that Ruth was going to push the SNP. The SNP campaign is all about

Nicola Sturgeon, and both of them are popular people, but the Tories

avoid using the word Tory and Ruth has focused on being a likeable

person, and a bit of a comic. Her heavy duty photo opportunities,

although she could have talked about Willie Rennie's highlight at the

farm with the pigs in the background, I think the Tories and

the SNP have chosen deliberately to go policy light and make it as

shallow and personality lead. I am quite glad that Kezia Dugdale has

done some long-term thinking positioning. Tax is one of the

biggest issues of our time. It is a global issue, but it is an issue for

Scotland and public spending. If Scotland ever did become

independent, how would it support public services? I have been urging

labour for many years to do this, confront the idea of tax, we need to

raise tax in this country. We will come back to you all later in the

The Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt gave his name

to the voting system that, slightly tweaked, will help us

And, added to the constituency members elected using first past

the post, the D'Hondt method is what makes Holyrood

But it can seem intimidatingly complex.

Once our special correspondent Kenneth Macdonald

So let's say you've voted in fact you voted twice, first on the lilac

coloured paper, then dip each one. What happens next? The electoral

system is made up of two types of election. It is the first past the

post system, and the additional members, the regional list members

of which there are 56, they are divided into eight electoral regions

and the proportionality comes from that part of the electoral system.

In the end you finish up with the allocation of seats, the 129, which

reflects more at the percentage of vote obtained by the party. Let's

create an imaginary electoral region. The lilac ballot papers have

been counted and seven constituency MSPs had been elected the first past

the post. Party for my not have any members. This is where the peach

coloured ballot papers come into play. There are seven more seats up

for grabs here. The vote across the region for each party or individual

are tarted up and on the face of it it looks good for party to you

again, but the first past the post method has given them more MSPs in

the constituency. In comes the D'Hondt method. We already have 723

macro that under the additional member system is divided by the

number of MSP they have thus one. When they do that it is party member

for it comes out on top and the candidate at the top of its list

becomes an MSP. The six remaining seats on the list it is the same

again, but in the calculation each time because the total number of

MSPs on who they represent changes every time you go through the

process. In our example, that means defining tally looks a lot different

from when we started, depending on when you it may be even more

complex. So why do we divide the number of list votes by the number

of MSPs plus one? That is because some parties may not have won a

constituency seat. Some constituencies and parties are only

standing on the list so if you try to work at the share of the vote he

would be dividing by the number of MSPs that they had, which is zero,

and you can't do that. Despite that, at the end of it all, it should seem

straightforward. Huge logistical challenges. 32 returning officers,

it regions, four million and lack tours. At ten o'clock the polls will

close and they start pointing straightaway. Some are very compact

counting areas, some of the size of Belgium, someone not the last a la

boxes until 2am in the morning into the centre depending on aeroplanes,

ships, fog in the channels, everything you can think of them

come into play on election night. In our imaginary region we have voted

for team MSPs. They will have equal status but never where they get to

Holyrood. Now Ken's cleared all that up,

this chat will make much more sense. We're joined now by the pollster's

pollster, psephologist extraordinaire Professor John

Curtice, from our London studio. Good evening. We started this

campaign with the SNP way out in front. Looking at the polls, has

anything changed for them? The truth is, only a little bit has changed

for any of the parties. There has been in the last couple of goals

that suggests that maybe the SNP vote has slipped a bit. We thought

at the beginning of the campaign the SNP might do better than they did 12

months ago, maybe now we are not quite so sure. The second movement,

well, probably Labour's voters is... The truth is I don't think any of us

knows, the pipe with Davison's apparent self-confidence about who

will come second. The failure of the Labour campaign is the fact they

have not shaken the Conservatives of the tail and therefore we are not

sure he is going to end up second. The Greens have had a good campaign.

They are probably favourites to come forth over the Liberal Democrats,

although the Liberal Democrats will probably hold that they have got.

One area where the opinion polls tend to be relatively weaker is in

estimating the list vote. When you go out to the polling centres and

asked people how they are going to vote, then he asked how they are

going to vote on the second ballot, I think sometimes people named the

second preference. One of the pollsters changed their questions

and drop the word second, suddenly the polling for the Greens was about

4% less. Who will come second? Not sure. Who will come forth? Not sure.

Tomorrow night the great excitement will be the list vote. The list vote

at the end of the day is the one above all that determines the number

of seats that a party gets. Given that we are thinking that the SNP

might well scoop up every constituency seat in much the way

that they did 12 months ago for Westminster, frankly everybody else,

the Liberal Democrats, Greens, labour and the Conservatives will be

primarily, if not wholly dependent, on what they get on the list vote.

Some of the opinion polls say that maybe labour is ahead in the

constituencies for a second, but maybe the Conservatives will be

ahead on the list. It is who is ahead on the list will be crucial.

