Thursday’s Scottish elections were not short of news stories. A record number of Scots voted. The Scottish National Party fell one seat short of a majority – in part as a result of tactical voting for Unionist parties in seats such as Dumbarton.
It’s hardly surprising that unionists voted tactically. The split among three Unionist parties – Tories, Labour and Lib Dems – has long been a boon to nationalists.
But over the weekend, I found myself wondering whether – and how – Unionist tactical voting had been coordinated. So I decided to do some digging.
And what I found is pretty concerning – to put it mildly.
Last week, the Guardian reported that unionists were spending heavily online in a bid to deny the SNP a majority. But it’s only now that the full scale of this campaigning can be seen.
In the days before Thursday’s Scottish Parliament election, third-party campaigns with no clear details of their funding spent tens of thousands of pounds on digital ads pushing tactical voting.
A group called ‘Young Unionists’ spent more than £20,000 on Facebook ads, including more than £5,000 in the final days of the campaign. Tens of thousands of voters were pushed to the VoteUnion tactical voting tool.
Under new election legislation, digital adverts in Scotland are supposed to carry details of who paid for them. But Young Unionists’ ads had no such imprint and there was no name attached to the campaign.
Young Unionists did register as a non-party campaigner in the Scottish election. Its secretary is listed as Maximillian Young – who was involved in a campaign called Capitalist Worker, which spent £65,000 on anti-Jeremy Corbyn ads in the 2019 general election without, as I revealed recently, declaring any donors.
Another Facebook page, ‘Vote Union’, last week spent £3,012 promoting its tactical vote calculator “to stop an SNP majority”. Again the ads carried no details of who paid for them.
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Peter Geoghegan | Radio Free (2021-05-10T16:19:41+00:00) Did dark money and dirty tactics swing the Scottish election?. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/05/10/did-dark-money-and-dirty-tactics-swing-the-scottish-election/
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