My old...well, how can I put this, acquaintance from my days at StormfrontLite, the self-styled international thriller writer Sean Thomas, alerted me earlier to a Sun article about a new YouGov survey of voters in Scotland. Straight away I was sceptical about the numbers, because Labour's 27% share of the vote for Westminster is not remotely high enough to explain the SNP being as low as 29% (which would constitute a 16-point drop since the 2019 general election) or the Tories being as low as 12%. Having now looked up the data tables, it turns out there's a very straightforward explanation - Don't Knows haven't been excluded from the numbers, which is almost unheard of in party political voting intention polls.
If anyone knows the definitive numbers with Don't Knows excluded, drop me a line, but a rough recalculation suggests they must be in the following ballpark -
SNP 38%
Labour 36%
Conservatives 16%
Liberal Democrats 5%
Greens 3%
Now, obviously those numbers are still a cause for concern, because Westminster is a first-past-the-post election and what matters most is the gap between the first-placed and second-placed parties. But the percentage drop in the SNP's vote since 2019 is just seven points - not even close to the sixteen point drop falsely claimed by The Sun.
There are also independence numbers...
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 46% (-1)
No 54% (+1)
Again, the numbers with Don't Knows excluded are missing from the data tables, although in this case The Sun have published them, so hopefully they're coming from a reliable source. The numbers actually in the data tables suggest the Yes vote could be either 45% or 46% and the No vote could be either 54% or 55% - the rounding to the nearest whole number could have gone either way.
This adds to the weight of evidence suggesting independence support has dipped recently, perhaps due to the SNP's strategic folly in pursuing gender self-ID against the public's wishes. But nevertheless, there's no sign of the 'drop off a cliff' that propagandists were talking up after the Ashcroft poll. Remember that YouGov are firmly on the No-friendly end of the polling spectrum, and you'll find plenty of results like this from YouGov (or worse) over recent years.
UPDATE: It looks like The Sun have belatedly added the correct figures to their article, although only after the numbers that don't exclude the Don't Knows, which are thus still being given ludicrously undue prominence.
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Is that ashift of votes from SNP to labour?
ReplyDeleteDo you what the sample size was?
ReplyDeleteAll the more important that the leadership campaign is conducted amicably and that the best person is chosen. We have to reasonably expect a bigger challenge from Labour than we’ve seen for the last 10 years or so, especially if Starmer continues to outpoll Sunak down south and appears more and more likely to be the next PM. A downturn for the SNP and a swing from Tory to Labour will be enough to unseat a few SNP MPs.
ReplyDeleteJames, do you have plans (and funds) for another poll anytime soon? It would be interesting to inject some ground truth into the leadership campaign on a few issues. I’m thinking about things like, should the Scottish government challenge the blocking of GRR in court, timing of indyRef2, appetite for Devo More (as you rightly put it in the previous blog post) vs Indy,…no doubt you and others can think of more (or better) questions.
Some hard numbers on a few key issues might help keep the candidates honest and could even help shape the course of the election.
Survation have published a poll from earlier in February (1st - 7th) that has SNP 42%, Lab 29% and indy at 49-51.
ReplyDeleteMy SNP MP Kirsten Oswald has been on the telly fronting up the NEC decision. When asked what happens to the timetable if there is only one Leadership candidate declared on Feb 24 th she refused to answer. In other words the conference was getting cancelled no matter what. It's clear to me that Sturgeons resignation cancelling the conference was not just a coincidental side effect. The plan all along is to pass the baton to Robertson. He time wastes for as long as he can get away with it then resigns and another time waster comes along, possibly Sturgeon making a comeback.
ReplyDeleteIt's up to the SNP members now - do you want independence - vote wisely.
If they are all like the numpties on WGD I don't hold out much hope. Hamish100 says it is nothing to do with non SNP members and Alba people should just shut up. Of course come an election they try and blackmail independence supporters in to voting SNP.
