Monday, December 5, 2022

No, there is no poll showing a big drop in the SNP's Westminster vote - ignore the tweet suggesting there is

I was almost taken in by this, because there's no disclaimer in the tweet that the numbers are from a subsample, nor is the name of the polling firm mentioned - but the addition of a seats projection makes it all look very credible and portentous.  Apart, that is, from the totally implausible Reform UK figure of 11%, which is what gave the game away.

What's particularly absurd about this stunt is that the subsample turns out to be from Redfield & Wilton, who have only just conducted a full-scale Scottish poll showing the SNP on 41% and Labour on 31%.  So it's not as if we have to rely on straws in the wind from subsamples to guess what a current Redfield & Wilton seats projection would look like.  If you pump the numbers from the full-scale poll into the Electoral Calculus projection model, this is what you end up with for seats:  

SNP 39 (-9), Labour 12 (+11), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1), Conservatives 3 (-3)

Incidentally, although 11% is implausible for Reform UK in a Scottish context, there has recently been a GB-wide poll from YouGov that had them as high as 9%.  I remain slightly baffled as to why they're polling as strongly as they are, because I wouldn't have thought their profile has been high enough since they changed their name from the Brexit Party. But then, I don't read the Daily Mail and I hardly ever watch GB News, so God knows what's going on under the radar.

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3 comments:

  1. Checkout the best-fit trackers on the relevant Wiki page. Something odd is happening. The Tories have lost approx half of their Sunak, honeymoon bump while Labour haven’t benefited (Labour are in fact fractionally down). The mirror image of the Tory and Labour curves is broken.
    The only apparent beneficiary is Reform UK. They were tracking consistently at 3% for a year and have edged upwards to approx 6.5% starting around the very nadir of Truss’ experiment.
    Have Reform UK benefited from nutters disenchanted with the abandonment of Truss’ kamikaze economics?
    Perhaps GB News is a long term project (think the Koch brothers in America). Their dismal viewing figures for the station aren’t necessarily everything, there’s the views for clips on YouTube and other platforms.

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    1. Your Anonymous observation is exactly what we might have expected IMO. I expect the 6.5% to continue to rise in the old "red wall" English seats. Reform UK have released their list of target seats. These English seats are a potential breeding ground for pseudo-fascists and worse. Labour gains in these seats are no longer a "given".

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    2. Here's the List of the seats where Reform intend to stand candidates https://twitter.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1596652728381575169

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