Thursday, March 23, 2023

New Ipsos poll shows Humza Yousaf's net approval rating has now slumped to -20, well behind both Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer - pointing to potential disaster for the SNP if Yousaf leads them into the next Westminster and Holyrood elections

We've been in a weird 'polling desert' since the Murrell scandal broke a few days ago, but at last we do have some up to date numbers.  Again, they come from polling of the general public rather than SNP members.  However, there appears to have been a YouGov poll of SNP members in the field for around a week, so we'll have to see if that eventually shows up, perhaps at the weekend.

The new Ipsos numbers come in the form of net approval ratings for each candidate and for other senior politicians.  They show Nicola Sturgeon's rating improving (just in time for that to no longer matter) while almost everyone else's falls.  Both Anas Sarwar and Kate Forbes have slipped into negative territory since the last poll, but the bad news for Humza Yousaf - who was already in negative territory in the last poll - is that he has slumped even deeper into the red and thus remains way behind both Sarwar and Forbes.

Ipsos net approval ratings (17th-21st March 2023):

Nicola Sturgeon (SNP): +8
Anas Sarwar (Labour): -4
Kate Forbes (SNP): -8
Keir Starmer (Labour): -9
Humza Yousaf (SNP): -20
Ash Regan (SNP): -24
Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -37
Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -39

So the concern remains the same.  Kate Forbes looks capable of competing with Labour's leaders on a roughly equal footing, but Humza Yousaf does not - which gives us fair warning that a Yousaf-led SNP would be likely to suffer seat losses in the next Westminster and Holyrood elections, and possibly to surrender power to Labour.

Incidentally, some random troll quoted these exact numbers at me last night on Twitter, several hours before they were published, although he had the fieldwork dates wrong.  I'd be interested to know how that was possible, although I have my suspicions.  He seemed to think the numbers were somehow good for Yousaf, possibly because he didn't spot the minus symbol before the 20!

*  *  *

Recently I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Is there ANY way the SNP could win the 2026 Holyrood election with a leader as unpopular as Humza Yousaf?

That's a headline deliberately "in the style of the Daily Mail", but there's a perfectly serious point behind it, and it's one I've made a number of times before.  I thought it might be worth revisiting on the day that we're told Humza Yousaf thinks - with a certain lack of self-awareness, it has to be said - that his opponents in the leadership election might cost the SNP some of its supporters. In reality, that concern relates mainly to himself.

We know that the approval ratings of leaders are often highly predictive of general election and Scottish Parliament election results, and every poll that has measured approval ratings over the course of this campaign has had Kate Forbes well ahead of Humza Yousaf.  But the most telling results have been from Ipsos, who also asked the same approval question of non-SNP politicians, and most importantly of the Labour leader Anas Sarwar, to allow a direct comparison to be made.  Here is what the most recent Ipsos poll showed...

Ipsos net approval ratings (6th-7th March 2023):

Kate Forbes (SNP): +8
Anas Sarwar (Labour): +5
Humza Yousaf (SNP): -7

So the SNP really are at a crossroads.  They can opt to give themselves a slight inbuilt advantage over Labour at the 2026 Holyrood election by choosing in Kate Forbes a leader who is a touch more popular than the de facto main opposition leader - and even having that option after so many years in government is pretty extraordinary, let's face it.  Or they can self-harm by spurning that opportunity and installing a leader who is significantly less popular than his Labour opposite number.

Would it be possible for the SNP to overcome the hindrance of an unpopular leader like Yousaf to hold onto power?  That would be a very tall order.  For as long as anyone can remember, UK general elections have generally been won by the party with the most popular leader.  The two exceptions that are generally cited are 1970, which was won by the Conservatives in spite of Harold Wilson being more popular than Edward Heath, and 1979, which was also won by the Tories in spite of James Callaghan being more popular than Margaret Thatcher.  But UK elections were a lot less presidential in the 1970s than they are now.

In a Scottish context, some may point out that Ruth Davidson often had slightly superior approval ratings to Nicola Sturgeon, and yet Sturgeon always got the better of Davidson in elections.  But that's not really a meaningful comparison because the Tories can't compete on a level playing field with the SNP in Scotland.  Their brand is too loathed outside their own core vote.  Scottish Labour have no such disadvantage, and in any case it's hard to dispute that Davidson achieved something very close to the best results that were realistically possible for her.