I said I would vote SNP in 2001 because I hoped Sturgeon would get another mandate for Indyref2 but she would not deliver and hopefully SNP members would wake up. WGD numpty Golfnut showed signs of awakening when he posted that the SNP needs a root and branch clearout of seat warmers etc. The rest of WGD say - it's all Albas fault - it's all Salmonds fault - just how dim can you be.
There seems to be more people declaring they are NOT standing at present. If Robertson is the only one declaring then you know the fix is in and the members do not get a vote.
Alba members don't have a vote, and rightly so. But what we do have is a voice and - if we wish it - an opinion, just as I had a voice and an opinion on who I wanted to win the two Tory leadership elections last year, and who I wanted to win the Labour leadership election in 2020. So sorry, Hamish, but you're not shutting us up.
DeleteHamish and all those SNP party first ultras should consider just how many MPs and MSPs they would get if only SNP party members voted SNP. Labour in Scotland treated their voters with contempt - take heed.
DeleteThe SNP have been speedrunning the Labour playbook in that regard. How does a party win so many seats in 2015 on the back of 50 years of Labour arrogance and entitlement, then fall prey to precisely the same follies in under a decade? Truly beggars belief.
DeleteIt's like they saw the cautions of history, and decided they were a time-trial challenge.
Guess if there's only one candidate declared on feb 24, independence will be declared on feb 25 - otherwise rumours that none in SNP want the reward of delivering it might gain traction :)
DeleteTrying my utmost not to be the harbinger of doom. This is just one poll, but it does play into a concern that has been growing larger in the back of my mind since Truss's disastrous tenure.
ReplyDeleteIt feels increasingly that a monumental chance to seize independence has been squandered. The SNP are in a dire state. The Yes movement has never been more fractured. And Scots, always so eager to vote along the path of least resistance, seem increasingly likely to "give Labour a go". All of those things combined could and quite probably would have a calamitous effect on a plebiscite election.
On the other hand, years of needless, self-defeating delay by a cautious Sturgeon, spooked by a 2017 election result neither she nor her party EVER interpreted correctly, now mean that as the polls turn in our opponents' favour, Yessers have lost patience entirely. Understandably, they will not accept any further delay, even if it means lurching headlong into a plebiscitary bloodbath.
Don't mistake me. The fault for this lies entirely at the feet of the SNP leadership, delaying chance after solid chance under the misapprehension that they had all the time in the world. I am just really starting to struggle to see how independence can be won this side of a Labour government.
The sole silver lining I can see is that Labour governments always end in disappointment. Starmer's ghoulish reanimation of the Blair project simply won't withstand the enormous pressures of 2020s society for more than a term. Two at the very most. He's trying to bring tepid 90s Blairism to a 70s societal meltdown. Good luck with that. A red rosette on a dozen different crises is a sticking plaster on a dozen gunshot wounds.
But where does that leave independence? A plebiscitary vote where we're fatally wounded once again by the same well-meaning dolts who "gave Labour a chance" in 2017 and helped set us on the current path? A further delay that sends voters potentially FLOODING to Labour, having been told categorically that independence is off the menu for the next several years at least?
Short of a truly miraculous new leader, I struggle to see a way out of the blind alley Sturgeon has led us down. Not this side of a Labour government anyway, where people are prone to all sorts of wishful, indulgent thinking about what a Starmer administration will actually represent and achieve.
Hey it's deja vu on WGD. Alba are both an irrelevance and as Dr Jim says:- " As for Alba they are the Labour unionists little helpers,... "
ReplyDeleteI am not a member of Alba and Jimbo doesn't put forward his case for Alba helping Labour so at present I can only put it down to grief induced temporary madness as he struggles to come to terms with the fact that his great leader will shortly no longer be the great leader.
There is a consolation for all the nicophants like Dr Jim - I won't be calling them nicophants any more as Sturgeon will (possibly) soon be irrelevant as well. I say possibly as she may be a back seat driver working the arms of her pal Angus.