Thursday, October 30, 2014

Huge SNP lead for Westminster reported in jaw-dropping YouGov poll

Hot on the heels of the Ipsos-Mori bombshell comes this full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov.  The figures are bang up to date, with fieldwork that ran from Monday until today (meaning that unlike the Ipsos-Mori poll it took place entirely after Johann Lamont blew the whistle on London Labour, and also after it became clear that Murphy was the most likely replacement).

Scottish voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election :

SNP 43%
Labour 27%
Conservatives 15%
Liberal Democrats 4%

Obviously these numbers are incomplete, with 11% of voters unaccounted for.  It's likely that UKIP and the Greens between them have 10% or so, which makes it impossible that the Lib Dems are in fourth place. Presumably we'll find out whether it's fifth or sixth in the morning.

Intuitively this poll looks a lot more plausible than Ipsos-Mori, but then again how often has intuition led us astray?  If nothing else, the results are much more in line with what Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls have been reporting, although in a sense that's a circular argument because a disproportionate number of those subsamples come from YouGov anyway.  There have been a small number of subsamples that support the story told by Ipsos-Mori (for example from Ashcroft and Survation), so we shouldn't dismiss that poll out of hand.  One thing that the two polls agree on is that the Tories are doing a bit worse than we thought - obviously that's a much more pronounced finding with Ipsos-Mori, but even the 15% figure from YouGov is on the low side, and would see the party down on the last election.  There has been a perception that the Scottish Tories were enjoying a mini-renaissance (defined as going slightly forwards when the UK party is going backwards), but it now looks like the referendum may have put a stop to that - in spite of the echo chamber effect of unionist journalists enthusiastically agreeing with each other about how many "plaudits" Ruth Davidson received during the campaign.

The SNP have released supplementary findings from the YouGov poll on trust in individual politicians.  The results don't entirely make sense in relation to the question quoted, so I think the percentages given must be the combined total of respondents who say they trust each politician either "a little" or "a lot" (that's the usual YouGov formulation).  They tell a very familiar tale, with First Minister-in-waiting Nicola Sturgeon proving to be Scotland's most trusted politician by a country mile.  Perhaps most pertinently, she's trusted by exactly twice as many respondents as Jim Murphy.  So there may be differing opinions over whether Murphy deserves his occasional billing as a "heavyweight", but there can't be much doubt that the public see him as a considerably smaller fish than Sturgeon (which I suspect may come as a shock to some metropolitan commentators who still struggle to take Sturgeon seriously because she has never served at Westminster).

OK, there's a dreadful pun there about "smaller fish than Sturgeon" which I genuinely didn't notice until after I wrote it.  Moving swiftly on...

Your cut-out-and-keep Anas Sarwar translator

What Anas Sarwar meant on Saturday when he said that it was important not to close down the option of standing as leader -

WANT IT BUT NEED SUPPORT
WANT IT BUT NEED SUPPORT
WANT IT BUT NEED SUPPORT

What Anas Sarwar meant on Monday when he said he was unwilling to stand as leader because he was so mindful of the trust that members had placed in him by electing him as deputy leader -

GOT TO KEEP WHAT I HAVE
GOT TO KEEP WHAT I HAVE
GOT TO KEEP WHAT I HAVE
PLEASE GOD AT LEAST LET ME KEEP WHAT I HAVE

What Anas Sarwar meant tonight when he said he was resigning as deputy leader because he felt strongly that it's terribly important to allow the focus to return to Holyrood -

LEANED ON
LEANED ON
LEANED ON
CONSOLATION PRIZE FOR ANAS INCOMING

*  *  *

I'll wait until tomorrow to update the Poll of Polls, because until I see the YouGov datasets I would only be able to calculate the numbers for four of the six parties anyway.

28 comments:

  1. That puts Greens + UKIP + everyone else on 1%.

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    1. Okay, arithmetic is not my strong point.

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  2. That's actually a bit more realistic! I mean, come on, it has the LibDems on 4%.

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  3. I fancy getting out campaigning tomorrow. God only knows how everyone else feels.

