Holyrood projection - October 2018 update

More Scottish polling at last

Seems there has been quite a frenzy to feel Scotland's pulse again recently as we had three new polls in quick succession. Oddly all were fielded before the SNP Conference so we will have to wait for further polling to know if there's any Conference bounce, or not. Interestingly all three follow the 'poll till you boak' pattern that Survation already used, with detailed data on the Westminster vote, the Holyrood vote and the Second Independence Referendum including Brexit options.

For full results and crosstabs just click on the links: Survation for the Sunday Post (fielded 28 September to 2 October), Panelbase for the Sunday Times (fielded 28 September to 4 October) and Survation for the SNP (fielded 3 to 5 October). Don't worry too much about the sometimes significant discrepancies between the three as I will be using weighted averages which are designed to iron out the outliers.

So with three different and equally meaningful issues being addressed in these three polls I had to choose which one to start with. And that will be the Holyrood voting intentions because I have this hunch they're the ones that currently matter most.

So what do Holyrood voting intentions tell us?

First and foremost that the Early Autumn polling is pretty close to the Early Summer polling. Like all the shiteslinging that happened since just left no trace, be it 'Salmondgate' or the truckloads of lies and insults hurled at the SNP by the various Unionist factions and their friends in MSM.

Here is what the three individual polls say. As always there are some discrepancies like on the list vote for the Greens. Also Survation insist on publishing their result with one decimal pace, which is quite irrelevant when you have like 3% MOE on any given poll, but I always oblige them.

With all these caveats, here are the weighted averages we now have:

Not as good aw we could hope for the SNP as they are down on both votes from 2016. But still good enough for promising results as we shall see later. Even the breakdown of the list vote by region has barely moved and South Scotland remains the odd one out with Tories in the lead as on the Early Summer polling, again for the first time since 2003.

Finally the trends on both votes show that, despite ups and downs, the Scottish electorate are still happy enough with the SNP to grant them sizeable and improving leads. Though of course the SNP should never take anything for granted, especially votes when the highest factor might very well be the differential turnout again.

The constituency results

On this polling here is how the 73 constituencies project on SLLM rating.

Only one seat would change hands: Perthshire South and Kinross-shire (Roseanna Cunningham) switching from the SNP to the Conservatives. Guess this one would offer the BBC some Portillo Moment re-enactment but it would be only a marginal Tory gain, so not a given if the SNP hear the warning and campaign hard enough in that seat. Then we would also have seven marginal seats that might go either way.

Raw math says that John Swinney and Richard Lochhead, among others, might also have a harder time holding their seats than expected. But the upside could also be unseating Trident-lover Jackie Baillie. You never know what might happen in marginals.

The regional lists results

As usual the bizarre workings of AMS would trigger more changes on the list seats. Here are the results we get by region on current polling. This time the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would come out as the winners with respectively three and two gains and no losses.

For the other parties there would again be some sort of musical chairs with seven seats overall changing hands. Right now the list MSPs notionally losing there seats would be Maree Todd, Paul Wheelhouse (SNP), David Stewart (Labour), Alison Harris, Dean Lockhart, Tom Mason and Maurice Corry (Conservatives).

The big picture

Finally here is what the next Scottish Parliament would look like on this polling, and how the parties would perform in terms of net gains and losses. The Liberal Democrats and Greens would score only gains, the SNP only losses, while Labour and the Conservatives would have a mix of both.

These results are generally good for both the SNP and the Yes movement. The SNP is still the only party able to form a government and the pro-Independence majority gained one seat from where we were on June-July polling, just one seat short of the 2016 result. And we have further confirmation that the SNP are on an upward trend, at least as far as Scottish Parliament elections are concerned, and no longer the downward trend we saw in 2017.

Full breakdown of seats by region

The usual stuff. Not much to add here.

Just note that some surprises may happen with the seventh list seats as five of them would be won by less than 1,000 votes. Surprisingly the shakiest would be the LibDems' seventh in Highlands and Islands, won by just 100 votes in a region where they otherwise do quite well.

And now what next?

You might remember that a month ago, the conclusion of my last Holyrood projection was that I did not expect 'Salmondgate' or the various 'SNP Bad' made-up controversies to have any effect. And that's exactly what happened, with the SNP even slightly up on both votes.

Not that the SNP should lapse into complacency because this batch of polls is good. The next one might not be so. And we all remember how well "We don't take anything for granted…. except your votes" worked in 2016 and especially 2017. So let's just avoid that next time.

More than ever stay tuned for further broadcasts.

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit