There is nothing remotely unusual about someone standing as a candidate in an election process they have concerns about - in general, participating in flawed elections is the only way to bring about change

Those of you who are on Twitter may have seen that I had a brief exchange with Pat Kane last night.  Earlier in the day, Pat had said that he couldn't understand why Ash Regan would want to cast doubt on the integrity of an electoral process she was involved in.  I thought that was an extremely peculiar remark, because it's actually very commonplace, the whole world over, for people to stand as candidates in electoral processes that they believe or suspect to be flawed in some way.  That's generally the only way to bring reform about (short of a revolution), and you'd think that any progressive would understand that perfectly well.  

A banal example is that if you think first-past-the-post is a rotten electoral system, you still have to stand in first-past-the-post elections, because it's only by winning power under the current system that you can introduce proportional representation.  The suggestion that nobody can in good conscience stand in an election unless they have complete faith in the system ultimately betrays a deeply conservative worldview, because it seeks to exclude (or at least delegitimise) most of the real world options for seeking change.  Eventually I responded to Pat, and the way I put it was that nobody would ever criticise the Belarussian opposition leader for standing in an election she believed to be flawed, and that having faith in how the SNP run internal elections is not a prerequisite for Ash Regan or for anyone else to think that they would make a good leader of the SNP, and thus to put themselves forward for that position.

Pat responded by implying that the mention of Belarus was further proof of the "derangement" of those who have queried the conduct of the leadership election.  Then Gerry Hassan suddenly popped up out of nowhere, and made a series of what I can only describe as defamatory claims, including the utterly baseless suggestion that I had "made light" of the Belarussian people's suffering under a cruel regime.  I hadn't even mentioned the Belarussian people.  I must say it's instructive to see just how quickly - in fact instantaneously - a leading radical left intellectual will quite happily try to distract from the weakness of his own case with cynical and disreputable debating tactics that would shame even the rawest of student politicians.

In reality, a comparison with the flaws of the Belarussian electoral process is not a comparison with the wider activities of the regime.  It's a comparison that does exactly what it says on the tin, no more and no less - and once you acknowledge that irrefutable fact, it becomes a much harder comparison to simply swat away.  The subtext of the suggestions that Ash Regan and her followers are some kind of lunatic fringe is that we live in a free country, very unlike Belarus, and that it's therefore absurd or somehow "Trumpian" to imagine there's any chance that the conduct of the SNP leadership election is not spotless and beyond reproach.  But that's a logical fallacy, because the UK's status as a free democracy rests on the conduct of elections to public office.  Internal party elections do not fall into that category and are therefore not subject to the same standards, laws and rules.  

Parties run internal elections themselves as they see fit.  If there was outright vote-rigging, there would probably be legal redress available - as long as you could find proof, of course.  But meeting the threshold for a free and fair election requires far more than simply the absence of vote-rigging.  In the context of public elections, there are several criteria applied, such as independent oversight, fair access to the media for all candidates, and transparency in the way the votes are counted.  What all of these points boil down to is one central question - is there any reasonable prospect of a transfer of power from the incumbents to their opponents if that is what a fair process might have resulted in?  

A much-studied political phenomenon is the "one party dominant state", where multi-party elections occur, but where the same party always wins.   Mexico was a prime example of that for many decades, and Russia is perhaps the best example now. The process is managed by systems of patronage, and by starving opposition candidates of fair access to the media.  Vote-rigging does not generally occur, but there always remains the open question of what the government might resort to if the more informal safeguards on its power start to fail.

In the context of the SNP leadership election, Humza Yousaf represents the incumbent faction.  That does not mean, of course, that Yousaf has to lose for the outcome to be democratic - it's perfectly possible that he could win because he is the best candidate or because his ideas resonate most.  But because the playing field is self-evidently not level, there will remain a question mark on whether the ruling faction would ever be prepared to relinquish power in line with democratic principles, and that question will stay unresolved until such time in the future that a transfer of power occurs.

