Fact Checking Nick Griffin's Claim

Much as I liked to see Jeff squirm at the fact that a casting vote may lie with a BNP member for Glasgow in the next Scottish Parliament I thought he really should have done fact checking before taking the word of Nick Griffin for granted.

Jeff refers to this article in the Times so lets look at the facts.

Griffin said:

"We [BNP] were 4.4 per cent in Glasgow North East in the European elections."

Fact:

Minor niggle, I know, but the BNP's 545 out of 12705 votes in Glasgow North East is actually only 4.29%. That is one very poor round up a whole tenth of a percent higher than they could claim (i.e 4.3%).

Griffin then said:

"In Glasgow there is a [Holyrood] seat to be taken with probably about 6.5 per cent of the vote and we believe that is a do-able thing."

Fact:

OK 6.5% was the vote for Patrick Harvie who was in that 7th place last time out. However the Green vote was up to 9.98% given them the biggest protest vote away from the Westminster parties on the night. 7.11% was the position on the night in June of the lowest ranked party who gained a seat in Holyrood on the list.

Fact:

The BNP were only the 7th ranked party across Glasgow on the night behind the five Holyrood parties and UKIP, hardly a good place to lift the 7th top up seat.

Fact:

Across Glasgow as a whole they only polled 3.25% which was not even their highest council area return on the night in Scotland. I had the unenviable position of witnessing that on the night in Falkirk; even there it was only 3.77%.

I'll not even bother fact checking Jeff's claim of 54 seats for the SNP. That would be fun to do, but needs a little more work. Maybe later.