    To quote the forgotten one (c) 'bring it on'

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    1. Yer not wrong mate. I couldn't get in touch with some in the branch tonight but tomorrow I will and see what might be done quickly.

      If 'scottish' Labour knew how incredible some of the branch meetings up and down scotland have been it would scare them every bit as much as these polls. They still seem to have no idea what's coming in 2015 or they would hardly be wasting their time with the eggman.

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  4. And the Tories are ahead in the UK-wide part of the poll. Basically, any parties that don't start with L are doing quite well.

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  5. FPT: They're certainly trying their hardest but as you say keaton it is laughably obvious this is all being controlled by London Labour and little Ed.

    Even the dimmest of 'scottish' labour (a dangerously low bar as we all know) will begin to wonder what on earth the point is after they saw the fate of Lamont and Gray.

    Little Ed is completely toxic in scotland yet this entire Murphy 'master plan' has been dreamed up and by him and a bunch of his most inept spads as a 'solution' to a problem they are simply making worse with every idiot move and arrogant assumption.

    The Eggman's 'tour' was a joke. We all know it was. We all saw it play out as Murphy shouted comically at 8 guys and a dug for weeks on end. Little Ed and the westminster bubble twits have fallen for their own spin and the spin in the Daily Mail and all the other unionist media. The Eggman was a million miles from being a decisive factor in the referendum but since all the rest of Labour simply couldn't be arsed to even go out on the streets and shout at 8 guys and a dug they have imbued the Eggman with the hilarious myth that he is a 'big beast' and can turn everything around by sheer dint of his right-wing Blairite personality. We are clearly dealing with complete and utter imbeciles who haven't a clue why the SNP now have a colossal 85,000 + membership and are polling the way they are.

    The most amusing thing is that Murphy will be fairly useless as a 'firewall' for little Ed in 2015 because little Ed will inevitably be the extremely unpopular face of Labour fro the GE. The Eggman could even try to turn the tables when little Ed pours the bucket of shit over the Eggman and SLAB's head. After all, if Murphy can't turn it all around fast what's to stop him 'doing a Lamont' but doing it with a great deal more ammunition, a great many more supporters in the Blairite wing in westminster , and the knowledge that little Ed is very far from 'safe' in his own job.

    Murphy is an incurable plotter and schemer. No matter what happens now it is bound to get extremely messy and there will be casualties. Could be mostly Brownites, could be mostly Blairites, but the knives are coming out since this is quite possibly the last chance 'scottish' Labour MPs and MSPs will ever have to finally take down their enemies and settle old scores.

    There is no god given right for Labour to hold onto their seats forever or hold back a political earthquake with an Eggman. If these polls don't hammer home that obvious truth to them, or if they still don't understand what 85,000 SNP members will mean on the ground, then they really are flirting with annihilation.

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  6. @chalks

    "Check out murphys approval ratings.....9% more than red ed......rofl...5% more than cameron

    Ffs this is priceless"


    @scottish_skier

    "Ed's broken a record tonight for example in terms of trust ratings. 15% trust vs 80% don't is surely a first?"

    *tears of laughter* :-D

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  7. I was reading somewhere that the new SLAB messiah, Jim Murphy, was at university for 9 years and never got a degree. Is that true?

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    1. It's true. He might have spent SOME time studying but spent more time as a NUS apparatchik, then straight into a career with Labour.

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  8. Watching the Eggman on STV and genuinely laughing out loud.

    This is wonderful stuff and there's weeks more of it to come.

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  9. What he being saying Mick? I have given up on BBC Scotland and STV.

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  10. Platitudes so trite you have to double-check to make sure he actually said them. As James memorably put it he can sound so staggeringly condescending you feel like checking the interviewer he's talking to isn't a toddler. Meaningless fluff like 'we must Look forward not back', 'I'm not interested in labels' (like, say, Blairite! :-D ) 'This is all the fault of those who want to play the blame game' (Those weren't the exact words but the oblivious irony was absolutely there) I don't want to name any names on who is to blame' (shortly followed by mentioning Lamont by name) It was pure comedy gold made all the more amusing by Smurph looking about as convincing as Blair ever did. Murphy's eyes almost always tell quite a different story from his words. When he was inevitably asked about how a westminster MP like him can possibly run scottish Labour without proving Lamont's point he got amusingly shirty yet still tried to hold himself in check. It was a bizarre effect as without his megaphone his 'snippy' act kinda loses it's force and sounds very camp indeed.