I'd invite you to look carefully at a list on Wikipedia setting out ten broad categories of things that must be present for an election to qualify as "free and fair".  Pretty much all of them are present in elections to public office in the UK, which is why we consider ourselves to live in a reasonably free country. And, in fairness, most of them are present in the SNP leadership election too - but there are, unfortunately, a number of gaps.  For example...

"whether election-related laws were not changed immediately before an election"

There have been suggestions that the SNP modified or bent their own rules with the short timescale for this election - which disproportionately harms lesser-known candidates like Ash Regan, who would have had more opportunity to build her profile with a longer campaign.

"electoral management (whether gerrymandering occurred and whether election management bodies, if they existed, were independent, impartial, and accountable)"

Gerrymandering does not apply here, but the equivalent of election management bodies can hardly be said to be independent and impartial.  Ultimately, this election is being run by people such as Peter Murrell who want Humza Yousaf to win, and who have a vested interest in him winning.

"electoral rights (whether citizens were generally able to vote on the basis of equal suffrage and access)"

There are anecdotal reports of some SNP members not having received a ballot.

"voter registers (whether they were accurate, current, and open to voters for easy and effective voter registration)"

There is no transparency over whether the list of eligible voters is accurate.

"campaign process (whether elections were carried out without violence, intimidation, bribery (vote buying), use of government resources to advantage the incumbent, or a "massive financial advantages" for the incumbent"

There's no suggestion of violence, intimidation or vote-buying.  However, the continuity candidate does seem to be benefiting from the resources of the party in a way that the other two candidates are not.

"media access (whether freedom of speech was protected and whether the ruling party was disproportionately benefited by government-owned media"

I don't think anyone would dispute that freedom of speech has been fully on show during the campaign.  But the equivalent of "government media" in an internal election are things like official party mailing lists, and we all know about the notorious example of Emma Harper using one of those lists to email members in support of Humza Yousaf.

"voting process (whether elections were conducted by secret ballot on a one person, one vote basis, with adequate security to protect voters and protection against ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, destruction of valid ballots, and other forms of manipulation"

There is no evidence at all for any vote-rigging in this election.  But is there "adequate security" to protect against any theoretical possibility of vote-rigging?  We don't really know.  Members are expected to just take it on trust.

"role of officials (whether the election was administered with adequately trained personnel, free from campaigning or intimidation at polling places, and with the ability of international election observers and party representatives to observe polling places; and counting of votes (whether votes were tabulated transparently and free of fraud or tampering"

In an internal election, the equivalent of "international observers" and "transparent tabulation" would be the type of independent oversight that two of the candidates have requested.  As I understand it, that request has been denied.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Is Alba on course for a list seat in the north-east?

I'm going to take a brief break from covering the SNP leadership election, because I was asked two or three threads back to give an opinion on the Alba Party's claim that polling shows them to be on course to win a Holyrood list seat in the north-east region, which would probably be filled by Alex Salmond.  The claim seems to be based on the regional subsamples from the YouGov poll commissioned by Sky News for their SNP leadership debate earlier in the week, which show the following for the list ballot in the north-east - 

SNP 32%

Conservatives 19%

Labour 19%

Greens 17%

Alba 6%

Reform UK 3%

Liberal Democrats 3%

That probably would be enough for an Alba list seat - I can only say 'probably' because you'd need to know the constituency results before you can make the d'Hondt calculation.  However, the problem is that the sample size in the north-east was just 150 respondents, and it seems unlikely that the numbers were correctly weighted to the regional population.  (YouGov are unusual in that they do appear to correctly weight their Scottish subsamples in GB-wide polls, but I'm not aware of any suggestion that they do the same for Scottish regional subsamples.)  Therefore, you can't expect pinpoint accuracy or anything like it, which is demonstrated by the fact that Alba are on the implausible figure of zero in both Mid-Scotland & Fife and West Scotland.  The chances are that Alba support is being understated in those two regions, but overstated in the north-east.

