There have been some suggestions that today's YouGov poll might be the last word from the firm for this year, and I was just a tad concerned about it overnight. The headline figures showed Labour on an unusually high 35% across Britain, and I wondered if that might be a sign that they'd at last secured a decent showing in the Scottish subsample. However, I needn't have worried - the datasets have now been released, and the SNP remain in the lead over Labour in Scotland by 42% to 31%, which is comfortably within the range we've been accustomed to since the referendum. As is equally typical, Labour's support in the poll is lower in Scotland than in three of the other four regions of Britain - the exception being the south of England (outside London).
So we've now come to the end of the first full week of Labour's Great Patriotic War Against Nationalism, and there's still no sign whatever of that elusive "Murphy bounce". Probably the only chink of hope for them is to be found in the subsample from the ICM telephone poll, which prior to the turnout filter being applied has them level with the SNP. However, after the turnout filter the SNP actually have a higher share of the vote than in either of the two previous post-referendum ICM phone polls, and are ahead of Labour by a comfortable enough margin of 43% to 35%. Meanwhile, one of this week's other phone polls is probably not exactly making Her Majesty purr - the Scottish subsample from Ipsos-Mori has Labour trailing the SNP by a mind-boggling 52% to 15%.
I'm not entirely sure whether this will be the last Poll of Polls of 2014 - there's still a possibility that there might be one or two polls to come in the Sunday papers. Either way, it's a good moment for another update, because the most recent full-scale YouGov poll has now dropped out of the sample, leaving us with numbers derived from eight subsamples from GB-wide polls, all of which were conducted either wholly or in part after Murphy's coronation. Four of them are from YouGov, one from ICM, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from ComRes and one from Populus.
Scottish voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election :
SNP 42.4% (-1.4)
Labour 26.3% (-0.4)
Conservatives 15.5% (-1.4)
Liberal Democrats 6.6% (+1.9)
Greens 4.4% (+1.2)
UKIP 3.6% (-0.1)
(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.)
Jeez, another new record SNP respondent down-weighting since the iref in the morn's yougov. That's 4 in a row now, each more heavily down-weighted. Could explain the rather stark difference between MORI and Yougov SNP VI; the latter using a 2010 weighting, the former not.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be more accurate figures for the YouGov poll in your opinion Scottish_Skier?
DeleteI think we should just wait for Scottish polls. However, to date, we see when these come out they show better SNP shares than we see in UK subsets, likely for the reasons I note about Yougov UK and other polls. Certainly, I see the SNP getting progressively down-weighted since the referendum with the running average of this hitting new highs today. That's with them building up a comfortable lead at the same time. Surely, this can only be good.
DeleteSurvation said last weekend on Twitter that they had some Scottish polling in the works (presumably for the Record?).
ReplyDeleteI miss the weekly referendum polls.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, good news and with the numerous reviews of the past year you can bet that the numbers might even go up a little bit as people remember the 19th September and what has happened.....thing that Labour don't realise is THAT is what people remember, it isn't that they have a new labour glorious scottish leader, they remember him crying in his pram about a broken egg, they remember him campaigning alongside tories, shouting on the street in front of a couple of Labour/Tory councillors and they remember Gordon Brown promising the earth, then fking off into the sunset and leaving Scotland bitter about broken promises or by insinuating something akin to what everyone wants and then not delivering.
People do not forget, it is why it was so important that we had a high turnout in the referendum.
At this point in 2009 the SNP were bumping along at about 22% Labour high 30's.
ReplyDeletePopulus sub-sample is SNP 34, Lab 30, Tory 20, LD 11. Consistent with their normal pattern.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmOnline_Vote_19-12-2014_BPC.pdf
@Marcia - more interestingly to me, around this time in 2009, prior to the last GE, Lab were polling around 39, SNP around 25.
ReplyDeleteLab gained 3 points, SNP lost 5. If that happened again, we'd be looking at something like SNP 37 v Lab 29 - I'd settle for that right now.
However, I think we're going to have to hang tight until Ashcroft's constituency polls in the New Year before we can get a real read on it.
For some reason, I read the original comment as 2010 - ignore me lol
DeleteSmall TNS subsample (75 down-weighted to 69) gives a very odd result:
ReplyDeleteLabour 36, Tories 26, SNP 25.
http://www.tnsglobal.com/uk/press-release/public-opinion-monitor-women-disproportionately-affected-economic-growth-without-wage-
Very odd poll overall as well, giving Labour a 7 point lead across GB (35-28), with UKIP in 19.
That's the first non-Populus subsample since the referendum not to give the SNP the lead, although as at least 40% of the fieldwork was pre-Murphy anyway it's probably not terribly significant.
Deletetwo strikes against the "murphy" bounce.
ReplyDelete1. The turn to patriotism, is designed to do one thing. Make reconcilation impossible by picking a fight with anyone who voted yes.
