Holyrood projection - June 2018 update

The big picture:

As I said in my previous post, someone was really eager to feel Scotland's pulse in real time last month amidst all the political turmoil. Just like we had three Scottish Westminster polls in June, we also had three Holyrood polls (one of them polling only the constituency vote). See them here. For the record there had been only 13 Holyrood polls in two years before that.

Super-sample on constituency vote is 3,114 (1.7% MOE). On regional list vote it's 2,096 (2.1% MOE). And here are the voting intentions the weighted average delivers:

At face value you might think 'good for the SNP' as their projected Holyrood constituency vote is higher than their projected Westminster vote. But it's not. Actually it's a pretty bad result for the SNP.

Current polling says SNP is down 5.8% from the 2016 Scottish Parliament election on constituencies. And down 7.8% on the regional lists. 

While Conservatives are up 5.3% on constituencies and up 3.1% on regional lists. 

Labour level on constituencies and up 2.9% on regional lists. 

Liberal Democrats down 1.8% on constituencies and up 1.2% on regional lists. 

Scottish Greens up 1.4% on regional lists, the only vote that really matters for them.

What it delivers:

Constituencies by SLLM rating. List seats by region. And the full result.

So projected result on current polling is SNP down eight seats, Conservatives and Labour both up three and Scottish Greens up two from 2016 election. Bottom line: pro-independence parties down to 63 seats, two short of a majority.

What happens in the constituencies:

The SNP is projected to lose six constituencies, all to the Conservatives:

Surely some of these projected SNP losses are shockers. Who can imagine Richard Lochhead, John Swinney, Roseanna Cunningham and Maureen Watt losing their seats? Let that sink in and then rewind to 2017.

Shocking upsets happened at 2017 GE though they were 'politically unlikely'. Most of them unexpected. And most of them in the same area from Moray to Perthshire. So I'm not ruling out upsets at 2021 Holyrood election either. However 'politically unlikely' it may seem I go with the math: SNP six constituencies down.

But of course there are some marginal constituencies that might tilt either way and influence the outcome. Though with the weird Additional Member System (AMS) we have in Scotland you never know. Anyway here are the five marginal constituencies we have on current polling, including four of the six projected Conservative gains:

And here we just stumbled upon on of AMS' oddities: sometimes a gain is not a gain. Meaning a change in constituency results can, under the proper circumstances, be 'compensated' by a change in the other direction in list results. We have two such cases here.

If the SNP hold Moray, then they lose their one projected list seat in Highlands and Islands. And if they lose Angus South, they gain one list seat in North East Scotland where they're currently projected to have none. In both cases the overall result is unchanged.

The other three seats tell a different story. Under current polling the SNP are projected to win no list seats in Mid Scotland and Fife or in North East Scotland. So if the SNP manage to hold the three marginal projected Conservative gains there (Perthshire North, Aberdeen South and North Kincardine, Angus North and Mearns), there can't be any 'compensation' by a list seat loss. Then the overall result would change to:

In this 'best case scenario' for the SNP, pro-independence parties hold their majority by ONE seat. As fragile a mandate as can be.

Back to the big picture:

Finally here is the complete seat breakdown by region.

As with my Scottish Westminster projection, next update will be next time we get further Holyrood polling.

Might be next week. Might be two months from now.

Saor Alba gu bràth