SNP soar to 41% in Scot Goes Pop Poll of Polls

We'll soon see what the Sunday YouGov poll brings, but as of this moment, it remains the case that there has been just one Scottish subsample since the referendum that has not put the SNP in the lead.  The odd one out was a Populus poll, but the most recent subsample from that firm could hardly be more different - it puts the SNP at 44% and Labour at 26%.

The average below is drawn from five Scottish subsamples - four from YouGov and one from Populus.  That's the lowest number of polls that any Poll of Polls update has been based on so far, and therefore the standings should be treated with even more caution than usual.  The reason that the SNP lead has soared is that the full-scale Panelbase poll that gave them a mere 2% lead, and that previously made up more than half of the sample, has now dropped out due to being more than seven days old.

There is no percentage change listed for the Greens because they weren't included in the previous update.

Scottish voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election :

SNP 41.0% (+5.2)
Labour 27.4% (-4.0)
Conservatives 17.6% (-0.1)
Liberal Democrats 7.2% (+2.1)
UKIP 3.4% (-2.1)
Greens 2.8%

(The Poll of Polls uses the Scottish subsamples from all GB-wide polls that have been conducted entirely within the last seven days and for which datasets have been provided, and also all full-scale Scottish polls that have been conducted at least partly within the last seven days. Full-scale polls are given ten times the weighting of subsamples.)

If you haven't made your submission to the Smith Commission yet, it might be an idea to avoid the small but intensely irritating error that I made, which was to offer immigration as an example of the very limited number of powers that are essential to maintaining the United Kingdom as a single state.  In fact, both the SNP and the Greens have used their submissions to identify the post-study work visa as one aspect of immigration policy that can and should be devolved (in the case of the Greens they argue for joint control between Edinburgh and London).  OK, it's only a technical distinction, because both parties implicitly acknowledge that the bulk of immigration policy will have to remain reserved to Westminster, so in that sense what I wrote is correct.  But I'm still annoyed with myself for not qualifying it (or for not using a more straightforward example).

It's interesting to compare the SNP and Green submissions, because the former is a model of detail and clarity, while the latter is radical in many respects but also strangely hesitant - it's full of language like "it may now be appropriate to devolve X" or "we see no reason in principle why Y should not be devolved".  I presume that's an attempt to sound open-minded and consensual, but I'd have thought it would be much better to be confident in your proposals and then flexible in the negotiations.  I'm guessing that's very much the SNP plan - they would never have nominated bridge-builders like John Swinney and Linda Fabiani unless they were serious about getting a deal if humanly possible.

The one part of the Green document that profoundly disappointed me in terms of the content rather than just the tone was the bit about broadcasting - they do propose a degree of devolution, but of a distinctly underwhelming variety.  That shouldn't be surprising, though, because they've often gone out of their way to defend the BBC when the SNP have been critical.  It's an oddly conservative strand of Green thinking, and it would be interesting to know where it originates from.