The only glimmer of hope for a Yousaf-led SNP might be the question of "which came first - the chicken or the egg?"  We might assume that it's leaders that make parties popular or unpopular, but just occasionally it can be the other way around.  Just by chance, I happened to be in the Republic of Ireland (Donegal, to be exact) in the week of the 2007 general election, which was widely expected to be won by Fine Gael, led by Enda Kenny.  But the snag was that Kenny was significantly less popular on a personal level than Fianna Fáil's incumbent Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.  I watched Kenny deliver his final party election broadcast, in which his strategists had forced him to parrot some North American-imported artificial nonsense about a "Contract with Ireland", and he came across as stilted and uncomfortable.  In the end, Fianna Fáil surprisingly retained power, and to a large extent that was attributed to the charm of Ahern, who was thought to be the sort of guy people would like to spend time with in a pub.

But four years later, it couldn't have been more different.  Kenny had somehow survived as Fine Gael leader, and in spite of the fact that his personality hadn't changed one iota, he weirdly had much higher approval ratings than before, and indeed was more popular than his opponent.  Voters had grown thoroughly sick of Fianna Fáil, and simply by embodying something different, Kenny became much more liked.  However, I think it would be wildly over-optimistic and naive to imagine Humza Yousaf could benefit from a similar effect - if you're unpopular just before you assume the highest office in the land, the likelihood is that the only way is down.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Monday, March 20, 2023

Tories cut Labour's Britain-wide lead to just 10 points in new poll - the lowest since Liz Truss was Prime Minister

There's a very big health warning to be put on this, because two other polls conducted at around the same time have failed to pick up the same trend, but nevertheless Deltapoll are indeed reporting that Labour's GB-wide lead has been slashed from 23 points to just 10 - which seems to be the smallest Labour advantage in any poll from any firm since mid-September 2022, when Liz Truss was still Prime Minister (just before she blew it completely).

GB-wide voting intentions for next general election (17th-20th March 2023):

Labour 45% (-5)
Conservatives 35% (+8)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-2)

It looks like that would still produce a decent enough Labour overall majority, although it certainly wouldn't be a three-figure majority, and not too much more of a swing back to the Tories would bring a hung parliament back into play.

Although there isn't really any supporting evidence of a Tory surge from other polls, it was notable that in the Opinium poll at the weekend, Rishi Sunak had slightly overtaken Keir Starmer to become the public's preference for Prime Minister.  We know that leadership ratings are sometimes more predictive of election results than standard voting intentions, especially a long way out from polling day.  

This is beginning to feel a little bit less like the run-up to the 1997 election.  In other words, although Labour are justifiably strong favourites to win next year's general election, it's possible to see a path back for the Tories in a way that wasn't really the case in the 1990s.  And in a perverse sense that might throw a lifeline to the SNP, who would stand a better chance of maintaining their majority status among Scottish MPs at Westminster if the momentum towards a Labour government starts stalling.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Installing a continuity leader in this scenario would be a disaster the SNP might never recover from - the solution is for Yousaf to make a dignified withdrawal and for his supporters to make their peace with Kate Forbes

I've written a few times about my fears that a Humza Yousaf win, even if it only results in him being leader for a year or two, could cause such damage to both the SNP and the independence movement that it might not be repairable by the person who replaces him. I think we're now getting to the point where this leadership campaign itself is causing enough damage that there's going to be a major problem even if the right person wins.  The idiocy of the people who told the media a direct lie about the membership numbers has caused newspapers to wreak their revenge by portraying the SNP as a party riven by sleaze and on its way out.  That is going to be hard to come back from, and the only way it can even possibly be done is with a completely new broom.  A Yousaf leadership is no longer a credible option.

The independence movement has split into two completely different types of hellscape today.  If you're brave enough to venture into the Wings comments section, you'll bizarrely encounter a party atmosphere as people effectively celebrate a process that could be killing the independence cause before our eyes.  As much as I understand the schadenfreude about the long-overdue downfall of Peter Murrell, there is, as ever, a total failure to see the bigger picture.  I presume many Wings commenters do still support independence to some degree, but today that seems to be coming a very poor second to the settling of old scores.

And on the other extreme, we have the true believers, the diehard defenders of the current regime and of the continuity candidate, who are lashing out angrily at just about everyone apart from the ones actually responsible for this mess - ie. their own side.  What they don't seem to understand - or want to understand - is that the lie about membership numbers couldn't have been covered up indefinitely, even if Kate Forbes and Ash Regan had conveniently played along with the veil of secrecy.  When the leadership election result was announced, either the membership numbers would have been visible in the result, or else the result would have been expressed only in percentages, which would have been so suspicious that the media would have known instantly a cover-up was going on.  The problem was always the lie and not the calls for transparency - and yet we have Nicola Sturgeon's own sister saying she's so furious with the calls for transparency that she would rather vote Tory than vote for an SNP led by Forbes or Regan.

