Projecting the swings from 62 varied wards across Scotland I estimate the Scottish Tory vote share at a mere 23.3%. So the BBC narrative about huge Scottish Tory triumph is total nonsense. Any foreign observer would be stunned by a state media, the BBC, that hails Ruth Davidson’s 23% as a massive triumph and decries Jeremy Corbyn’s UK 28% as the greatest disaster in political history.

It is really hard for the media to explain away Ruth’s 23% in Scotland in terms of the narrative they have been spreading so assiduously about “Ruth more popular than Nicola” and “Massive Tory surge”. So they have adopted a fascinating tactic. Not one media outlet anywhere has to date given a figure for the Scottish vote share.

The BBC could give you the actual definitive Scottish vote share at the push of a button. But they won’t.

Because not only does the Tory performance make a nonsense of the propaganda they continue to pump out non-stop, but there is another interesting possibility. While the Tories won a few more seats than Labour, my projection has Labour ahead of the Tories in Scotland in vote share on 23.4% to 23.3%. My figures are only a projection and I would put a margin of error of about 1.5% on each of those figures, but it is an intriguing possibility.

The BBC Pacific Quay propaganda machine prefers just to work on seat gains, and is doing something absolutely astonishing – continually saying the SNP were net losers when in fact they were net gainers. There are no more seats in total than there were in 2012, and today the SNP have more seats than they had then. Yet the BBC are claiming that the SNP were net losers due to adjusting for boundary changes, an obvious nonsense. Even the Guardian, Times and Telegraph are all showing the SNP with net gains.

But that would not suit the relentless BBC propaganda, and they are sticking with a straight lie about SNP losses and that, as the presenter on BBC News said yet even again as I typed this sentence, “The SNP are now losing momentum and going backwards”. Iain Macwhirter is currently being interviewed and he has been asked six questions by the BBC presenter, every single one of which is about how fantastically the Tories are doing in Scotland. MacWhirter said that Ruth Davidson is doing “fantastically”, so he earned his BBC fee.

UPDATE I calculate Tory vote share in Scotland on results so far as 26%. The BBC is proclaiming this as a triumph and ringing endorsement for Ruth Davidson, and final refutation of Independence. I calculate Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour UK wide vote share so far as 28%. This is abject failure and a total rejection of Labour, according to the BBC. How 26% is a great triumph, and 28% an abject defeat, no doubt the current GCHQ shift will explain below.

Unlike England and Wales, the Scottish elections are on the proportional STV system. With their Scottish 26%, the Tories are picking up some gains in third or fourth place in multi-member wards. Under the English FPTP system, the Tories would have gained almost nothing in Scotland.

Interestingly nowhere on the BBC news or website can I find any indication of Scottish vote share, only UK vote share. But of course if the BBC gave the Tory Scottish vote share it would rather spoil the Tory triumph narrative.

Oh, and we now know it is YouGove who are the charlatans.

ORIGINAL POST I do like simple binary possibilities, they are much less hard work than complex thought. Today we have one. By tea-time we will know which of two possibilities is correct.

Possibility a) Craig Murray is a deluded old fool who has no understanding of politics and is totally out of touch with the people of Scotland

Possibility b) YouGove are a bunch of charlatans who produce polling about Scotland deliberately designed to exaggerate the success of unionists and Tories, in order to provide pegs for the media to hang Tory propaganda and to attract the weak-minded to the “winning” position.

YouGove’s Scottish polling figures continually produce results which are to me impossible, showing Scotland is a nation enamoured of the Conservatives.

The Scottish component of Today’s YouGove opinion poll for the Times has

Scotland

SNP 40%
Conservative 37%
Labour 15%
Lib Dem 6%
Green 1%

Fortunately yesterday every local council in Scotland had an election, and we shall soon start to see results. So am I a fool or are YouGove charlatans? Will the Tories get 37%? Will the unionist parties combined get 58%?

On a technical note, yes that poll has a fairly small Scottish subsample of 209. But it is one of a series in which YouGove has consistently produced much higher figures for Tories in Scotland, and much lower figures for the SNP in Scotland, than other pollsters. For example three days ago the Scottish element of the latest Panelbase poll had the Tories on 19%.