The best guide to whether Alba have a realistic chance of nicking a list seat in the north-east or anywhere else remains the national vote share, which can be considered much more reliable.  In this poll Alba are on 2% nationally, exactly the same as at the 2021 Holyrood election, when they didn't really come close to winning a seat.  If they could double that and get to 4% nationally, they'd be in the zone where only a slight overperformance in one or two regions could claim them a seat.  As things stand, though, it's likely they'd still be falling short.

However, forgetting about unreliable regional subsamples, there is a much better argument for thinking Alba might be making a little progress in the north-east, and that's the Dyce by-election result from a few weeks back.  They took a creditable 4% of the vote, significantly better than they managed in by-elections in the central belt towards the end of last year, and finished ahead of the Greens.  OK, one swallow does not make a summer, and even 4% across the north-east region would not be quite enough for a list seat.  But it is the first real sign that when Alba run a well-organised campaign, they have a message that is capable of resonating enough to make them competitive with at least one of what are generally considered to be the "big five" parties.

A final point: in the press release in which Alba make the claim about the north-east seat, they also say the YouGov / Sky News poll shows the Yes vote on 45% and the No vote on 55%.  That's not true - the real figures are Yes 46%, No 54%, which in spite of the hysterical way the mainstream media reported the poll actually represents no change at all from the previous YouGov poll, thus suggesting the Yes vote is holding up well during this difficult period.  As I've said before, I very much hope Alba don't start following the Wings practice of effectively talking up and embellishing the poorest polls for Yes, and falling silent out of disappointment whenever a good poll for Yes is released.  

I'm on record as saying a Humza Yousaf win would be checkmate for independence, at least until he's deposed.  But even if Yousaf does win, it would still be a mistake for any pro-independence party to be continually talking down independence.  In that scenario, the SNP will inevitably learn the hard way that they've made a terrible blunder, and there'll be no value in other independence supporters actively contributing to that process by effectively campaigning like unionists.  Our job will be to keep the flame of independence alive - just about - for however long it takes for the SNP to emerge from the blind alley they've wandered down.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

The first polling information about second preferences is extremely bad for Humza Yousaf - but extremely good for both Kate Forbes and Ash Regan

I've made a few attempts over the last four days to find the data tables from last week's Survation poll on the SNP leadership election, but I became more determined tonight when I saw John Curtice saying that it was the only poll to date with any information on second preferences.  I eventually found a link to the tables on Survation's Twitter account (there's still no link on the Survation website as far as I can see).

One of the problems with trying to work out the likely result of this election is that all but one of the polls to have been conducted so far have been of the general public, or in a couple of cases of SNP-voting members of the general public, rather than of card-carrying SNP members who comprise the actual electorate on this occasion.  That problem also applies to these Survation numbers on second preferences.  However, although there are good reasons for assuming SNP members may have different first preferences for leader than SNP voters (and the sole members' poll bears that theory out), there's no obvious reason for thinking that SNP members who want Ash Regan as leader would have radically different second preferences from SNP voters who want Ash Regan as leader.  So this poll may actually give us a reasonable insight into what is likely to be going on, albeit with a big health warning attached.

Survation / DC Thomson poll (8th-10th March 2023):

Second preferences of Ash Regan-supporting SNP voters:

Kate Forbes: 46%

Humza Yousaf: 29%

Another problem here is that the subsample of Regan-supporting SNP voters is extremely small (only 44 people), so the margin of error is considerable, but it's an interesting straw in the wind if nothing else.  It suggests that Kate Forbes can expect to at least eat into the modest first preference lead for Yousaf shown by the sole members' poll.  On these figures, Forbes would fall very slightly short of winning, because the members' poll suggested she would need a 3-1 margin on Regan's second preferences.  Nevertheless, bearing in mind the margin of error on the members' poll, this race looks extremely tight, and certainly far too close to call.  There's no good reason on the basis of any poll so far to conclude that Yousaf has a very high probability of being in the lead once second preferences are taken into account.

Although it's likely to be academic, perhaps the most startling finding of this poll is that Forbes supporters return the compliment by breaking for Regan by a similar margin.  I would have expected it to be much more even, or perhaps even for Yousaf to have an advantage, because I assumed that Forbes supporters were more 'establishment-minded' than Regan supporters.

