Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Clegg crestfallen as SNP and Plaid Cymru draw level with the Liberal Democrats across Britain

When the news came through last night that the Liberal Democrats had slumped to a historic low of just 5% in the latest GB-wide YouGov poll, I wondered if that might mean that the SNP and Plaid Cymru had drawn level with them - and so it has proved.

Britain-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 2nd-3rd March) :

Conservatives 36% (+1)
Labour 34% (+2)
UKIP 14% (-1)
Greens 6% (n/c)
SNP/Plaid Cymru 5% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 5% (-2)

The Scottish subsample figures are fairly routine : SNP 40%, Labour 27%, Conservatives 20%, UKIP 6%, Liberal Democrats 4%, Greens 2%.  As usual, the SNP lead would have been even bigger if it hadn't been for the misconceived downweighting based on Westminster-centric party ID target figures - 42 SNP and Plaid identifiers have been downweighted to count as just 32 respondents, in spite of the fact that Scottish respondents in general have had to be slightly upweighted.

Some people are confidently suggesting that today will bring the publication of more Scottish constituency polls from Ashcroft, although as far as I'm aware the man himself hasn't publicly confirmed that.  If true, I'm fairly sure there'll only be a limited number this time, perhaps concentrating mostly on constituencies that have big name sitting MPs (such as Ross, Skye & Lochaber and East Renfrewshire).  It might leave quite a distorting impression, because if any seats are likely to buck the national trend, those are the ones.

13 comments:

  1. I would imagine the lead is still around 16-18% at this point, although recent polls (perhaps because of downweighting) are showing a more narrow lead.

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    1. Not really - the TNS poll had a 16% lead, and Survation had a 17% lead. There's been no narrowing in the subsamples.

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    2. Ok, fair enough.

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    3. Aye, while survation suggested a possible tiny narrowing, a over similar time period TNS suggested lead growing, as did Yougov (slightly). MORI essentially no change. All MoE stuff really though. I likewise see no change in UK poll subsets; if anything, SNP lead has grown a little since Jan.

      UK polls have Tories right behind Labour. March so far suggesting small Labour lead might be going, although I've said that before and then it remained as the month progressed.

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  2. I don't know about crestfallen but it looks to me that the main Westminster parties are running around like chickens without heads. And if the polls are correct the re is a distinct possibility that Cleggy will be more than crestfallen.

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  3. Maybe Ashcroft has decided to surprise us - rather than inviting the hackers to probe his website like he did the last time?

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    1. It could just be that he didn't intend to leave directory listings on and has now switched them off, so the L33T Haxxors can't work their magic (of getting a webpage).

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  4. What time are Ashcroft's constituency polls being released? Is it one of his 4pm shots?

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    1. He's announcing them at a 6pm live event, so they won't appear online for a while (unless he makes a mistake like last time). As far as I know he hasn't confirmed whether any of the polls will be Scottish.

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  5. Ah ok, thanks very much for the info, James, good of you. Although I am of course more interested in any Scottish ones he has done, I guess any English ones could be intriguing also.

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  6. STV news just confirmed the Ashcroft poll for later tonight.

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    1. I'm following his presentation right now on Twitter, but he isn't half dragging it out.

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  7. (Almost) the lead item on Scotland2015 and Newsnight - and it's good news for us forgotten souls fighting Fluffy Mundell in the DCT constituency.
    We've got folk out every night and every weekend - all over a huge area - and it looks like it's paying off.
    Rumour has it that the DCT Labour candidate and his team are spending most of their time in the neighbouring constituency where the SNP's Richard Arkless (SNP's Finance/Business spokesman at Westminster ?) has a fantastic campaign running, and Russel Brown is running .... scared !

    Our problem is Fluffy's cash mountain. He's been getting many thousands from London-based millionaires and other wealthy Tories - and he gets his glossy campaign literature gratis from a local printing company.
    That's BEFORE he gets his share of Tory Central funds !
    We expect coachloads of Home Counties-based Young Tories to start arriving soon.
    Could be intersting.

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