More on Edinburgh Central: 2007 data

Time for a little more data analysis. Courtesy of Lallands Peat Worrier it has come to my attention that in Scotland they record comparisons of how people vote in the list and constituency votes. That means we know how many Tories, in a specific seat, voted for, say, the BNP on the list. And they have this for every seat in Scotland - Glorious!

So obviously I've taken a look at Edinburgh Central, which is where I'll be casting my votes in May. Last time round while Labour won the vote for the constituency, it actually came second to the SNP on the list vote from within the same area.

The table shows the total votes cast for each list (right) and the proportion of those votes that were cast for each of the four choices we had for the constituency. It's worth bearing in mind this was in 2007 before the Coalition, for example.

I've cut off those parties who did not out poll the BNP, partly because xl is being quite, quite insolent tonight and I had to do some of this by hand;

	Tory	Labour	SNP	Lib Dem	Total Votes
Scottish National Party	2.05%	3.71%	82.05%	7.77%	6876
Labour Party	1.42%	88.56%	0.98%	4.37%	6756
Liberal Democrats	2.16%	6.62%	1.56%	87.69%	4621
Conservatives	85.37%	4.89%	1.10%	6.31%	4107
Scottish Green Party	4.59%	26.80%	17.13%	47.06%	3619
Margo MacDonald	18.06%	27.55%	20.17%	31.18%	1844
Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party	17.78%	30.28%	22.22%	23.61%	360
Solidarity	4.29%	26.29%	39.14%	20.86%	350
Scottish Socialist Party	1.53%	25.46%	37.12%	25.15%	326
British National Party	34.72%	18.13%	24.35%	10.88%	193

Out of the voters for the four main parties on the list the SNP appear to be the party that voters were least likely to switch to and the Lib Dems the most likely. By the same token those who voted SNP on the list were the least likely to stick to their list choice in the constituency - whilst Labour were the more consistent / tribal.

However, it's actually the other parties who yield the most interesting results because they actually couldn't stick to their list choice, even if they wanted to.

BNP voters followed by voters for Margo MacDonald were the list voters most likely to choose the Tory candidate. The Senior Citizens were most likely to plump for Labour. Solidarity and SSP voters were those  most likely, proportionally, to choose the SNP and the Greens were most likely to choose Lib Dem.

Of course, it's just as easy to see it in reverse and that a large portion of Lib Dem voters (for example) chose to lend the Greens their second vote whilst staying loyal in the constituency. The figures alone couldn't tell us which way round was the most sensible way to interpret the numbers.



There are some interesting little tit bits in their too if you look. For example, those voting for Solidarity on the list were more likely to vote Tory in the Constituency than even Labour, Lib Dem or SNP voters. Bizarre.