Second preferences of Kate Forbes-supporting SNP voters:

Ash Regan: 45%

Humza Yousaf: 29%

On the headline first preference results, the Survation poll is strikingly similar to the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll that was conducted at roughly the same time - it shows a big lead for Kate Forbes among the general public, and a smaller Forbes lead among SNP voters from 2021 (as opposed to the fictional 19-point lead for Yousaf that the man himself kept boasting about on Sky the other night).

General public's first preferences:

Kate Forbes: 30%

Humza Yousaf: 20%

Ash Regan: 9%

First preferences of SNP voters:

Kate Forbes: 33%

Humza Yousaf: 31%

Ash Regan: 13%

First preferences of Yes voters from 2014 independence referendum:

Kate Forbes: 32%

Humza Yousaf: 28%

Ash Regan: 15%

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

The Liz Truss episode is a warning from (recent) history for the SNP - you don't have the luxury of installing a leader as unpopular as Humza Yousaf and then fixing the mistake later, because by that point the damage may be too great for the leader that follows him to repair

one good thing about the timing of the leadership change is the new leader’s popularity will be tested in the (lesser importance) WM election at least 16 months before the (crucial) HR26 election. That way if the new leader tanks in WM GR we can punt then before HR one

— Scone of Destiny (@SconeOf) March 13, 2023

If you have to go through the SNP losing half their Westminster seats just to realise what the polls are already telling you, ie. that Yousaf is the wrong choice, that's a hell of a price to pay. Better to get it right first time, and prevent that disaster ever happening.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 14, 2023

Last summer, the Tories held a leadership contest in which the polls showed the public had a clear preference between the contenders - they wanted Rishi Sunak rather than Liz Truss.  Tory members made the opposite choice, which perhaps wasn't surprising given what tends to happen when parties have been in power for a very long time.  Parties that have been out of government for an eternity, such as Labour in the early-to-mid 1990s, are generally pretty disciplined in looking at what will help them connect with the public and doing whatever it takes to get elected, even if that means stepping outside their own comfort zone in their choice of leader.  But after a decade or more in government, complacency often sets in, and there's a tendency to just stay inside the comfort zone with the choice of leader and to expect the public to learn to live with the person you've selected.  That can be a very dangerous game if the leader is not just someone the public wouldn't have chosen, but someone who polls show the public actively dislikes.  We know only too well that the Tories paid an incredibly heavy penalty for defying the public with their selection of Truss, and indeed that the heaviest penalty of all probably still lies in store for them.

If the SNP elect the unpopular Humza Yousaf as their leader, it will be an act of complacent self-indulgence comparable to the election of Truss, although the nature of the self-indulgence will be somewhat different.  It starts with the fact that Yousaf is the hand-picked successor of the faction that currently controls the SNP, and in that sense the mistake of anointing him can be compared with the Corbynites' strategic blunder in betting the house on Rebecca Long-Bailey rather than a more suitable left-winger such as Clive Lewis.  They had fallen in love with the idea that they had control of the party machinery and effectively control of the membership, and could thus install whoever they wanted - but in retrospect it's obvious that they would have been far better off making the hardheaded choice of rejecting Long-Bailey in favour of Lewis.  In the SNP's case, it's still possible the current leadership will 'get away' with making the poor selection of Yousaf,  but if they do, it will be for all the wrong reasons.  It won't primarily be about ideological purity in the way that it was with Truss (although admittedly the identity politics divide is playing a big role), it'll be more about factionalism, and personal loyalties, and even sentimentality to some extent. If a member votes for Yousaf mainly because John Swinney tells them to, ultimately that boils down to a sentimental attachment to Swinney after so many decades of him being around in a senior role.

