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October1974
I Love 'Our Scotland'
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 354
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 Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject: How did your polling station go last May |
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If you ever wondered how your own polling station voted? Now you can as there is a complete breakdown of the votes for the Scottish Parliament last year. Mine voted SNP.
http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/...ations/documents.php?doctype=pubs
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I am not a Nationalist because I am proud to be Scottish but ashamed of the state of the country and want it improved |
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Reluctant Hero
Collecting my 'Our Scotland' Pension!
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
Posts: 2271
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for posting that October, it's really interesting.
I kept a note of my voting experience in the hope that one day I would write a book about the election  However since that doesn't look as if it is going to happen any time soon, I'll post them here just in case anyone finds it remotely interesting.
The constituency I live in, Coatbridge & Chryston, was one of the safest Labour seats in Scotland. However, the issue of Monklands hospital was putting a spanner in the works.
So although I wasn't expecting a miracle, I thought it may be an outside chance that the Labour majority could be overturned. But looking at that analysis, every single polling station had Labour out front in the constituency vote.
Here is what I wrote about voting, if anyone can be bothered reading it :
| Quote: | Labour Panic
The first I became aware that Labour were starting to panic in my constituency was when placards started to appear deep into the housing schemes. “Vote Labour” was all you could see if you kept your eyes open for more than a second.
Polling station
The next sign of panic was on approach to the polling station. There was not one, but two Labour bods handing out “sample” voting papers to show you how to vote Labour. I thought that this was slightly heavy handed or indeed underhand. They were like two bouncers on the door of a popular night club, where only selected clientele were allowed entry.
“Labour or SNP?”
“SNP.”
“Sorry, you are not getting in!”
SNP one step ahead
One aspect of this election campaign though, was that the SNP appeared to be one step ahead of Labour and in Coatbridge & Chryston, it was no different. For as I managed to push myself past the bouncers, I noticed that the SNP leaflet guy had strategically placed himself closer to the polling station entrance. He also looked less intimidating.
“Please vote for the SNP,” he said or something to that effect.
“You already have my vote mate. Are you confident?”
“Well those guys over there,” he said pointing to the bouncers, “are running scared. Here, although you are voting for the SNP, have a little memento of the next first minister.”
I glanced down at my hand and he was thrusting a leaflet into it which bore the photo of Alex Salmond on it saying their election catchphrase, “It’s Time.”
Voting
Thanking him, I stepped inside the community hall which today was doubling up as the polling station. I felt a rush of excitement. There is nothing quite like an election. It is your chance to make your mark, a chance for change, a chance for a better life. That’s the theory anyway!
I took my polling card out of my pocket and approached the unsuspecting polling attendants. They were unsuspecting, because unlike most other voters, I was interested in things like turnout. 20% they told me. Glancing at my watch I saw that it was 5 o’clock in the evening.
“That’s not bad for this time of the day,” I was told.
Secretly though, I was disappointed. 20% turnout with 67% of the voting time elapsed? What was going on? It was a glorious day outside, so that was bound to entice the fairweather voters. There were also contentious local issues which would normally stoke voters passions. The local hospital, Monklands had recently decided to close it’s A&E Department.
An independenet candidate was standing on that very ticket in this election. Julie McAnulty hoped to repeat the feat achieved by Dr Jean Turner in Strathkelvin just four years earlier, turning over a massive Labour majority to be returned as MSP on a single issue stance.
Then there was the issue of Tony Blair. His association with the Iraq “War” and his alledged association with cash for honours just seemed to add up to one thing. Labour were going to get a kicking. But where were the voters? Why was it only 20%?
Hiding my dissapointment, I took my two voting papers over to the booth and bent down to talk to my six months old daughter who was in her pram alongside the cubicle.
“Shall we create history?” I asked her.
She gave me a look that a doctor would usually reserve for the insane.
“OK let’s do it,” I said answering my own question.
In the previous election I had voted for the Scottish Socialist Party. This was the party that were most closely affiliated with my views. The SSP had done really well 4 years ago as they returned six MSPs. However, had they just concentrated on the regional vote instead of standing in the constituency ones as well, they reckoned they would have returned more MSPs.
Therefore that was the strategy they were following this time around as was their splinter group Solidarity.