2. He's a Backbench MP with no authority and under the thumb of the UK party whip.
there is a third, now that I think about it. Since its very likely Labour won't win in 2016 either, he will be new leader who leads them into a 3rd term of opposition. The man who is his own Boss and doesn't take orders from not no-one, will be a former back-bencher who aspires to be an opposition leader.
The only thing Murphy and Scottish labour are fighting against is reality.
"The turn to patriotism, is designed to do one thing. Make reconcilation impossible by picking a fight with anyone who voted yes."
DeleteI really don't understand the point you're trying to make here. Why would Murphy want to make reconciliation impossible? That's completely backwards given it would just entrench support for the SNP and I've no idea why trying to be outwardly "patriotic" would do that anyway.
It's pretty obvious why he's emphasising the Scottish angle. The SNP have managed to stake out the "we'll protect Scotland's interests in Westminster" ground so he's trying to take that back by drawing a line between himself and Labour in the rest of the UK.
"2. He's a Backbench MSP with no authority."
DeleteDoesn't seem to have stopped Salmond idly speculating on what the SNP will do...
Nor indeed Gordon Brown manipulating a referendum with offers he was in position to make or keep...
DeleteTo be fair if there was going to be some "Murphy bounce" (Something I'm very sceptical of) it wouldn't show up until into the new year. We haven't been hearing much about Murphy over the past few days. I'm sure the media is collectively puckering up in preparation for a five month long Murphy arse kissing Marathon starting early January.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about that. Attention in a GE campaign will inevitably focus on Ed M, not Murphy, who may not be standing for any office in the election.
DeleteI suspect Labour will close the gap significantly due to the tendency for most don't knows to revert to type. No doubt most of the media will ascribe this to Murphy, but I think it would happen anyway, It's a bit like changing the manager of a struggling football team. He's almost bound to get a few decent results early on, but it can only be fairly judged over a longer term.
You're right in that it can only be judged longer term - personally I think it will have more of an impact in 2016 than 2015 as Scottish elections are essentially votes for who you want as First Minister (Murphy probably isn't even going to stand in 2015 so it's hard to see why it would make that much difference one way or another).
DeleteSo I'm not sure I really go along with the "it's been a week and there's *still* no Murphy bounce" argument. Anyone on the Labour side who said there would be such a bounce was being pretty naive - as was anyone who thought it would decimate Labour's support. I'd rather have an objective, fair look at this, not grandstanding, but that's just me.
I would agree with that. The more likely effect of Labour having a "credible" candidate for FM is that their campaign should not implode in the way it did in 2011. Against that you have to consider that Murphy is not starting from the same point as Iain Gray did.
DeleteI don't see how Murphy is at all relevant to 2015. The MSM has made it clear to everyone that Murphy's leaving Westminster for Holyrood so will have absolutely no influence at all in London.
DeleteA vote for Labour is a vote for 'Respect Jerusalem' Ed; the most unpopular UK Labour leader in the history of Scotland.
Murphy should concentrate on 2016. First job is to work out how to get a constituency seat and win it. I mean if he's aiming for FM that's never going to happen if he can't even win a constituency.
No doubt there will be more of a focus on Miliband, but given his unpopularity in Scotland (And everywhere else), I think the Scottish media put as much focus as it can get away with on Murphy. OK, I know that Murphy's not the most popular leader in the universe himself, but he does at least come across as a bit more of a leader than Miliband.
ReplyDeleteThough I agree with your point that any possible close in the gap would likely happen anyway, with or without Murphy.
One can ask Murphy on air anything at all on http://www.clyde2.com/on-air/scotlands-talk-in/ especially those awkward ones like membership numbers confusion.
ReplyDeleteSurvation have tweeted that their next Scottish poll will be in the Record on Monday. I would guess from the wording of the tweet that there will be supplementary questions about Murphy / Labour.
ReplyDeleteThey confirmed there will be. Would be daft not to. Predictions?
DeleteApproval midway between Sturgeon and Miliband?!
Well, their poll last month had SNP 46, Labour 24. It's hard to imagine Labour doing worse than that, as 24 is very much on the low end of their results in recent months. Even the Mori poll that gave the SNP 52 still gave Labour 23. I would expect a Labour uplift of 4-5 points, mostly at the expense of the SNP.
DeleteI would guess a result of something like 42-28. No doubt the Record would spin a result like this as being good for Labour, when in just about any other context it would be catastrophic.
Danny (The Quisling's Quisling) Alexander says that the collapse in the price of oil means an Independent Scotland facing £6.4 Billion in cuts. He also said that we'd face £6 Billion in cuts for months before the price dropped.
ReplyDeleteWhy is such an obvious lie not highlighted by the media?
Are they all traitors?
Do the few honest journalists fear for their safety from mobs of rabid unionists?