Which Side Are You On? 🔊
There have been 22 full Scottish polls fielded between June 2017 and January 2019. The only ones I use for my Scottish projections as subsamples of GB-wide or UK-wide polls are volatile and unreliable. Though sometimes I can't help quoting some notable subsample on Twitter when it's really tremendously good for the SNP, but with the strongest of caveats. The National also quoted one not long ago but their caveats bordered on the inaudible. Good one anyway lads. So here is what the true full polls say:
Of course a cropped screengrab from Wikipedia is not the easiest of reads. So let me translate this to a better looking representation: trendlines based on a three-point rolling average.
The trend is clear and illustrates the truth about Scotland's state of mind, whatever the Unionists say. The SNP is the first party and is far from being in a downward spiral. Quite the opposite in fact with recent polls also the ones offering better prospects for the SNP than we have seen at the end of last year.
The Sky Is No Limit 🔊
Let's see what all these polls have to offer for the SNP: voting intentions from each of the 22 polls and the projected number of seats. Note that we again see one of oddities of FPTP at work. In some cases the SNP is predicted to bag a bigger share of the popular votes but fewer seats. Which is not as odd at looks at first glance because the seat projections rely not just on one party's share of the vote, but more importantly on how all parties' vote shares change relative to each other. Just remember the 2017 GE delivered 20 marginal seats in Scotland, most of them really close and most of them SNP-Labour marginals, and it's easy to see how the SNP could be up 1% of the vote but down 2 seats.
Of course paradoxical situations are the exception rather than the rule and the big picture is definitely good for the SNP. First of all voting intentions over the last 19 months never fell below 36%, that is barely 1% lower than the 2017 result. Then only four polls out of 22 have the SNP losing seats, and these anyway look like outliers when compared to polls fielded over the same periods. Besides the point is quite moot as the most recent of all polls predicting the SNP losing seats is a year old and the trend has become much more favourable since. But the SNP is not the only player in this game and here is what the 22 polls predict for the whole Scottish representation in Westminster.
As I hinted earlier SNP's low points are also Labour's high points as the SNP-Labour marginals would be the first to fall if Labour managed to significantly close the gap with the SNP. Think Glasgow East, Glasgow North West, Inverclyde or Motherwell and Wishaw among others. Then of course it would take the stars aligning in a most peculiar way to actually achieve this, so it is by far not the most likely scenario and certainly not what recent polling predicts.
Late last year John McDonnell boasted that Labour were breathing down the SNP's neck but nothing can be further from the truth. Quite the opposite as SNP's lead over Labour is now about 15% when it was 'only' 10% in 2017. And Labour aren't even breathing down the Conservatives' neck in Scotland, which should be happening if they had built a really convincing case. Of course this does not mean the SNP should take anything for granted as they're prone to do because MPs just won't re-elect themselves. Key to success is as always a strong turnout.
59 is the limit at least in theory, and odds of reaching it are close to non-existent. But the SNP should raise the bar as high as realistically feasible and that is in the vicinity of 50 under current polling and possibly 55 in the near future if the SNP do all the right moves on all the best campaign themes. Back to the 2015 tsunami or close might sound far-fetched but it possibly is not and anyway nothing says even an uphill battle can't be won. All it takes is to fight it.
Light The Sky On Fire 🔊
As we saw earlier the most recent Scottish polls are definitely good for the SNP. The last one was fielded by YouGov from 21 December to 4 January as part of their mega-poll for People's Vote. With almost 3k respondents it certainly delivers a pretty accurate picture of where Scottish public opinion stands right now and the voting intentions are good news for the SNP in many ways.
This would amount to roughly a 4.5% swing from Labour to the SNP and/or 3% from Conservatives to the SNP. Not bad for a party some claim has lost touch and is declining. The problem with polls though is that they always include Green, UKIP and Others is their prompts as if these would field candidates in every constituency. This was not the case in 2015 and 2017 and is also very unlikely to happen at the next GE.
So here we have 6% of the vote that would probably shrink to less than 1% on Election Day and are up for grabs. Best estimate is that Green votes would go to Labour and SNP, UKIP votes to Tories and Others to about everyone. Which would roughly make the 40-25-21-8 shares in the poll morph into 42% SNP, 26.5% Tories, 22% Labour and 8.5% LibDems at the actual election.
My model takes care of this with the assumption that minor parties would field candidates at the next GE only in the constituencies where they stood in 2017 already. So the reallocation of votes is done automatically on a seat-by-seat basis. Which is how all prediction models work anyway. Based on the early January voting intentions, here is the distribution of seats we would get (by SLLM rating and summary):
For the record Election Polling finds the same result while Electoral Calculus projects 45 SNP, 9 Conservatives, 4 LibDems and 1 Labour. So everybody agrees on a significant success for the SNP though short of the 50 seats that would make it a true triumph. Aye I do believe we have to set the bar that high. For the moment. Until we raise it again.
Winds Of Change 🔊
This time eleven Scottish seats would change hands: six from Labour to the SNP and five from Conservatives to the SNP. Labour losses are only to be expected as their 2017 intake mostly won by small margins in constituencies with a strong SNP showing in 2015. Besides Labour steadily and conclusively fail to make their case in Scotland. Scottish Labour MPs are conspicuously silent in Westminster and the only one with a noticeable presence on social media is Ian Murray, the one that should know to shut the fuck up before making an arse of himself again and again.