If Yousaf wins, I don't expect the wheels to come off quite as quickly as they did with Truss.  But even if he learns from Truss' mistake and governs circumspectly over the coming months, there's one ticking time-bomb that he can't avoid for very long.  A Westminster general election will almost certainly take place next year (most likely in May, June or October), and the SNP would be going into that battle with a leader who has significantly poorer public approval ratings than either the UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, or the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.  Given that Westminster elections are 'away fixtures' for the SNP where the media won't allow them to compete with the UK-wide parties on a level playing-field, and given that Labour will have momentum behind them as they seek to eject the Tories from power after a decade and a half, it's not hard to see where this ends.  In my judgement (to use the late Paddy Ashdown's favourite pompous phrase), there is a greater than 50% probability - perhaps far greater than 50% - that a Yousaf-led SNP would lose their position next year as the majority party among Scottish MPs at Westminster.

That event would shock the SNP membership to their core.  It might lead to Yousaf swiftly being deposed, and you could imagine that the subsequent leadership contest may boil down to a battle between Kate Forbes and Angus Robertson.  If that had been the line-up in the current contest, Robertson would have been favourite to win, but it would be a very different story after a landmark Westminster defeat.  As was the case for Sunak last autumn, Forbes would be in pole position as the popular runner-up who history had proved completely right.  It would be plain for all to see that 'continuity didn't cut it', and in all likelihood the SNP would belatedly install the First Minister that the public had wanted all along.

But the real warning from history is this: even though Sunak became Prime Minister only one month later than he would have done if he had defeated Truss in the summer, he inherited a completely different legacy.  If he had won at the first time of asking, he would have taken over a Tory party that was only slightly behind Labour in the polls.  He would probably have either maintained that position or improved on it.  Instead, he came in when polls were pointing to a landslide defeat for the Tories, and thus far he hasn't been able to turn that around, because the damage Truss did in her short period in office was simply too great.

A post-Yousaf SNP could face a similar fate.  The SNP have defied gravity in the last three UK general elections by winning a majority in Scotland, but if Labour return to being the majority party, the new Labour MPs will start enjoying an incumbency boost and they will be very, very difficult to dislodge.  The SNP would retreat to being what they were prior to 2015 - essentially a Holyrood-only party.  Now, in fairness, Alex Salmond took Scotland to the brink of independence in 2014 without much of an SNP presence at Westminster.  But here's the thing: both leadership frontrunners are now saying that the way in which we almost won independence in 2014 is no longer good enough.  50% + 1 of the vote on a single day won't do anymore, apparently, we need "sustained supermajorities".  That being the case, permanently throwing away the tremendous leverage of a pro-independence majority among Scottish MPs at Westminster is self-evidently a luxury we cannot afford - and yet that is precisely what the SNP are flirting with by even thinking of someone as unpopular as Yousaf as their new leader.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Remember, Ash Regan supporters, it's vitally important to use your second preference vote, and it's a totally risk-free thing to do - here's a quick reminder of how the voting system works

I was toying with the idea of doing one of my "how the voting system works" blogposts just before the SNP leadership ballot got underway, but I began to think it was unnecessary because I had looked back at past internal elections in different parties and realised that the vast majority of members do actually rank more than one candidate.  However, our regular commenter Keaton has gone and put a doubt in my mind by saying that he thinks Humza Yousaf might sneak the win, because not enough Ash Regan supporters understand the voting system and therefore may not give any second preference at all.  I'm not at all sure that's true, but just on a belt-and-braces basis, here's a reminder of why using a second preference is so vitally important and why it's a totally risk-free thing to do.

The name of the voting system being used in the leadership ballot is the Single Transferable Vote, and it's the same system used in multi-member local election wards in Scotland - although in practice when only one person is being elected it is functionally identical to the Alternative Vote system that the UK had a referendum on back in 2011.  The name Single Transferable Vote helpfully sums up the system in quite a literal way.  It may seem strange to call it a 'single vote' when you're able to rank more than one candidate, but it genuinely is 'single' in the sense that it can only be in one place at any one time - ie. on any given count, it will only count towards one candidate's tally of votes.  There will be no 'half-votes' or 'diluted votes', so you don't need to worry that your first preference vote for Ash Regan will somehow be 'less emphatic' if you give a second preference to Kate Forbes.  (My guess is that's the irrational worry that causes some people to wrongly use only their first preference vote.)  When the first preference count is revealed, everybody who gave Ash Regan their first preference will simply have cast one vote for Ash Regan and for nobody else.  There will be no distinction made between Regan voters who gave a second preference and Regan voters who didn't.  Those will all just be Regan votes and nothing else.

