The SNP won't be too unhappy with the final YouGov seats projection

After last night's poor seats projection for the SNP from Survation, I've been nervously waiting for the final projection from YouGov, who are the most experienced firm with MRP.  It's kind of middling - they have the SNP on eighteen seats, which if you think about it isn't that much fewer than the 24 projected from last night's Savanta poll that had an outright SNP lead in the popular vote.  The important thing is that it's in line with the previous two YouGov projections of 17 and 20 seats respectively, which means there is absolutely no corroboration for Survation's view that there has been a big swing against the SNP over the campaign.  Survation look increasingly like an outlier on that point.

The individual seat projections predictably show a sea of red in the central belt, but it's broken by SNP wins in Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock, Edinburgh East & Musselburgh, North Ayrshire & Arran and also in two symbolically important seats - Paisley & Renfrewshire South (formerly held by Mhairi Black) and Mid Dunbartonshire (held by Jo Swinson until 2019).  The SNP are also on course to defeat Douglas Ross in Aberdeenshire North & Moray East but are falling short in three notionally Tory-held seats: Gordon & Buchan, Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk and Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale.  All three of those are tight, though (the SNP are within five points).  The two Aberdeen seats and the two Dundee seats are all in the SNP column, although Aberdeen North is pretty close.

Fans of Joanna Cherry (which includes me) will be heartened to know that although she's nominally behind Labour, her seat is classed as a toss-up.  Deidre Brock is similarly very close to holding on in Edinburgh North & Leith, as is Alan Brown in Kilmarnock & Loudoun.  There are a handful of other central belt seats where the SNP still look to be in contention, including East Renfrewshire, which would be a very satisfying hold because the Labour candidate is Blair McDougall.

In the Western Isles, Labour are supposedly on course to defeat the SNP by 40% to 31%, with Angus MacNeil on a maximum of 7%, which demonstrates the severe limitations of MRP projections in atypical constituency races.  All of the indications from the ground are that MacNeil is likely to be in the top two alongside Labour. 

Jamie Stone is holding on for the Lib Dems in Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross, but only just - Lucy Beattie is estimated to be only two points behind him for the SNP.  I know many people will be sceptical about that, but with the boundary changes being so radical you just never know.

The lower bound for SNP seats is 8, and the upper bound is 34, meaning that YouGov are saying an SNP overall majority is still just about possible.

Incidentally, YouGov have made a really odd factual error in their write-up.  They say their projection of 32 seats for Labour in Scotland would return the party to roughly their level of strength from the 2005 and 2010 elections, when they had "27".  In fact, Labour won 41 seats in Scotland in both of those elections, so they'd be falling a fair bit short of that.

Meanwhile, the new More In Common projection has the SNP on sixteen seats, which is also fairly stable since the last update.

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I've previewed the constituency races in Perth & Kinross-shire and Rutherglen for The National - you can read the articles HERE and HERE.