(This is really aimed at readers south of the border, who may not be familiar with the ins and outs of the Holyrood voting system
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Really requires an understanding of the D'Hondt voting system
Holyrood has 73 parliamentary seats just like the Westminster system. Salmond's new party isn't standing for them, because they'd get nowhere.
But it also has 56 seats under a regional voting system, and that's intended to be some kind of proportional representation. That's where Salmond's Alba Party hopes to make an impact.
But it's not just a straightforward PR system. If a party does well in the ordinary seats, it won't be allocated so many in the regional seats.
So because last time round the SNP got a shedload of the ordinary seats, it hardly got any in the D'Hondt regional seats, even though it got a shedload of votes in the latter.
So Salmond is hoping that if pro-indy people vote SNP in the standard seats as normal, they will vote Alba in the D'Hondt seats, and pick up a few seats that way. Basically, a vote for Alba in the D'Hondt seats would be more effective for independence supporters than a vote for the SNP.
Indeed, that's how the Greens have picked up a few seats over the years, and they are basically Sturgeon's little helpers at Holyrood. They don't stand in the ordinary seats because that would be pointless, but manage to pick up a few of the D'Hondt seats in the regional vote (also called the list vote, 'additional member' seats etc.)
So basically Scottish voters have two votes in Holyrood elections - one in the normal seats for the normal candidates, but in the second D'Hondt vote we vote for a *party*, and the seats are allocated that way. There are eight regions in Scotland and each region elects seven MSPs each.
So basically Salmond's Alba wants to do what the Greens have been doing for years, and pick up pro-indy votes in the regional seats that would otherwise be wasted on the SNP.
(Of course, politically Salmond's Alba probably closer to Farage's UKIP than the cuddly and 'progressive' Sturgeonite wing of the SNP. Meanwhile, the Greens are the opposite, and think, for example, that someone with a penis can call themselves a woman if they so wish
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So all this week Sturgeon, her acolytes and sympathetic commentators have been trying to monster Alba as a party of oddballs, cranks and obsessives. And they certainly have a bit of a point, and of course the subtext to it all is that Salmond is guilty as hell, and somehow he just 'got off' the sexual assault charges
Anway, it all seems to be working, with the first opinion poll apparently showing Alba on 3%. Which might get Salmond elected (they'll probably get more than 3% in the region Salmond is standing in) but that's about it. I think they were expecting at least 10%, which might have gained them a handful of seats.
But for me, the more they monster Salmond and his acolytes, the more this demonstrates the extent of the cover up over the years, and the degree to which indy 'moderates' were willing to accomodate some pretty unattractive bedfellows. Which I could easily write 10,000 words on, but won't bore anyone south of the border with the details. Assuming any have had the fortitude to even read this far
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