The SNP making serious inroads into Tory territory is excellent news as these seats are the key to a major success. What the SNP need to stress is how disunited Scottish Tories are. When one of them trashes another's public positions as 'rubbish' while being dubbed 'SNP gain' by his colleagues, you have definite proof there is something rotten in Toryland. So five seats lost may very well be only just the start, as the updated data about SNP target seats show.
The data above are the 2017 results for the 24 non-SNP seats. Highlighted in yellow are the ones projected to switch at the next GE and pale yellow indicates those close to switching. Four more Tory seats. LibDem MPs appear much safer as voting intentions show LibDems going up, not spectacularly but enough to keep them relatively safe from the SNP surge. Then I think everybody should pay more attention to Edinburgh South. If other election results are any indication, the seat is actually closer to a three-way marginal than a Labour stronghold. It's common knowledge that Ian Murray was propelled back to Westminster by massive tactical voting and not all of his campaign funds came from Labour donors. Some day Tories will smell blood and realize they have a shot at gaining the seat. Then will be popcorn time.
On The Threshold Of Fire 🔊
Current polling would leave only nine marginal seats in Scotland instead of twenty after the 2017 GE. With eight of them SNP-Conservatives battlegrounds as Labour is again sent down the pipes by voters. And the four potentially re-elected but in the Danger Zone Conservative MPs may indeed find themselves in a worse situation than the math says. If any of them made a durable impression on his constituents, it's obviously a negative one and I would not be surprised to see at least the Two Rosses flushed into oblivion at the next GE no matter what raw numbers say.
Alternate scenarios right now are extremely positive for the SNP as even the worst case would have them 6 seats up. Only one SNP seat (North East Fife) could possibly switch as it was the closest result UK-wide in 2017 and LibDems doing well in polls makes a gain a credible outcome. SNP should take the threat seriously as this was a Liberal and then LibDem safe seat for close to 30 years before the SNP gained it in 2015. Also don't forget that the almost coterminous Holyrood constituency has been held by LibDems for 15 of the 20 years since the first Scottish Parliament election. If even Willie Rennie can unseat the SNP there then the Westminster seat could really be in jeopardy.
The only caveat here is that my projection is based only on the last YouGov megapoll published three weeks ago. But adding the earlier Panelbase poll (nine weeks old by now) to the mix would not greatly alter the big picture as the weighted average of both would still have the SNP between 40 and 48 seats. So still a major success if one step back from a genuine triumph.
Ride The Tiger 🔊
Finally the usual breakdown of seats by party from worst to best for the SNP. Note that seven of the eight residual Tory seats are in the South or in the North East. Try to factor in how the farmers in Dumfriesshire and Berwickshire reacted when hearing that £160mil of EU funding had been stolen from them by the English Government to be 'reallocated' to English farmers. Or how fishermen in Fraserburgh and Peterhead felt when openly sold out by the English Government during Brexit talks. Guess that takes some Tory MPs several steps closer to the woodchipper than projections can say.
Starting form the voting patterns shown by the latest YouGov poll, the SNP would need a further 2% swing to reach the symbolic 50 seats and bagging 45% of the popular vote would deliver 54 seats. This would have looked like an impossible hurdle to clear just a few months ago but Brexit just 59 days away makes such scenarios more credible. All it takes is Scottish communities getting a clearer and fairer assessment of the damage Brexit will inevitably do, and choosing the MPs who have always made it their priority to defend Scotland's best interests first and foremost.
Let's Go Together 🔊
What we need right now is an united Yes Movement and everybody within it accepting that the SNP is the key player simply because they're they only ones who can get MPs elected as long as we stay in the UK and the only ones able to form a Scottish Government seeking Indy. Works both ways though: the SNP can't thrive without the Yes Movement just as the Yes Movement can't thrive without the SNP.
What the SNP must do next is simple: remember what went wrong in 2017. First and basic point is not to be dragged into debating devolved matters and how the Scottish Government handles them. This is not legitimate GE campaign material and I still remember that painful part of the 2017 debate when Nicola Sturgeon let herself be dragged into it and Patrick Harvie was the only one objecting it had no place in a GE debate. Second and more important: put Independence squarely at the center of the campaign as I already argued ten days ago. This is legitimate GE material as a majority of SNP MPs is a key component of the triple-lock mandate to seek Independence.
Remember that the SNP lost 477k voters in 2017 compared to the 2015 result. It is likely part of them switched to other parties, mostly to Labour. But the bulk actually chose to abstain because the SNP did not get the Independence message through loud enough. Best educated guess is that about 250-300k of these abstainers could have been held with a different campaign, taking the SNP vote to 42-45%. Abstainers probably cost the SNP 7 to 10 seats. So you know what to do next time. Putting Independence squarely on the table can't harm, quite the opposite.
Until then stay tuned for further polling and updates on post-Brexit martial law.
Wha daur meddle wi' me
© Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Marty Balin 1974
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