In this situation, it is unthinkable that a continuity candidate could emerge as leader of the SNP.  An analogous event was the downfall of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons, when it was obvious to everyone that if confidence was going to be restored, the person who replaced him would have to be in a completely different mould.  But the problem is that the SNP have arrived at this moment after the bulk of votes for leader have already been cast - which raises the horrifying prospect of Yousaf being elected as a zombie leader whose position had already become untenable in the days before he took office.  Responsible Yousaf supporters who care first and foremost about the interests of the SNP and the independence cause should now be giving urgent thought to how that scenario can be averted.  The obvious solution would be for Yousaf to make a dignified withdrawal and for his supporters to make their peace with Kate Forbes.

There was a TV series in the 1970s called The Sandbaggers, which is often considered one of the most realistic depictions of espionage ever seen on TV because it was written by someone who was believed to have been an intelligence officer himself.  There's one episode in which "C", the head of the intelligence service, suddenly stands down due to ill health, and his Director of Operations - the lead character in the show - starts panicking because he realises that the most likely replacement is a personal enemy of his and someone who has a completely different prescription for the future of the service.  So he spends the episode frantically trying to fix the selection process so that the new "C" is a different person who he knows to be completely unsuitable for the job but at least isn't his enemy - somewhat analogous to the various tactics being employed by the SNP establishment in favour of Humza Yousaf.  By the end, he's patting himself on the back because he thinks he's succeeded - but then his chosen candidate does something so stupid and ridiculous that it would result in the end of the service.  So he sheepishly goes back to his superiors and tells them he was completely wrong and that he can now see that his enemy was always the best person available - the right man at the right time.  His humiliation is complete when he is told that his enemy has already been appointed anyway.  But in later episodes, he finds he can work with his enemy effectively enough, albeit in an uneasy fashion, and he can even start to see a few merits in the philosophy of the new "C", which he had previously regarded as so alien.

If I was constructing my ideal First Minister, Kate Forbes is probably not the person I would choose.  I'd want someone a bit more left-wing, a bit less socially conservative (I do agree with her about the GRR, but that's got nothing to do with social conservatism), and certainly a lot more radical on independence strategy.  But a responsible party of government needs a leader, and that leader needs to be the best person available, the right person at the right time.  Making that hardheaded choice can sometimes mean giving a new leader some latitude to chart a different course that you might not be entirely comfortable with - but that's still infinitely better than choosing an obviously unsuitable person.  If this contest is boiling down to Forbes v Yousaf, the decision ought to be a no-brainer in the current climate.  The party establishment have backed the wrong man, and they need to be responsible enough to set aside factionalism and petty grievances. and to put their mistake right before incalculable damage is done.  They can surely see that a Forbes leadership wouldn't be the end of civilisation as we know it - they had her, after all, as their own Finance Secretary.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

There is nothing remotely unusual about someone standing as a candidate in an election process they have concerns about - in general, participating in flawed elections is the only way to bring about change

Those of you who are on Twitter may have seen that I had a brief exchange with Pat Kane last night.  Earlier in the day, Pat had said that he couldn't understand why Ash Regan would want to cast doubt on the integrity of an electoral process she was involved in.  I thought that was an extremely peculiar remark, because it's actually very commonplace, the whole world over, for people to stand as candidates in electoral processes that they believe or suspect to be flawed in some way.  That's generally the only way to bring reform about (short of a revolution), and you'd think that any progressive would understand that perfectly well.  

A banal example is that if you think first-past-the-post is a rotten electoral system, you still have to stand in first-past-the-post elections, because it's only by winning power under the current system that you can introduce proportional representation.  The suggestion that nobody can in good conscience stand in an election unless they have complete faith in the system ultimately betrays a deeply conservative worldview, because it seeks to exclude (or at least delegitimise) most of the real world options for seeking change.  Eventually I responded to Pat, and the way I put it was that nobody would ever criticise the Belarussian opposition leader for standing in an election she believed to be flawed, and that having faith in how the SNP run internal elections is not a prerequisite for Ash Regan or for anyone else to think that they would make a good leader of the SNP, and thus to put themselves forward for that position.

Pat responded by implying that the mention of Belarus was further proof of the "derangement" of those who have queried the conduct of the leadership election.  Then Gerry Hassan suddenly popped up out of nowhere, and made a series of what I can only describe as defamatory claims, including the utterly baseless suggestion that I had "made light" of the Belarussian people's suffering under a cruel regime.  I hadn't even mentioned the Belarussian people.  I must say it's instructive to see just how quickly - in fact instantaneously - a leading radical left intellectual will quite happily try to distract from the weakness of his own case with cynical and disreputable debating tactics that would shame even the rawest of student politicians.

