The National:

TORY MSP Murdo Fraser has been accused of engaging in “pointless nonsense” after tweeting a map of May 6’s election results which had been altered to show sweeping SNP losses.

Fraser’s map had taken the vote tally in every Scottish parliament constituency and pitted the total votes for Unionist parties against those cast for the SNP and Greens.

Conveniently for the Tory, it ignored the list vote altogether.

Not so conveniently for the Tory, if the rest of Scotland did that he wouldn't even have a job.

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Fraser, who lost out on the constituency vote to the SNP’s John Swinney in North Perthshire, also has a pinned tweet to the same effect as the map.

This tweet highlights the fact that Unionist party votes have a slight lead overall against Yes party votes across all of Scotland’s constituencies.

Why Fraser would ignore the list vote results so pointedly can easily be guessed. A higher number of Scots voted for parties that support independence there than those who voted for Unionist parties.

Looking at just the five “main” parties, as Fraser’s pinned tweet does, there is a lead for Yes on the regional list vote.

A total of 1,314,698 Scots voted for either the SNP or Greens on their peach ballot. 1,263,102 Scots voted for either the Tories, LibDems, or Labour.

This majority, of 51,596, is actually larger than the constituency majority of 38,462 Fraser’s pinned tweet hails as a win for the Unionists.

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That means that, if we add together all of the regional and constituency votes, Yes parties come out on top. It’s close, a matter of just over 13,000 votes, but pro-independence parties are on top.

Fraser ignores all that though, and cherry-picks to his heart’s content.

The list MSP claims the constituency figures he has hand-selected show there is “#SettledWill #NoMandate”.

Obviously, no-one is really buying any of Fraser’s useless attempts to spin an election result that didn’t go his way.

SNP MP Angus MacNeil accused Fraser of engaging in “pointless nonsense”.

MacNeil tweeted: “This pointless nonsense will only be sorted when we have a referendum... Given his arguments Mr Fraser should be confident and not feel [the] need to hide from the people. #indyref2”

Responding to Fraser's tweet, associate professor Steven Seggie wrote: "Absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is whether there is a mandate for an independence referendum and given that a majority of seats are controlled by parties supporting independence there is. 

"Instead of this nonsense try making a positive case for the Union."