I also quite like Ms Goldie. She's a good debater, she's quite well grounded, she speaks a lot of sense. If she weren't a Tory, she'd do really well in Scotland. To be honest, she does well even for a Tory.
I do agree with Carter's sentiments regarding the quality of debates. What really annoys me about the Parliament is that some parties (most notably Labour and the Lib Dems) send their weaker candidates to Holyrood, with their stronger candidates going to Westminster. This is quite clearly seen in the cases of Margaret Curran and Cathy Jamieson being "promoted" to Westminster, whereas the opposite has never happened. As such, the best debating tends to be SNP vs Tory (SNP sending their best candidates to Holyrood, and the Conservatives having no choice but to do so!). It's actually quite insulting, because the Scottish Parliament decides on some of the biggest issues that affect our day to day lives; education, health, transport, justice, etc... and as such I think the posts of MP and MSP should be of equal standing.
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I hope a SNP majority emerges, but as said above a coalition with the greens seems the only sane choice if two parties could ever join forces.
The SNP (or, indeed, any party) winning a majority is an unlikely scenario. The AMS we use is a form of PR, and as such to get a majority you'd need huge levels of support. There's not that much between Labour and the SNP, and the swing needed to give an SNP majority would be phenomenal. It's an unrealistic expectation, I'm afraid.
However, if the polls are to be believed, an increased number of SNP seats combined with an increased number of Green seats (plus Margo MacDonald, if re-elected, and maybe some smaller parties) could create a nationalist majority, and we would then see an independence referendum in the next few years. Unlike last time, this is a realistic possibility. But that largely depends on the votes for the unionist parties as well, so we'll have to see what happens.