However, if Ash Regan is eliminated after the first count (as we strongly suspect she will be), you then actively want your single vote to be transferred to another candidate for the second and final count.  You can't do Regan any good whatsoever by not having your vote transferred, because in the second count she's not a candidate anymore.  Your first preference for Regan has already been recorded and will be reported in the media, so there literally is nothing to be gained by not giving a second preference - which would be tantamount to abstaining on what will be a Yousaf v Forbes run-off on the second count.  If you prefer Forbes to Yousaf (as most Regan supporters do), not giving a second preference means you are passively helping Yousaf to beat Forbes, which is an utterly perverse thing to do - and let's be honest, Ash Regan herself would not thank you for doing that.  I have no doubt that she'd far rather serve in a senior Cabinet post under First Minister Kate Forbes than find herself languishing on the backbenches under "First Activist" (ahem) Humza Yousaf.

Yousaf appears to have spent half the Sky News debate telling blatant lies about opinion poll results - in fact, the new YouGov / Sky News poll has Kate Forbes ahead of him among SNP voters on several key questions

Humza Yousaf was absolutely obsessed with talking about opinion poll results during the Sky News leadership debate tonight, which suggests to me he's very worried about what the polls are actually showing and is desperately trying to muddy the waters with a mixture of lies, half-truths and distortions.  Although Kate Forbes clearly came out on top in the debate, one thing that disappointed me was that she didn't properly challenge Yousaf's fibs about polling.  He kept asking her what essentially was a "when did you stop beating your wife?" question, ie. variants on "is that why I've pulled ahead of you among SNP supporters, Kate?", which is based on a completely false premise.  In fact, the Panelbase poll which I published two days ago (and which is more or less bang up to date - the fieldwork ran until Friday) showed Forbes ahead of Yousaf among SNP voters from the 2019 general election, SNP voters from the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, and Yes voters from the 2014 independence referendum.

Yousaf repeatedly made two claims about opinion polls tonight -

* That he had gone from being behind among SNP supporters earlier in the campaign to being "nineteen points ahead".

* That he had "quadrupled his support with the Scottish public" over the course of the campaign.

The latter seems to be a very cynical apples-and-oranges comparison between the current three-way polls, and polls from several weeks ago that asked about a much wider range of potential candidates.  For example, there was a Savanta poll in mid-February which showed the following - 

Kate Forbes: 14%

Angus Robertson: 9%

John Swinney: 9%

Humza Yousaf: 6%

Mairi Gougeon: 3%

Shona Robison: 2%

Neil Gray: 2%

Shirley-Anne Somerville: 1%

Others: 4%

Don't Knows: 50%

I mean, if Humza couldn't improve on a 6% showing after six of the above potential candidates ruled themselves out, including Robertson and Swinney who had 18% support between them, something would be going very, very badly wrong somewhere.  Using the same bogus comparison, Kate Forbes would be able to claim that she's more than doubled her support over the same period (in fact far more than doubled it), even though she was in the lead right from the start.

But as for the claim about Yousaf currently being nineteen points ahead among SNP supporters, I'm inclined to think that should be regarded as an outright lie.  He implied he was taking the numbers from the new Sky News / YouGov poll.  I've searched the data tables from that poll, and I cannot find anything that looks even remotely like a nineteen point lead.  He'll probably come up with some sort of ultra-contrived and ultra-convoluted figleaf justification for his claim, but to all intents and purposes it was a lie.  (Unless of course he had access to information that YouGov forgot to include in the data tables - I'll concede that's a theoretical possibility but it seems unlikely.)

The real results among SNP voters in the YouGov poll are mixed - Yousaf does fare better than Forbes on one question (not 19 points better, let me stress), but Forbes fares better on all of the others.  For example, Yousaf has a poorer rating than Forbes among SNP voters on the question of whether each candidate would be a better or worse First Minister than Nicola Sturgeon.

