The Tories will come third here: even though Helensburgh was added to the seat, a good area for them, their vote has tailed away here.

The LD’s have dominated the Highlands for a fair while, and I don’t think the Tories will undergo much of a revival in Scotland - at a national election, the anti-Labour swing is likely to go to the SNP. I think they will be second here.

# John B Dick-You say:

“The Anybody-But-The-Tory party has been dominant in Scotland for many years and any sitting ScotLibDem or SNP MP is in a very favourable position.”

Now that the Lib Dems have allied themselves with the Tory and Labour parties on the commission looking into the need for changes in the powers of Holyrood, it seems likely to me that the interchangeabilty of Lib Dem and SNP votes, very evident in the past, is going to break down in the future. A strong indication of this is that every Highland Seat at the Holyrood election in 2007 returned a majority on the regional voting list for the SNP even where the Lib Dems held on to the constituence seat.

Tom - I don’t agree that because folk voted LD at Constituency level and SNP at Region level this means vote interchangeability is breaking down.
My personal experience is the very reverse of that - many people choose to out their 1st choice for constituency, 2nd choice for Region - and many still do not understand that they can vote for the same party!
I believe the same is true in London, as we’ll see on Thursday.

The combined Lib Dem / SNP vote here is 22502 and the Tory vote is 10150 (almost twice the amount in the Holyrood seat 5571, which does not include Helensburgh or Loch Lomondside).

The Tory vote is likely to rise and if the Lib Dem/ SNP vote is as divided here as it was 2007 with only 815 votes between them, the Tories could come through the middle here with not much more than 25% of the vote.

Former Lib Dem MP for this seat, Ray Michie, has died.

She built her support up from nothing (poor 4th position)and at a very low level toured the whole constituency between elections, visiting remote island communities like Jura.

Ray Michie appeared to usurp the SNP in gaining Argyle & Bute in 1987.

“Now that the Lib Dems have allied themselves with the Tory and Labour parties on the commission looking into the need for changes in the powers of Holyrood, it seems likely to me that the interchangeabilty of Lib Dem and SNP votes, very evident in the past, is going to break down in the future.”

Labour and LibDems were close in the coalition. Why should the commission make any difference?

“A strong indication of this is that every Highland Seat at the Holyrood election in 2007 returned a majority on the regional voting list for the SNP even where the Lib Dems held on to the constituency seat.”

The Greens were damaged by “Alex Salmond for First Minister” There wasn’t any other reason why people should turn against them. They wern’t being investigated for Perjury, hadn’t fiddled their expenses etc. A lot of the SNP regional votes may have gone to the Greens previously.

I don’t see how you can say LibDem and SNP are interchangable. There is no point in voting LibDem on the Highland list because they have so many constituency seats. If you are a disaffected Old Labour voter, you couldn’t possibly vote for the Conservative candidate, so the SNP is the obvious choice. If you are a libertarian Liberal, you might be happier in an independent Scotland than under Blair’s terrorist legislation.

It’s purely tactical and entirely logical.

Recent polls show a swing in England from Lab to Con and on the YouGov Scottish Polls page there is some discussion of why it all goes to the SNP in Scotland.

The Labour vote in A&B may collapse due to poor morale and bad press, but it won’t all go to the SNP. In most Constituencies (I don’t know about this one) there is bad feeling between Lab and SNP activists. That’s because many have come from Lab to SNP.

The disaffected Labour voter doesn’t want to let the Tory in and a sitting LibDem candidate is preferable to voting SNP and risk letting in the Tory by default.

Thanks for your comments, John B Dick.

What I was suggesting in my earlier post (April 29th) is that in the past anyone whose first preference was to vote SNP, but who felt that the Liberal Democrats were more likely to win the seat and therefore keep the most unionist party out (the Tories),would have been quite comfortable voting Liberal Democrat.

Now that the Lib Dems have alligned themselves with a commission which won’t even consider independence, and also the Lib Dems will not support a referendum on independence, then those who support the SNP will vote SNP even if next time this causes the Tories to win the seat. Given that the SNP won the Holyrood seat in 2007 (the likelihood of this was indicated by the SNP already topping the Holyrood regional list in 1999 and 2003), this risk may well be taken by SNP supporters because if the SNP don’t win for Westminster next time, they surely will the election after that, as it will be clear that they and not the Lib Dems are the “natural” best supported party in A&B.

I agree with you that voting Lib Dem in the past “was purely tactical and entirely logical” BUT it isn’t any more

Will Paterson:

“And could you please explain how former Labour voters switching to the SNP lets the Tories win Argyll & Bute, when they’re not a part of that particular transaction?”

It is expected that there will a general loss of LibDem support, though not approaching the scale of Labour losses.

There are no strong reasons why the sitting MP should be particularly affected, and there is evidence that sitting LibDem MP’s in rural constituencies benefit from incumbency and national swings against their party are tempered and majorities are less vulnerable than urban LibDem ones.

Not many of these votes will go to the Conservatives, because those who want to keep Labour or SNP out have had the opportunity to vote for a second place Conservative before and those among them who preferred a Conservative would have had no need to vote tactically in the past. The Conservative vote should hold up, because they are - all over Scotland - pretty much down to their core vote of those who accept a belief system and those who are looking for a “best buy” have abandoned them as an option except in the South West. Last time the Conservative vote declined marginally.

Most people are now expecting the Labour vote to fall everywhere. What matters is how that breaks, constituency by constituency. There are Labour seats where the SNP is in fourth place and even if ex-Labour votes all went to the SNP it would not be enough for them to win, and the LibDems have a very likely win.

In A&B, if sufficient dissatisfied Labour voters compensate the LibDem for the likely loss of LibDem votes to the SNP, then the Conservative won’t get in, even assuming their vote holds up. If LibDem losses to SNP exceed the majority over Conservatives, and the Conservative vote is resilient,then even if nearly the whole of the rest of the Labour vote goes to the SNP, it wouldn’t be enough for the SNP to win the seat. The result would be that the constituencey would become a narrow three way marginal for next time and the Conservatives claim a great victory. If that happens, they would be deluded because this election is not about a Conservative revival, nor a desire for independence. It is about NewLabour values, spin, gimmicry and competence. Neither the Conservatives nor SNP are driving the churn, but some party has to gain if others are losing.

Will Paterson:

I was wrong.

The majority is too big, and the 3rd place SNP too close for the second placed Conservative to get in with fewer votes than last time.

There may be LibDem held seats where the Conservatives can win without gaining votes but in A&B the SNP would win on any scenario where Labour lose proportionaly more of their existing share of the vote than the LibDems do.

It could happen, but not in A&B.

Even if the grim reaper culls 1% of Conservatives, and a third of Labour voters defect to the SNP,Alan Reid would need to lose 12% of his share of the vote last time (4% of the electorate)giving the SNP a massive 46% improvement in their share, in order to lose the seat. I think that’s unlikely given the inertia in rural LibDem majorities identified by Sean Fear in SW England and that the GROT faction don’t care who they vote for so long as it is not (a)Conservative and (b) Labour.

A ScotLibDem Hold, then.

Feedback I have received recently is that Alan Reid is regarded as a weak candidate and may not receive the incumbency benefit that most other Scottish LibDems MPs receive. The feeling is that this seat is very much in play.

The loss of the seat to the SNP in the SP elections obviously does not help either as it undermines the perception, in the eyes of the voters, that this is Liberal territory. This last point is, I think, an important consideration because I feel that LibDem success in places like SW England is due to the fact that voters consider themselves to be living in a distinctively Liberal-voting area and vote accordingly (whether or not they hold particularly Liberal views themselves).