In reality, a comparison with the flaws of the Belarussian electoral process is not a comparison with the wider activities of the regime.  It's a comparison that does exactly what it says on the tin, no more and no less - and once you acknowledge that irrefutable fact, it becomes a much harder comparison to simply swat away.  The subtext of the suggestions that Ash Regan and her followers are some kind of lunatic fringe is that we live in a free country, very unlike Belarus, and that it's therefore absurd or somehow "Trumpian" to imagine there's any chance that the conduct of the SNP leadership election is not spotless and beyond reproach.  But that's a logical fallacy, because the UK's status as a free democracy rests on the conduct of elections to public office.  Internal party elections do not fall into that category and are therefore not subject to the same standards, laws and rules.  

Parties run internal elections themselves as they see fit.  If there was outright vote-rigging, there would probably be legal redress available - as long as you could find proof, of course.  But meeting the threshold for a free and fair election requires far more than simply the absence of vote-rigging.  In the context of public elections, there are several criteria applied, such as independent oversight, fair access to the media for all candidates, and transparency in the way the votes are counted.  What all of these points boil down to is one central question - is there any reasonable prospect of a transfer of power from the incumbents to their opponents if that is what a fair process might have resulted in?  

A much-studied political phenomenon is the "one party dominant state", where multi-party elections occur, but where the same party always wins.   Mexico was a prime example of that for many decades, and Russia is perhaps the best example now. The process is managed by systems of patronage, and by starving opposition candidates of fair access to the media.  Vote-rigging does not generally occur, but there always remains the open question of what the government might resort to if the more informal safeguards on its power start to fail.

In the context of the SNP leadership election, Humza Yousaf represents the incumbent faction.  That does not mean, of course, that Yousaf has to lose for the outcome to be democratic - it's perfectly possible that he could win because he is the best candidate or because his ideas resonate most.  But because the playing field is self-evidently not level, there will remain a question mark on whether the ruling faction would ever be prepared to relinquish power in line with democratic principles, and that question will stay unresolved until such time in the future that a transfer of power occurs.

I'd invite you to look carefully at a list on Wikipedia setting out ten broad categories of things that must be present for an election to qualify as "free and fair".  Pretty much all of them are present in elections to public office in the UK, which is why we consider ourselves to live in a reasonably free country. And, in fairness, most of them are present in the SNP leadership election too - but there are, unfortunately, a number of gaps.  For example...

"whether election-related laws were not changed immediately before an election"

There have been suggestions that the SNP modified or bent their own rules with the short timescale for this election - which disproportionately harms lesser-known candidates like Ash Regan, who would have had more opportunity to build her profile with a longer campaign.

"electoral management (whether gerrymandering occurred and whether election management bodies, if they existed, were independent, impartial, and accountable)"

Gerrymandering does not apply here, but the equivalent of election management bodies can hardly be said to be independent and impartial.  Ultimately, this election is being run by people such as Peter Murrell who want Humza Yousaf to win, and who have a vested interest in him winning.

"electoral rights (whether citizens were generally able to vote on the basis of equal suffrage and access)"

There are anecdotal reports of some SNP members not having received a ballot.

"voter registers (whether they were accurate, current, and open to voters for easy and effective voter registration)"

There is no transparency over whether the list of eligible voters is accurate.

"campaign process (whether elections were carried out without violence, intimidation, bribery (vote buying), use of government resources to advantage the incumbent, or a "massive financial advantages" for the incumbent"

There's no suggestion of violence, intimidation or vote-buying.  However, the continuity candidate does seem to be benefiting from the resources of the party in a way that the other two candidates are not.

"media access (whether freedom of speech was protected and whether the ruling party was disproportionately benefited by government-owned media"

I don't think anyone would dispute that freedom of speech has been fully on show during the campaign.  But the equivalent of "government media" in an internal election are things like official party mailing lists, and we all know about the notorious example of Emma Harper using one of those lists to email members in support of Humza Yousaf.

"voting process (whether elections were conducted by secret ballot on a one person, one vote basis, with adequate security to protect voters and protection against ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, destruction of valid ballots, and other forms of manipulation"

There is no evidence at all for any vote-rigging in this election.  But is there "adequate security" to protect against any theoretical possibility of vote-rigging?  We don't really know.  Members are expected to just take it on trust.

"role of officials (whether the election was administered with adequately trained personnel, free from campaigning or intimidation at polling places, and with the ability of international election observers and party representatives to observe polling places; and counting of votes (whether votes were tabulated transparently and free of fraud or tampering"

In an internal election, the equivalent of "international observers" and "transparent tabulation" would be the type of independent oversight that two of the candidates have requested.  As I understand it, that request has been denied.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Is Alba on course for a list seat in the north-east?

