cannae take it.... Your point is well made re understanding voters. Berating voters is no way to go forward, the SNP campaign did not persuade voters to change. That takes patience and a lot of time. politicians always need to respect the electorate something they have forgotten recently. However to say the SNP have not been damaged is a more than a little spin. Losing Glasgow East and Dunfermline is not good. It shows voters are happy to make a protest in a by-election but come the election proper they were not convinced. Therefore one possible conclusion must be that the the original result was simply a protest and in no way a conversion to nationalism. Last night showed that the SNP campaign was a bit of a disaster. If no gains could be made against a worn out Labour government then that is really a disaster. Not to keep the by-election wins given the effort put in was also a disaster. I was in Glasgow last week and in Glasgow East it was obvious that a lot of SNp resource was being applied. Simply this was a missed opportunity for the nationalists. The vote for champs bit was poorly thought out and just didn't work. They should have campaigned on an Independence platform, challenging voters to either four more years of Gordon Brown or the return of the Tories. Because in reality the only alternative is the SNP in Scotland. One can only wonder why this was not done