    You didn't miss anything policywise but then you never will because The Smurph isn't about policy. They all think he's a BIG NAME and that's all that matters to little Ed and the westminster bubble media. Who cares about policy or the polls when a 'personality' like the Eggman is in town?

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  11. I wonder if the Kellner Correction is still being used? Anyway, on these figures the SNP would get 47 seats, Labour 10 and the Tories and Lib Dems 1 each.

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  12. By-election news;

    SNP hold North Coast and Cumbraes on North Ayrshire Council.

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  13. Ah, that's Alex "Braveheart" Gallagher territory!

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  14. I don't share the opinion that Murphy is a joke - he's a selfish, self-serving, self-publicist but he speaks well on TV. He is to be dealt with and beaten to a political pulp. Detestable git but then what's new about that? He can't do any worse than Lamont and thus will appear like a Red Tory messiah in comparison - he's a danger imo bcause the BritNat media will cuddle and hug him and love him and never let him go whilst attacking the SNP.

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    1. More accurate to say he speaks on TV stevie. Speaks well? He certainly didn't last night. Even by Lamont standards that interview was anything but a 'triumph'. Going by that interview you certainly have to wonder if the Eggman had seen those polls a day earlier whether he could have ever been forced to stand by little Ed. I strongly doubt it.

      If Murphy's given a few soundbites to speak AT the camera without interruption he can sometimes manage that passably and better than the likes of Lamont, but so what? How will that help them? The London Labour branch office meltdown is way, WAY beyond being 'fixed' by a few soundbites and platitudes to camera.

      The latest straw clutching from little Ed and his spinners is that the staggering polling is all merely a result of Lamont quitting. LOL No. It isn't.

      They were in meltdown before Murphy and little Ed had Curran stab Lamont in the back while London Labour were briefing against her at the Labour conference. The Lamont debacle was merely a symptom. It is most definitely not the cause. The utterly dire state of 'scottish' Labour was filtering through even before then as it was beginning to dawn on at least one or two of the less blinkered in SLAB what the colossal rise in the SNP membership and other early polling indicators signified.

      So there is no way on earth the Eggman can possibly stop the relentless pressure and a political earthquake in it's tracks by giving a few soundbites to camera. Even if it was something that a personality could possibly 'fix', instead of being a systemic failure throughout Labour, they would be fucked.

      The Eggman is a right-wing Blairite facing one of the most popular leaders scottish politics has ever seen in Nicola. It's only the out of touch westminster bubble twits and media who haven't grasped that while the Eggman was shouting at a dozen or so folk Nicola was engaging with the scottish public for years in packed town hall meetings up and down the land taking all their questions and listening to all their concerns. Now she's taking that to the next stage with another tour selling out venues and stadia (which she did in record time) so she can speak directly to the new members and all those who want to hear her. Murphy will never be doing that, no matter how much westminster bubble pundits cling to the delusion that he's a 'BIG NAME' and that must trump everything.

      The colossal 85,000 + membership is also being nurtured and encouraged right now by those who were at the sharp end of the most incredible grass roots campaigns ever seen in scotland. The one which made history with the grassroots driven, unprecedented and jawdropping turnout. All the branches up and down scotland are now engaged in the massive effort of harnessing that staggering new membership surge. Educating and encouraging while constantly being surprised at some of the incredible talent that we are seeing with great ideas, and the enthusiasm to make them happen. Some, both from the Indy campaign and from the new intake, are absolutely going to be rising stars in the near future. Those who also want to help out with campaigning in even the smallest way are being given the opportunity while everything from fundraisers to canvassing training to help with public speaking is being done where it is needed.