I'm going to take a brief break from covering the SNP leadership election, because I was asked two or three threads back to give an opinion on the Alba Party's claim that polling shows them to be on course to win a Holyrood list seat in the north-east region, which would probably be filled by Alex Salmond.  The claim seems to be based on the regional subsamples from the YouGov poll commissioned by Sky News for their SNP leadership debate earlier in the week, which show the following for the list ballot in the north-east - 

SNP 32%
Conservatives 19%
Labour 19%
Greens 17%
Alba 6%
Reform UK 3%
Liberal Democrats 3%

That probably would be enough for an Alba list seat - I can only say 'probably' because you'd need to know the constituency results before you can make the d'Hondt calculation.  However, the problem is that the sample size in the north-east was just 150 respondents, and it seems unlikely that the numbers were correctly weighted to the regional population.  (YouGov are unusual in that they do appear to correctly weight their Scottish subsamples in GB-wide polls, but I'm not aware of any suggestion that they do the same for Scottish regional subsamples.)  Therefore, you can't expect pinpoint accuracy or anything like it, which is demonstrated by the fact that Alba are on the implausible figure of zero in both Mid-Scotland & Fife and West Scotland.  The chances are that Alba support is being understated in those two regions, but overstated in the north-east.

The best guide to whether Alba have a realistic chance of nicking a list seat in the north-east or anywhere else remains the national vote share, which can be considered much more reliable.  In this poll Alba are on 2% nationally, exactly the same as at the 2021 Holyrood election, when they didn't really come close to winning a seat.  If they could double that and get to 4% nationally, they'd be in the zone where only a slight overperformance in one or two regions could claim them a seat.  As things stand, though, it's likely they'd still be falling short.

However, forgetting about unreliable regional subsamples, there is a much better argument for thinking Alba might be making a little progress in the north-east, and that's the Dyce by-election result from a few weeks back.  They took a creditable 4% of the vote, significantly better than they managed in by-elections in the central belt towards the end of last year, and finished ahead of the Greens.  OK, one swallow does not make a summer, and even 4% across the north-east region would not be quite enough for a list seat.  But it is the first real sign that when Alba run a well-organised campaign, they have a message that is capable of resonating enough to make them competitive with at least one of what are generally considered to be the "big five" parties.

A final point: in the press release in which Alba make the claim about the north-east seat, they also say the YouGov / Sky News poll shows the Yes vote on 45% and the No vote on 55%.  That's not true - the real figures are Yes 46%, No 54%, which in spite of the hysterical way the mainstream media reported the poll actually represents no change at all from the previous YouGov poll, thus suggesting the Yes vote is holding up well during this difficult period.  As I've said before, I very much hope Alba don't start following the Wings practice of effectively talking up and embellishing the poorest polls for Yes, and falling silent out of disappointment whenever a good poll for Yes is released.  

I'm on record as saying a Humza Yousaf win would be checkmate for independence, at least until he's deposed.  But even if Yousaf does win, it would still be a mistake for any pro-independence party to be continually talking down independence.  In that scenario, the SNP will inevitably learn the hard way that they've made a terrible blunder, and there'll be no value in other independence supporters actively contributing to that process by effectively campaigning like unionists.  Our job will be to keep the flame of independence alive - just about - for however long it takes for the SNP to emerge from the blind alley they've wandered down.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

The first polling information about second preferences is extremely bad for Humza Yousaf - but extremely good for both Kate Forbes and Ash Regan

I've made a few attempts over the last four days to find the data tables from last week's Survation poll on the SNP leadership election, but I became more determined tonight when I saw John Curtice saying that it was the only poll to date with any information on second preferences.  I eventually found a link to the tables on Survation's Twitter account (there's still no link on the Survation website as far as I can see).

One of the problems with trying to work out the likely result of this election is that all but one of the polls to have been conducted so far have been of the general public, or in a couple of cases of SNP-voting members of the general public, rather than of card-carrying SNP members who comprise the actual electorate on this occasion.  That problem also applies to these Survation numbers on second preferences.  However, although there are good reasons for assuming SNP members may have different first preferences for leader than SNP voters (and the sole members' poll bears that theory out), there's no obvious reason for thinking that SNP members who want Ash Regan as leader would have radically different second preferences from SNP voters who want Ash Regan as leader.  So this poll may actually give us a reasonable insight into what is likely to be going on, albeit with a big health warning attached.