This meant that in Coatbridge & Chryston, there was 8% of the vote up for grabs. So who was going to get my 0.00004%?
The parties standing were
Julie McAnulty – Independent
NHSFirst Party
SNP
Lib Dems
Labour
Tories
I honestly thought that it was pretty pointless voting in the constituency seat, although I did end up voting. Elaine Smith the sitting Labour MSP had a majority of eight and a half thousand. To put it another way it would take an 18% swing for the SNP to take the seat.
Although Julie McAnulty was standing on the save the Monklands tisket, just about everyone else was as well. The SNP candidate Frances McGlinchey had “Save Monklands Hospital” after her name. There was a new party NHSFirst and even Elaine Smith was campaigning against the closure even though it was her party who has presided over the debacle.
So although McAnulty was bound to secure a lot of votes, I doubted whether she would come close to winning. She had lost my vote over an altogether bizarre incident.
It was the Monday before polling day and I was out jogging. Between Bargeddie and Coatbridge, there were helpers of McAnulty erecting placards on the street lamposts. As I was sprinting past them, I slowed down and offered my best wishes for the forthcoming election.
“Good luck for Thursday,” I had said.
Either they never heard me, which was unlikely, or they were too engrossed in what they were doing, possible, or they were just downright ignorant, but they just totally ignored me and carried on as if I wasn’t there.
So when I glanced down my ballot paper, I pretended she wasn’t there. Apart from Dr Jean Turner, how many single issue candidates have been elected anyway?
Another party supposedly interested in the wellbeing of the NHS in Scotland is the recently formed NHSFirst Party. However on closer inspection, it transpires that it was actually a Labour councillor who was standing for election under this guise. Credit where it is due. If Labour were wanting to split any potential rebellion on the issue of the NHS, what better way to do it than to set up its own splinter party to take some of the votes away from McAnulty.
So this left a simple choice between the Lib Dems and the SNP, because I feared my eyes would instantly turn to stone if I even glanced at either the Tories or the Labour party candidates named on the ballot paper.
The problem I had with the Lib Dems was their leader. He just didn’t look leadership material. He was adamant throughout the campaign that he did not believe in Scottish independence. This coming from a party that was supposed to be liberal?
So the SNP it had to be then. I didn’t agree with many of the poicies that the SNP were proposing, especially the business friendly ones, but they were the best bet of getting rid of Labour and in Alex Salmond, they had a leader that was actually worthy of leading his party.
On the way back out of the polling station I again passed the two Labour bouncers. Just as bouncers can sense you are in trouble when you are waiting in the queue to get in, I am pretty sure these two guys could sense I had voted SNP and as I walked passed, I am pretty sure one of them growled.
With so much time on my hands between 5 o’clock and when the election programme started, I wondered what I should do next. It was a bit too early to start tanning the beer. It looked like it could be quite a long night, so if I started this early, I probably wouldn’t even have seen the first result, nevermind the last result. Particularly since I had had a fly pint at lunchtime. This was a particularly enlightening pint. A fellow drinker was at the bar drinking his pint and reading the day’s edition of the sun. Now it has to be said that all throughout the election campaign, the sun and its partner in crime the record had embarked in the most negative campaign against the SNP you had ever seen. It was even worse than in 1992 when the sun attacked Neil Kinnock.
In today’s copy they had a noose on the front page implying if you voted SNP, you were putting Scotland’s head in the noose. If you delved inside, you would read about all the disasters that were waiting to be unleashed on Scotland if you voted SNP.
The drinker was actually laughing out loud and said, “Does anyone actually believe this f*$%ing crap?”
This had given me extra hope that tonight could actually turn out to be a special night for Scottish politics. |
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William_Cleland
This is Ma' Life!
Joined: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 710
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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Would it have killed them to put the polling station locations and some %'s into the main results spreadsheet.  Definitely interesting to check out some of the more localised numbers. The SNP has made major inroads into the fishing industry portions of Shetland to a level unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago but not so much into the areas where crofting is a key factor (they've always loved the Liberals because of the Crofting Act) with Lerwick and the area around Sullom Voe in between. Wee bit surprised by that as I would have expected the SNP vote to be concentrated in areas where there have been lots of incomers through the oil industry not on islands like Burra and Whalsay. I'm sure there are lots of other things like that to be uncovered in the numbers. |
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