      That earthquake polling is only going to fire us all up and encourage us to an even greater degree and make us all the more determined. Plans are being brought forward right now for membership drives in the streets and many othertypes of events in the wake of them. We are still going to fight 2015 with the clear knowledge of just how hard it will be to overturn those massive majorities. Nobody is taking anything for granted and it won't be us who are caught being complacent as little Ed and the London Labour looks for yet another quick fix to their systemic problem in an Eggman they themselves are imposing and doing their best to force on to their branch office.

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  15. James - didn't donate much - £10 but it's the best £10 I've spent this year - keep p the good work and thanks.

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    1. Me too. I'm not particularly smart or talented but I was smart enough to give £10 to someone who is.

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  16. The SNP have won a council by-election tonight in North Ayrshire. NB the Labour vote percentage.

    SNP: 38.7
    Independent: 22.8
    Conservatives: 21.5
    Labour: 13.2
    UKIP: 3.6

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  17. O/T but just completed a Panelbase poll that asked a variety of questions relating to which powers should be under the control of Holyrood, as well as voting intentions for the 2015 election and 'if the referendum was held again, how would you vote?' (I'm paraphrasing here).

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  18. YouGov all carried out Holyrood voting intention, here are the tables: http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/56mwcrrg3d/Times-results-141030-scotland-day-1.pdf

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  19. Looks like the "Kellner correction" is no more:

    http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/31/labours-scottish-nightmare/

    To sum up, the people who used to switch between Labour for WM and SNP for Holyrood have moved more firmly into the SNP column.

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  20. The Guardian have lost the plot completely with this article by Nicolas Watt on Jim Murphy:

    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/31/jim-murphy-can-working-class-street-fighter-save-scottish-labour#comment-43015925

    It is batshit crazy, and unbelievably delusional. The sources appear to be John McTernan and Catherine McLeod, who was a former adviser to Alastair Darling! Ragingly hysterically funny article.

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    1. I saw it earlier and I was in stitches. Anyone who takes any of the laughable lies spun by "no-brainer" McTernan seriously clearly doesn't have a clue about politics.

      Wings pointed out only yesterday just how demented and massively counter-productive his bullshit has been for the London Labour branch office thus far.

      http://wingsoverscotland.com/every-one-a-gem/

      BUT, for him to actively be involved in the attempted London stitch-up of 'Scottish' Labour (with Guardian backing no less) means we can say quite definitively that Little Ed and London Labour have lost their fucking minds completely.

      He is the very last person SLAB needs anywhere near scottish politics right now. An ultra-Blairite spinner with the strategic and tactical nouse of a potato.

      You need proof? (though christ knows why since only a fool could have missed how hilariously incompetent he has been over the years for 'scottish' Labour) Here it is and why ANYONE who let's McTernan near spinning a would be 'leader's' image must be certifiable.

      (It's also well worth reading not just because it is laugh out loud funny but for those who wish to know why he is known as "no-brainer" McTernan.)

      Enjoy! :-D

      A last-stitch bid? Storm over photo of republican Australia PM Julia Gillard knitting kangaroo for royal baby

      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/a-laststitch-bid-storm-over-photo-of-republican-australia-pm-julia-gillard-knitting-kangaroo-for-royal-baby-8672707.html


      For those who don't know what happened next, utter chaos, open warfare and infighting, an internal coup with a leader being toppled, (the leader McTernan was spinning for obviously) and to top it all of the worst defeat for Australia's Labor party in over 100 years! Good job McTernan, good job.

      The ideal man to help promote Murphy and stop the complete and utter meltdown in London Labour's branch office in it's tracks. Or is "no-brainer" McTernan the ideal man to stop Murphy in his tracks and help promote the complete and utter meltdown in London Labour's branch office?

      I think we all know which is more likely. ;-)

      LOL

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  21. The good news just keeps right on coming for little Ed and the out of touch westminster bubble twits.

    STV poll: Two thirds of Scots support second referendum within ten years

    Two thirds of Scots would support another independence referendum within the next ten years, according to a STV News poll.

    Of those asked by Ipsos Mori, 66% said they would support the vote taking place in the next decade regardless of circumstances.

    Just 31% would oppose a referendum in the next ten years.

    http://news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/297867-stv-poll-third-of-scots-support-second-referendum-within-ten-years/

    Eggpocalypse Now! :-D

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