Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Long-awaited YouGov projection puts SNP on 43 seats - and suggests Jo Swinson is only 5% ahead in East Dunbartonshire

The YouGov MRP figures are finally out, and it's going to take me a while to wade through the data properly.  But like a lot of people, the first seat I checked was East Dunbartonshire, because there's been a long-running difference of opinion about whether Jo Swinson is in trouble, or will hold her seat easily.  The answer seems to be somewhere in between the two extremes.

East Dunbartonshire estimate:

Liberal Democrats 38%
SNP 33%
Conservatives 17%
Labour 8%
Greens 3%

So she's in the danger zone, but she'll probably hold on.  However, YouGov agree with the earlier Better for Britain projection in saying the SNP have the lead in the Lib Dem seat of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.  That would be a reasonably big shock.

The SNP are projected to win 43 seats overall, which would be a perfectly good result if it actually happens, but it just worries me a little because the projections in 2017 were showing much the same thing, and we all know what happened next.  If there's another late Labour surge, things could still go wrong.  But one point of encouragement: some of the seats the Tories are projected to hold look quite tight.  So things could yet go wrong for them as well, and if that happens there'll only be one beneficiary: the SNP.

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On a completely different topic, a free Scottish Gaelic course is now available on Duolingo.  That could have a transformative effect on the language's prospects - it puts it in the shop window, and anyone with the urge to begin to learn it can now do so, wherever they are in the world.  Read more HERE.

29 comments:

  1. Interesting!

    Data is here, folks - https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2019/

    SNP are within M.O.E/Tossup in about 10 seats too - most of North East, Ochil, East Renfrew amongst them. And in most of these, they are 1-2% behind!

    A wee bity behind but still not insurmountable in Swinson's seat and Moray.

    There's two weeks to go! So do what you can to get folk out there voting. It really could be the madcap UKIP or Brexit party votes that wins it either way!

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  2. How can anybody vote for that Tory Swinson - well okay the Brexit racists and the Tories I suppose.

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  3. The only way she was re-elected at the last election was due to Labour and Tory anyone but the SNP voters . Voting against their beliefs. As the broader public get to know what she is really like the Lib dems chances of being a significant player diminish by the day.

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  4. Could be like a rerun of the 1987 election when the Tories lost a lot of seats due to tactical voting in Scotland. The only difference is that it is the SNP and not Labour would be the victor and other opposition parties lose seats too.

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  5. I hope that will be the case Marcia but sadly the hatred of the SNP and the wishes of their fellow countrymen to decide their own future. Runs so deep in these folk, that Labour and Tory voters will happily give their vote to any party that stands a better chance against the SNP. Though the Labour branch office in Scotland has on many occasions betrayed the interests of Scotland and its people. I cannot fathom how Labour supporter with any experience of the damage done to Scotland by excessive Tory governments whom we never voted for can in good conscience vote Tory

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  6. Labour and Tories need to vote for Swinson and keep the Scottish Nat si and her fake blond hairdo out of politics. Voting for Swinson is a vote for brexit which she does not like and a vote for the Great British Union.

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    1. So now you are calling for people to vote to cancel brexit.

      So much for 'respecting the will of the people'.

      You are planning to vote Labour while encouraging others to vote Lib Dem!

      Delete
    2. He hates democracy just like the EU bearaoaorcrats whom he worships.

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  7. There is a CSV file of the figures available - the implied shares are (very roughly) SNP 41%, Con 27%, Lab 18%, LD 11%.

    https://twitter.com/anthonybmasters/status/1199820822002712576

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  8. My arse is kirsten hair winning her seat. Or whoever is replacing the racist and the coke-head penis fondler in aberdeen.

    On another topic I see A Wilson ranting at Melijomuir and stating that Scotland really does have a 7% deficit and GERS are wonderful.

    The mon's a bufoon! I see he's also a member of the smith institute. Which casts some doubt upon his actual commitment to independence.

    As an example. Norway £25,000,000,000 from North Sea oil. Scotland £1,000,000,000.
    But Scotland produced 80% as much oil as Norway. Which means that the Uk must be taxing oil at 5% of the Norwegian rate.

    So if Norway was applying a 50% tax then the UK is only taking 2.5% Does that seem realistic to anyone?

    It is plainly bollocks. And that's not even allowing for the removal of english debt interest, cutting the defence budget by 1/3 minimum. That's £5,000,000,000 gone from the supposed deficit in an eyeblink.

    Better yet. Scotland is not liable for a single penny of pension payments. Huzzah! We don't become liable for any full pension payment until 40 years after Independence Day. Has andy wilson (close personal friend of fraudster and all round bigot, wendy bendy alexander) forgotten that little fact in his calculations? I've not.

    And another thing! When you take the £10,000,000,000 currently spent in london on our behalf and spend it in Scotland you have instantaneously increased GDP and reduced any percentage deficit. By what rights does Sad Andy claim to be any sort of Economist? I can work this out and I only have a Science degree....Hmmm.

    Scotland has no deficit. Anybody saying otherwise is either a Yoon liar or brain dead.

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    1. Oil is being severely under taxed. Osborne slashed the rates in the run up to the 2014 vote claiming it was to encourage new investment. Which was due to over taxation in previous years. To make things worse OPEC pulled their semi regular glut on the market stunt to crash the price. This time to derail investment in fracking.

      A cynic might assume that the side effect of slashing oil revenues in order to undermine its contribution to the case for independence was more than unintended. In fact an independent Scotland faced with a mass exodus of oil companies might have found it useful if used it to its advantage as a reason for nationalisation at far less than market value.

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  9. Celtic beating Rangers in the cup final would help the Unionists as the Tim former Labour now Nat sis would still be drunk and celebrating all week.

