This is possibly the best way I have ever seen STV shown off
Yes, indeed. It really helped, and I'd just spent 2 days working the system out for myself with graphs and spreadsheets.
The only thing it didn't emphasise was how many people were not voting to the bottom of the list. I looked at all the wards in Edinburgh and about half of them in quite some detail (and went into the actual raw, anonymised ballot data for 3 of them).
My observations were.
Conservative 1st pref voters were far more likely than others to only make 1 preference (i.e. Tory). Like 40-50% in most wards didn't vote beyond the first Tory candidate.
Where Tory vote did reallocate on 2nd preferences, it preferentially went Lib Dem. This was not reciprocated by Lib Dem vote, which tended to go more Labour/Green.
SNP voters followed the SNP 1-2-3 or SNP 1&2 message very closely too. There was a not insubstantial number though (~15%) who didn't vote for both or all of their candidates, which seemed silly. Labour and Lib Dem voters unsurprisingly didn't really put SNP high up their preferences. While the vote went preferentially to Green, it wasn't really a massive boost to the Greens as not enough SNP votes were putting Green at 3 or 4, and Labour were often just as likely to get the 2nd preferences as Greens.
Green 1st prefs were the best at voting to the bottom of the list. The Greens did well where they got in by getting a strong round of 1st prefs, and then picking up a substantial reallocation (say 10-15%) from all the other candidates (except the Tories). Green 1st pref votes reallocated much more in favour of Labour than Lib Dems.
Some of the Socialist Labour Party vote in Leith found it's way to the Conservative candidate!
The Labour vote was substantially making only 2 (i.e. both Labour candidates) or 3 choices, generally the 3rd being Lib Dem.
All voters, regardless of party of 1st pref, seemed to favour voting 3 times. I'm not sure why that is, if they thought it was just 3 preferences they could make or if they thought a 3 member ward you only got 3 choices. Who knows?
My main observation is that the electorate is really not too clued up on STV as a system. "They" get it in Ireland, because the parties get it too and make sure the voters are well informed about how to vote. Looking at the posters with messages like "Vote Conservative 1", "Vote SNP 1-2-3", "All you need is Labour 1 & 2", it's quite clear that the parties here either don't understand the system or are unwilling to exploit it for their benefit (or benefit of parties that might work with them). I think a lot of this is the fairly closed mindset of parties here from the days of X-in the box and first past the post. They seem unwilling to make official alliances for mutual benefit, they are all focussed on trying to win a very unlikely majority.
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