It has been called the tax election. Abu has been the defining issues for

the voters? No, not the defining issues for the voters, but they have

been for the parties. They marked this election night and it has

enabled voters to become aware that the Scottish parliament is getting

more in the wake of crucial tax powers. The big differences between

the parties on tax from Labour on one end and the Conservatives on the

other, but the truth is that we have to remember that Scott Scottish

electoral politics was reshaped by the referendum 18 months ago. An

increased the level of support for independence and that meant that

whereas he had a GOP were in favour of independence she were more likely

to vote for the SNP but were not guaranteed to do so, now you're

almost guaranteed to do so. It is 5% of the people who voted yes said

they will vote for the SNP. It is pretty clear there are a lot of

people out there who voted yes to independence, they said they will

vote for the SNP and they will do so even though they are probably closer

to the Labour Party on the question of tax. Labour have not succeeded in

making the tax issue significantly important for these voters for them

to switch back from the SNP to the Labour Party.

So, Simon, Sam and the two Andys are still with me.

Why has not Labour managed to punch through on the tax issue? Labour

should have been a bit bolder on the tax issue. I know that to Andys is

probably disagree with me. Raising taxes kryptonite and so on, but I

think we are living in changing times. For the top rate of tax

Labour could have afforded to have been bolder. It was too little too

late in my view to clearly define the difference that Labour is a

party of the left. Did they get the presentation right? The rebate

issue? That was a problem but I think that is part of the pressure

that the Labour Party is under. The trauma of what happened in 2015, it

is not even a full year yet and the impact that is sad on the party, and

the lack of funds. The SNP are the richest party by a Scotland. Labour

is the poor person of Scottish politics. The impact that has on the

party UK wide. Labour should have set up a think tank a few years ago

to hammer out economic policies, but more importantly, I know it was part

in the selection, but Labour has to face up to the Constitution because

it is key issue in Scottish politics now. It is about identity politics,

argue and nationalist or a Unionist? It is far clearer defined for the

two gentlemen on the right than it is for Labour supporters. Labour

must confront it. I think there should be a fully autonomous

Scottish Labour Party. I believe that the United Kingdom is this

going to see even more constitutional change. Even when we

get the next monarch. The are tectonic plates shifting all over

the place. Is that something that the Lib Dems have to think about?

The Lib Dems already have a federal judge so that is not an internal

problem for us. In terms of the debate being stepped on

constitutional lines? Ruth has been trying to run this entire election

that it is only the Tories that are standing up to the SNP on

independence. I don't think the voters will be fooled. The SNP

campaign was the defining feature of Scottish politics and people

remember that Labour and the Lib Dems were opposed to independence.

It is a fairly mendacious positioning stumped by the

Conservatives. One of the interesting things about the vote

tomorrow and the interplay of the constituencies, by my estimate there

are probably only three constituencies that the SNP might

not win, Orkney and Shetland, where I am reasonably confident the Lib

Dems will win, then Edinburgh West, where you have the suspended SNP MP

and there has been a strong Lib Dem campaign. That means that on the

list vote in the Highlands and Islands and in the Lothian, SNP

voters might manage to get somebody in on that vote, but anywhere else

seems pretty unlikely that the SNP win any of those seats. SNP voters

to have a second choice, in that sense. They are free to pick from

Labour, Lib Dems or the Conservatives. Do you think the SNP

campaign will be successful? I think we will have to wait and see. They

have worked incredibly hard. Once they saw there was an argument

coming through saying that we want the second vote, we can do things,

we want to keep the SNP must. Then the studies that there might be some

truth in that, they have worked incredibly hard to reinforce over

and over again the both votes SNP message. Let's see where that goes.

The constitution really is the elephants filling the room, I think.

There was an absolute inevitability that the constitution is going to

continue to dominate the next five years. He said at the all these new

powers to talk about. There are, but most of the SNP members of the

because they an independent Scotland. They are clearly going to

win the election tomorrow night. There is no way independence will be

removed from the agenda. It is just a matter of watching with great

interest when or if Nicola Sturgeon will go for that in the next five

years. That gives the Tories subtraction because they are the

party who will be standing up and fighting that. Looking at the

electoral system itself, some would say that it was designed to stop the

SNP having a majority like this, have a broken the system? They have

at the moment. The Scottish parliament is young and we can get

carried away by what happens in the early stages of it. You're quite

immature democracy in the terms of the environment. Other countries in

Europe to do things the way we have. Yes, they have broken the system,

but I don't think this will remain the case for long. We will go back

to minority and coalition governments and I don't think we

will see any more majority governments again. I don't think

anybody needs to be particularly concerned about that side of things

because I think this is the last time that we will see that. If there

is a Brexit vote, David Cameron will not survive as Prime Minister, you

could have Boris Johnson in Downing Street. The Scottish public, and you

know that as well as anyone, find David Cameron and George Osborne is

bad enough that the loan Boris Johnson! I think Brexit is

overplayed. Even if there is a Brexit vote, people in Scotland will

take a view based on the circumstances that they have a bad

time and it doesn't necessarily mean that it will push people further

towards independence. I don't think there will be an independence

referendum within the next term. I don't think Nicola Sturgeon wants

one for a second. Brexit will change the game and it will change the

way... People will decide again on the economy. I don't think Brexit

means necessarily will be pushed towards a yes vote. Tax will be the

main thing. There was an attempt early on either parties to make that

a key fit jerk of the campaign. That did not get much resonance with

voters. I am afraid we are almost over time.

I'm sure you'll all be watching the BBC's election coverage instead,

which starts at 10.30pm on BBC One and goes through the night.

We're back with full analysis of the results at the usual

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