Survation / DC Thomson poll (8th-10th March 2023):

Second preferences of Ash Regan-supporting SNP voters:

Kate Forbes: 46%
Humza Yousaf: 29%

Another problem here is that the subsample of Regan-supporting SNP voters is extremely small (only 44 people), so the margin of error is considerable, but it's an interesting straw in the wind if nothing else.  It suggests that Kate Forbes can expect to at least eat into the modest first preference lead for Yousaf shown by the sole members' poll.  On these figures, Forbes would fall very slightly short of winning, because the members' poll suggested she would need a 3-1 margin on Regan's second preferences.  Nevertheless, bearing in mind the margin of error on the members' poll, this race looks extremely tight, and certainly far too close to call.  There's no good reason on the basis of any poll so far to conclude that Yousaf has a very high probability of being in the lead once second preferences are taken into account.

Although it's likely to be academic, perhaps the most startling finding of this poll is that Forbes supporters return the compliment by breaking for Regan by a similar margin.  I would have expected it to be much more even, or perhaps even for Yousaf to have an advantage, because I assumed that Forbes supporters were more 'establishment-minded' than Regan supporters.

Second preferences of Kate Forbes-supporting SNP voters:

Ash Regan: 45%
Humza Yousaf: 29%

On the headline first preference results, the Survation poll is strikingly similar to the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll that was conducted at roughly the same time - it shows a big lead for Kate Forbes among the general public, and a smaller Forbes lead among SNP voters from 2021 (as opposed to the fictional 19-point lead for Yousaf that the man himself kept boasting about on Sky the other night).

General public's first preferences:

Kate Forbes: 30%
Humza Yousaf: 20%
Ash Regan: 9%

First preferences of SNP voters:

Kate Forbes: 33%
Humza Yousaf: 31%
Ash Regan: 13%

First preferences of Yes voters from 2014 independence referendum:

Kate Forbes: 32%
Humza Yousaf: 28%
Ash Regan: 15%

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

The Liz Truss episode is a warning from (recent) history for the SNP - you don't have the luxury of installing a leader as unpopular as Humza Yousaf and then fixing the mistake later, because by that point the damage may be too great for the leader that follows him to repair

Last summer, the Tories held a leadership contest in which the polls showed the public had a clear preference between the contenders - they wanted Rishi Sunak rather than Liz Truss.  Tory members made the opposite choice, which perhaps wasn't surprising given what tends to happen when parties have been in power for a very long time.  Parties that have been out of government for an eternity, such as Labour in the early-to-mid 1990s, are generally pretty disciplined in looking at what will help them connect with the public and doing whatever it takes to get elected, even if that means stepping outside their own comfort zone in their choice of leader.  But after a decade or more in government, complacency often sets in, and there's a tendency to just stay inside the comfort zone with the choice of leader and to expect the public to learn to live with the person you've selected.  That can be a very dangerous game if the leader is not just someone the public wouldn't have chosen, but someone who polls show the public actively dislikes.  We know only too well that the Tories paid an incredibly heavy penalty for defying the public with their selection of Truss, and indeed that the heaviest penalty of all probably still lies in store for them.

If the SNP elect the unpopular Humza Yousaf as their leader, it will be an act of complacent self-indulgence comparable to the election of Truss, although the nature of the self-indulgence will be somewhat different.  It starts with the fact that Yousaf is the hand-picked successor of the faction that currently controls the SNP, and in that sense the mistake of anointing him can be compared with the Corbynites' strategic blunder in betting the house on Rebecca Long-Bailey rather than a more suitable left-winger such as Clive Lewis.  They had fallen in love with the idea that they had control of the party machinery and effectively control of the membership, and could thus install whoever they wanted - but in retrospect it's obvious that they would have been far better off making the hardheaded choice of rejecting Long-Bailey in favour of Lewis.  In the SNP's case, it's still possible the current leadership will 'get away' with making the poor selection of Yousaf,  but if they do, it will be for all the wrong reasons.  It won't primarily be about ideological purity in the way that it was with Truss (although admittedly the identity politics divide is playing a big role), it'll be more about factionalism, and personal loyalties, and even sentimentality to some extent. If a member votes for Yousaf mainly because John Swinney tells them to, ultimately that boils down to a sentimental attachment to Swinney after so many decades of him being around in a senior role.

If Yousaf wins, I don't expect the wheels to come off quite as quickly as they did with Truss.  But even if he learns from Truss' mistake and governs circumspectly over the coming months, there's one ticking time-bomb that he can't avoid for very long.  A Westminster general election will almost certainly take place next year (most likely in May, June or October), and the SNP would be going into that battle with a leader who has significantly poorer public approval ratings than either the UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, or the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.  Given that Westminster elections are 'away fixtures' for the SNP where the media won't allow them to compete with the UK-wide parties on a level playing-field, and given that Labour will have momentum behind them as they seek to eject the Tories from power after a decade and a half, it's not hard to see where this ends.  In my judgement (to use the late Paddy Ashdown's favourite pompous phrase), there is a greater than 50% probability - perhaps far greater than 50% - that a Yousaf-led SNP would lose their position next year as the majority party among Scottish MPs at Westminster.