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  10. So basically it's a to play for. Labour could yet have a late surge and hold its ground against SNP and/or SNP could make inroads against Tories in more of their vulnerable seats.

    I guess most SNP supporters would take a 43 seat result with no Unionist gains and no SNP losses.

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  11. Great news about Duolingo featuring Gaelic now.
    Thanks for the info.
    Siuthadaibh! Chan eil i doirbh.

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    Replies
    1. Started it this morning. Always meant to but never managed to get round to it. Here we go (will post the Gaelic version in about 3 years' time.).

      Delete
  12. So that's Prince Phillip dead is it? Not surprised he lasted that long in his life of luxurious leisure. Now... It'll be the wife next... or maybe Prince Pokey in a car accident.

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    1. When you die it wil not be noticed unlike Adolf or Mussolini.

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    2. There's many a mile from Oslo to the site of Trimble's tooth.

      Delete
  13. LibDem bubble slowly deflates.
    Voters go SNP Instead. Labour struggling to stay in the game.
    Forecast-- England votes Tory, Scotland gets a Tory Govt it never voted for.
    Same old same old. But for the SNP it can't just be business as usual.
    If the Westminster establishment think it'll be business as usual,they'll have to think again.
    Mind you, it's only a poll. All to play for. Time for all the YES groups to pile into the targeted seats.

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  14. The LibDems will hold East Dumbartonshire. Too much to loose - they will throw absolutely anything and everything at this seat. And besides, since 2015, the tories (of all hues) have managed to effectively convert British nationalists into single issue voters, the issue being "anyone but SNP".

    Just managing expectations, folks. Don't get carried away.

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    1. Exactly. 75% of all seats is pretty impressive.

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  15. I'm going to stick my neck out and say hung parliament or really narrow majority for Con, so much so that their own infighting screws it all up and it's stalemate.

    Libs to drop to ~10% by election day at best UK-wide, but with this concentrated in key seats, mainly in South England, where they make some progress and hurt the Tories by taking the Tory Remain vote.

    Just like last time, the 'delay brexit by any means necessary / stop the Tories' vote goes to Labour the further you move north, so the Tories fail to pick as many 'labour brexit' seats as they'd hoped. They have a high%, but it's concentrated Tory brexit seats, so doesn't help deliver.

    In Scotland, where more choice is available, the prospect of a solid extremist Tory victory (as the papers are now all projecting), focuses minds and turnout rises. This favours Remain, Yes, and the SNP. The latter make decent gains. How much is really turnout dependent. If the ~50% Yes vote decide to push hard, the SNP will do very well.

    While the prospect of the SNP holding the balance of power is small, I still think deadlock of some form in Westminster is likely. England, and the UK, is too divided. The English nationalists may then find themselves with a decent majority in England, but with their brexit dreams once again scuppered by Wales/Scotland/NI.

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    1. I'm going to stick my neck out and say hung parliament or really narrow majority for Con, so much so that their own infighting screws it all up and it's stalemate.

      What would they be fighting about? The party has been purged of anyone who opposes Johnson. Every Tory candidate for Westminster has signed up to the withdrawal agreement. If they win a majority, which every indicator suggests they will, that'll be it. The UK and Scotland subjected to the hardest Brexit possible short of no-deal, with any escape route for the latter closed off.

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    2. The backstop is the obvious one.

      You have the no deal crazies who want to rebuild the empire and to tell all the neighbours to get to feck over NI and the GFA. But then you have the slightly cooler heads, Johnson included, who understand that would mean a permanent no deal brexit with everyone in the world. Ergo, utter ruination for England.

      There are divisions within divisions.

      He may have purged the remainers, but he's still got all the different pro-brexit factions stabbing each other in the back. It's like herding rabid cats. The DUP are a perfect example; they were, to all intents and purposes, the NI branch of the Tories. Now they are sworn enemies of Johnson, and have quite a lot of allies in the English Tory ranks; enough to threaten his control.

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    3. Remember, the trade deal negotiations haven't even begun yet, with the EU, USA, rest of the world... That's where things start getting really difficult for the UK and it will have to make huge concessions from a position of weakness.

      What we've has so far - the simple withdrawal agreement - is the easy bit.

      Johnson will need a 1997 tony blair type majority with all the peoples of the UK united behind him to have any chance of making brexit work, at least for 1 parliamentary session.

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    4. As I said, every Tory candidate supports the WA, so any risk of the "crazies" who want to ditch the GFA getting a foothold has been eliminated for this parliament. No one cares what the DUP thinks.

      As for the trade deal, the government will sell the UK to Trump for a pittance. Everyone who wields any power will be perfectly happy with this situation.

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    5. I think you are overestimating how united the Tories area. They have absolutely no loyalty to each other, and will stab each other in the back at every possible opportunity. I imagine there are already a few planning to take out Johnson and become PM themselves at the next avialable opportunity.

      Tories are all out for themselves at the best of times. The reasonably competent ones are now all gone, leaving a pack of mad loony racists led by a buffoon.

      Brexit will not be a success, even if Johnson won a decent majortiy. It will be a great disaster. English people don't even want it now, so it has zero chance of going well.

      We can't predict the outcome in terms of seats, but we can predict that the UK will sink deeper into the shit, with the constitutional crisis getting worse.

      There is no possible outcome that will see things go well for the UK.

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  16. There is no possible outcome that will see things go well for the UK.

    Oh, there's no doubt about that, if by "the UK" you mean almost all the people living here. For the Conservative Party, the next few years look pretty rosy.

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  17. Scottish Westminster voting intention:

    SNP: 44%
    CON: 26%
    LAB: 16%
    LDEM: 11%
    GRN: 2%

    via @IpsosMORI, 19 - 25 Nov

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