Scottish Election Analysis

9 May 2011

The SNP has had an historic landslide victory in the election to the Scottish Parliament.

Alex Salmond is congratulated on being manifestly so much better than the other main Party leaders in Scotland, and it demonstrates the need for a distinctly Christian Voice in the Scottish Parliament to brighten up and improve debate there.

The pundits were caught out by the scale of this sea-change in Scottish politics.  They will have their own analysis of what happened - useless opposition leadership; the collapse of Lib Dem support as a result of the Westminster coalition and breaking faith with the electorate; etc.  However we wish to draw attention to one aspect of this change which may be easily overlooked.

The SCP ran a positive campaign with a better vision for the north of Scotland than the SNP served up.  In tandem with this, because the timing was acute, the SCP drew attention to the moral sea-change which may take place in the next Scottish Parliament if it should legalise homosexual marriage.  Those who were concerned about this looked around for the best Party to support.  The Scottish Christian Party hoped that voters would opt for the SCP as the only Party which opposed this, but in the event it looks as if many of these voters chose the best of a bad bunch from among the major parties.  This was the SNP.  The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems had all declared in favour of homosexual marriage, and only the SNP had not openly done so.  On this basis it seems that many gave their vote to the SNP.  Only in the closing stages of the election campaign did it become apparent that Alex Salmond personally supported homosexual marriage.  Although this website drew attention to this fact, it was possibly too late to alert all concerned people and very likely too late for those who had already voted by postal vote.

In effect, it is highly probable that many people voted for the SNP because they thought that they were the best option to safeguard traditional marriage.  The SNP Manifesto shows that it is prepared to debate the issue, but if this assessment has any weight, then the lesson for the SNP, after witnessing the backlash on the Lib Dems for breaking faith with their voters, is to keep faith with the electorate and kick homosexual marriage into the long grass.