That event would shock the SNP membership to their core.  It might lead to Yousaf swiftly being deposed, and you could imagine that the subsequent leadership contest may boil down to a battle between Kate Forbes and Angus Robertson.  If that had been the line-up in the current contest, Robertson would have been favourite to win, but it would be a very different story after a landmark Westminster defeat.  As was the case for Sunak last autumn, Forbes would be in pole position as the popular runner-up who history had proved completely right.  It would be plain for all to see that 'continuity didn't cut it', and in all likelihood the SNP would belatedly install the First Minister that the public had wanted all along.

But the real warning from history is this: even though Sunak became Prime Minister only one month later than he would have done if he had defeated Truss in the summer, he inherited a completely different legacy.  If he had won at the first time of asking, he would have taken over a Tory party that was only slightly behind Labour in the polls.  He would probably have either maintained that position or improved on it.  Instead, he came in when polls were pointing to a landslide defeat for the Tories, and thus far he hasn't been able to turn that around, because the damage Truss did in her short period in office was simply too great.

A post-Yousaf SNP could face a similar fate.  The SNP have defied gravity in the last three UK general elections by winning a majority in Scotland, but if Labour return to being the majority party, the new Labour MPs will start enjoying an incumbency boost and they will be very, very difficult to dislodge.  The SNP would retreat to being what they were prior to 2015 - essentially a Holyrood-only party.  Now, in fairness, Alex Salmond took Scotland to the brink of independence in 2014 without much of an SNP presence at Westminster.  But here's the thing: both leadership frontrunners are now saying that the way in which we almost won independence in 2014 is no longer good enough.  50% + 1 of the vote on a single day won't do anymore, apparently, we need "sustained supermajorities".  That being the case, permanently throwing away the tremendous leverage of a pro-independence majority among Scottish MPs at Westminster is self-evidently a luxury we cannot afford - and yet that is precisely what the SNP are flirting with by even thinking of someone as unpopular as Yousaf as their new leader.

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Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Remember, Ash Regan supporters, it's vitally important to use your second preference vote, and it's a totally risk-free thing to do - here's a quick reminder of how the voting system works

I was toying with the idea of doing one of my "how the voting system works" blogposts just before the SNP leadership ballot got underway, but I began to think it was unnecessary because I had looked back at past internal elections in different parties and realised that the vast majority of members do actually rank more than one candidate.  However, our regular commenter Keaton has gone and put a doubt in my mind by saying that he thinks Humza Yousaf might sneak the win, because not enough Ash Regan supporters understand the voting system and therefore may not give any second preference at all.  I'm not at all sure that's true, but just on a belt-and-braces basis, here's a reminder of why using a second preference is so vitally important and why it's a totally risk-free thing to do.

The name of the voting system being used in the leadership ballot is the Single Transferable Vote, and it's the same system used in multi-member local election wards in Scotland - although in practice when only one person is being elected it is functionally identical to the Alternative Vote system that the UK had a referendum on back in 2011.  The name Single Transferable Vote helpfully sums up the system in quite a literal way.  It may seem strange to call it a 'single vote' when you're able to rank more than one candidate, but it genuinely is 'single' in the sense that it can only be in one place at any one time - ie. on any given count, it will only count towards one candidate's tally of votes.  There will be no 'half-votes' or 'diluted votes', so you don't need to worry that your first preference vote for Ash Regan will somehow be 'less emphatic' if you give a second preference to Kate Forbes.  (My guess is that's the irrational worry that causes some people to wrongly use only their first preference vote.)  When the first preference count is revealed, everybody who gave Ash Regan their first preference will simply have cast one vote for Ash Regan and for nobody else.  There will be no distinction made between Regan voters who gave a second preference and Regan voters who didn't.  Those will all just be Regan votes and nothing else.

However, if Ash Regan is eliminated after the first count (as we strongly suspect she will be), you then actively want your single vote to be transferred to another candidate for the second and final count.  You can't do Regan any good whatsoever by not having your vote transferred, because in the second count she's not a candidate anymore.  Your first preference for Regan has already been recorded and will be reported in the media, so there literally is nothing to be gained by not giving a second preference - which would be tantamount to abstaining on what will be a Yousaf v Forbes run-off on the second count.  If you prefer Forbes to Yousaf (as most Regan supporters do), not giving a second preference means you are passively helping Yousaf to beat Forbes, which is an utterly perverse thing to do - and let's be honest, Ash Regan herself would not thank you for doing that.  I have no doubt that she'd far rather serve in a senior Cabinet post under First Minister Kate Forbes than find herself languishing on the backbenches under "First Activist" (ahem) Humza Yousaf.

