#BothVotesSNP? That only helps Unionists

The SNP - including the normally-sensible Nicola Sturgeon - have been banging on incessantly for weeks for everyone to vote #BothVotesSNP. This is utter madness, if what you care about is Scotland and our future as a nation. On the current polling, we get the following:

That is to say, pro-independence parties - SNP and Greens - would have a total of only 79 seats at Holyrood, against 50 pro-union seats. That is a majority, but it isn't overwhelming. The unionists will still get plenty of air-time, plenty of coverage, and, most importantly of all, plenty of tax-payers money in the form or salaries for MSPs, researchers and associated staff. With that money they'll be able to campaign.

And notice that seven of those pro-union MSPs are UKIP.

If everyone planning to vote SNP on their first vote also votes SNP on their second (the pure #BothVotesSNP which the party are currently so keen to promote), we get this:

No Greens at all, only 74 pro-independence MSPs (all SNP), and now we're up to 55 pro-union MSPs including now 8 UKIP. The Tories also gain one, and Labour gain three.

By contrast, if all SNP voters give their second vote to the Greens, we get a very different pattern:

This time there are one hundred and eleven pro-independence MSPs, and only eighteen unionists. And all I've done is move SNP second votes to the Greens.

So the clear outcome of this analysis is this: every list vote the SNP gets robs us of pro-independence MSPs, and sets the cause of independence back - badly. #BothVotesSNP is, quite simply, stupid, partisan, tribal politics, psephologically illiterate. It's a vote for the union.