SNP: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

When they haven't been gloating over the ongoing demise of the Labour Party, SNP supporters seem to have been busy debating whether the 2016 Holyrood election was a glorious reaffirmation of the party's dominance or a frustrating stumble on the path to independence. On the face of it, this seems odd. The 2011 absolute majority was something of an anomaly, and the 2016 result still sees them with 63 seats (out of a total of 129), 46.5% of the constituency vote, and 41.5% of the regional vote. These are figures that any other party can only dream of, and that leave the SNP well placed for a third term of government, albeit reliant on the votes of others.

However, the concerns are real. Firstly, there is the question of the gap between the constituency vote and the regional one. Which of these represents the SNP's "true" level of support? On the one hand, there are those who argue that the lower regional vote reflects the mistaken decision of SNP voters to lend their list vote to other pro-Independence parties. On the other hand, there are those who argue that the SNP's constituency vote is (artificially) boosted by the Greens (who only ran in two constituencies) and by a few stragglers from RISE and Solidarity.

There is, unfortunately, no way of settling this decisively - short of interviewing thousands of voters about how they voted and why. But given that the Greens' total regional share of 6.6% was only 2.2% higher than their pre-IndyRef total in 2011 and was actually lower than the 6.9% they achieved in 2003, the most likely explanation for the difference seems to be Green voters lending their constituency votes to the SNP rather than SNP voters lending their regional votes to the Greens. (To be honest, I'm not keen on the whole concept of a party's supporters "lending" votes as it seems to imply that the votes are somehow the property of the party, but I'll let that pass for the moment.)

If this is correct, then the true level of support for the SNP, was 41.5% this time round. (And for anyone who wants to argue that the constituency vote is the best test of support, all I can say is that this would leave Labour claiming second place overall, and would place the Liberal Democrats 7% ahead of the Greens.)

The second concern, which I haven't seen discussed in much detail so far, is the impact of the campaign. The verdict following the Independence referendum was that the Yes side might have lost the vote but that they had won the campaign, turning a 30% deficit into a 10% one. The clear implication was that one more successful campaign would turn the shortfall into a surplus, a view that appeared to be confirmed by the SNP's dramatic victory at the UK General Election of 2015.

Now let's look at the Scottish Parliament campaign. According to the Poll of Polls on Pro-Indy blog Scot Goes Pop!, on 1 March the SNP was on 53.4% on the constituency ballot and on 47.4% on the regional ballot. In other words, the SNP appears to have lost 7% on the constituency ballot during the course of the campaign and 6% on the regional ballot. (It's interesting to compare this to the widely criticised Labour Party campaign which actually held its vote at a stable level during the campaign - although admittedly at a level that still sees the party consigned to the political wilderness for the next five years at least.)

While the overall result is clearly a good one, SNP members and supporters would do well to ask whether their strategy was fit for purpose. And they may also want to ponder on what lessons to draw from the fact that, during a campaign which focused overwhelmingly on the issue of a second referendum, they appear to have suffered a signficant loss of support.