Monday, March 13, 2023

Yousaf appears to have spent half the Sky News debate telling blatant lies about opinion poll results - in fact, the new YouGov / Sky News poll has Kate Forbes ahead of him among SNP voters on several key questions

Humza Yousaf was absolutely obsessed with talking about opinion poll results during the Sky News leadership debate tonight, which suggests to me he's very worried about what the polls are actually showing and is desperately trying to muddy the waters with a mixture of lies, half-truths and distortions.  Although Kate Forbes clearly came out on top in the debate, one thing that disappointed me was that she didn't properly challenge Yousaf's fibs about polling.  He kept asking her what essentially was a "when did you stop beating your wife?" question, ie. variants on "is that why I've pulled ahead of you among SNP supporters, Kate?", which is based on a completely false premise.  In fact, the Panelbase poll which I published two days ago (and which is more or less bang up to date - the fieldwork ran until Friday) showed Forbes ahead of Yousaf among SNP voters from the 2019 general election, SNP voters from the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, and Yes voters from the 2014 independence referendum.

Yousaf repeatedly made two claims about opinion polls tonight -

* That he had gone from being behind among SNP supporters earlier in the campaign to being "nineteen points ahead".

* That he had "quadrupled his support with the Scottish public" over the course of the campaign.

The latter seems to be a very cynical apples-and-oranges comparison between the current three-way polls, and polls from several weeks ago that asked about a much wider range of potential candidates.  For example, there was a Savanta poll in mid-February which showed the following - 

Kate Forbes: 14%
Angus Robertson: 9%
John Swinney: 9%
Humza Yousaf: 6%
Mairi Gougeon: 3%
Shona Robison: 2%
Neil Gray: 2%
Shirley-Anne Somerville: 1%
Others: 4%
Don't Knows: 50%

I mean, if Humza couldn't improve on a 6% showing after six of the above potential candidates ruled themselves out, including Robertson and Swinney who had 18% support between them, something would be going very, very badly wrong somewhere.  Using the same bogus comparison, Kate Forbes would be able to claim that she's more than doubled her support over the same period (in fact far more than doubled it), even though she was in the lead right from the start.

But as for the claim about Yousaf currently being nineteen points ahead among SNP supporters, I'm inclined to think that should be regarded as an outright lie.  He implied he was taking the numbers from the new Sky News / YouGov poll.  I've searched the data tables from that poll, and I cannot find anything that looks even remotely like a nineteen point lead.  He'll probably come up with some sort of ultra-contrived and ultra-convoluted figleaf justification for his claim, but to all intents and purposes it was a lie.  (Unless of course he had access to information that YouGov forgot to include in the data tables - I'll concede that's a theoretical possibility but it seems unlikely.)

The real results among SNP voters in the YouGov poll are mixed - Yousaf does fare better than Forbes on one question (not 19 points better, let me stress), but Forbes fares better on all of the others.  For example, Yousaf has a poorer rating than Forbes among SNP voters on the question of whether each candidate would be a better or worse First Minister than Nicola Sturgeon.

YouGov / Sky News poll (9th-13th March 2023):

Net approval ratings on the question of 'better or worse than Nicola Sturgeon', SNP voters only:

Ash Regan: -40
Kate Forbes: -41
Humza Yousaf: -49

That's obviously poor for all of the candidates, presumably due to the high regard SNP voters hold Nicola Sturgeon in, but nevertheless Yousaf clearly comes out worst.  Forbes is also preferred to Yousaf by SNP voters on other key measures...

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "strong":

Kate Forbes: 34%
Humza Yousaf: 33%
Ash Regan: 19%

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "competent":

Kate Forbes: 47%
Humza Yousaf: 41%
Ash Regan: 27%

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "trustworthy":

Kate Forbes: 38%
Humza Yousaf: 35%
Ash Regan: 20%

Whether Yousaf actually deserves to be trusted by as many as 35% of SNP voters is doubtful, because if you can't even trust him to tell the truth about opinion poll results, what the hell can you trust him to tell the truth about?

Incidentally, even on the one question in which SNP voters prefer him to Forbes in the poll, he's actually behind Forbes among Yes voters from 2014.

Net approval ratings on question of 'would he/she make a good or bad First Minister', Yes voters only:

Kate Forbes: -2
Ash Regan: -8
Humza Yousaf: -8

Let me just stress in closing that all of the above numbers are from either SNP voters only, or Yes voters only.  The bigger picture is that among the general public, Kate Forbes has an enormous lead over Humza Yousaf on every single measure - some of those numbers can be found HERE.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.