YouGov / Sky News poll (9th-13th March 2023):

Net approval ratings on the question of 'better or worse than Nicola Sturgeon', SNP voters only:

Ash Regan: -40

Kate Forbes: -41

Humza Yousaf: -49

That's obviously poor for all of the candidates, presumably due to the high regard SNP voters hold Nicola Sturgeon in, but nevertheless Yousaf clearly comes out worst.  Forbes is also preferred to Yousaf by SNP voters on other key measures...

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "strong":

Kate Forbes: 34%

Humza Yousaf: 33%

Ash Regan: 19%

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "competent":

Kate Forbes: 47%

Humza Yousaf: 41%

Ash Regan: 27%

Percentage of SNP voters who think each candidate is "trustworthy":

Kate Forbes: 38%

Humza Yousaf: 35%

Ash Regan: 20%

Whether Yousaf actually deserves to be trusted by as many as 35% of SNP voters is doubtful, because if you can't even trust him to tell the truth about opinion poll results, what the hell can you trust him to tell the truth about?

Incidentally, even on the one question in which SNP voters prefer him to Forbes in the poll, he's actually behind Forbes among Yes voters from 2014.

Net approval ratings on question of 'would he/she make a good or bad First Minister', Yes voters only:

Kate Forbes: -2

Ash Regan: -8

Humza Yousaf: -8

Let me just stress in closing that all of the above numbers are from either SNP voters only, or Yes voters only.  The bigger picture is that among the general public, Kate Forbes has an enormous lead over Humza Yousaf on every single measure - some of those numbers can be found HERE.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

More catastrophic polling numbers for Humza Yousaf as YouGov finds, by a 2-1 margin, voters think Yousaf is "weak", "incompetent" and "untrustworthy" - while the same poll finds Kate Forbes is considered "strong", "competent" and "trustworthy"

My heart skipped a beat earlier, because someone left a comment saying that independence support had "fallen to 39% in a new YouGov poll".  Totally false alarm, as it turns out - that was the figure before Don't Knows were excluded.  The headline numbers are actually Yes 46%, No 54%, which bearing in mind that YouGov are generally on the No-friendly end of the spectrum, suggests that independence support is holding up pretty well amidst all the sparks flying around during the SNP leadership contest.  Even more remarkably, the SNP lead on both Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions has actually increased since the last YouGov poll.

But I'm afraid there's no false alarm in this poll for Humza Yousaf.  These are probably the most devastating numbers for him to date - it's hard to see how any politician can expect to lead his party to an election victory (let alone lead his country to independence) if voters have already made up their minds that he is "weak", "incompetent" and "untrustworthy".

YouGov / Sky News poll (9th-13th March 2023):

Thinking about Humza Yousaf, do you think he is a strong or weak leader?

Strong: 19%

Weak: 39%

Is competent or incompetent?

Competent: 22%

Incompetent: 40%

Is trustworthy or untrustworthy?

Trustworthy: 18%

Untrustworthy: 42%

*  *  *

Thinking about Kate Forbes, do you think she is a strong or weak leader?

Strong: 28%

Weak: 22%

Is competent or incompetent?

Competent: 37%

Incompetent: 20%

Is trustworthy or untrustworthy?

Trustworthy: 30%

Untrustworthy: 27%

*  *  *

Thinking about Ash Regan, do you think she is a strong or weak leader?

Strong: 13%

Weak: 26%

Is competent or incompetent?

Competent: 17%

Incompetent: 24%

Is trustworthy or untrustworthy?

Trustworthy: 13%

Untrustworthy: 26%

Respondents were also asked whether each candidate would be a better or worse First Minister than Nicola Sturgeon.  All three candidates came out with a negative rating on this question, which is perhaps understandable given how Nicola Sturgeon has dominated Scottish politics over the last decade.  But, once again, Humza Yousaf came out by far the worst.  His rating is a ghastly -40, compared to a considerably more respectable -16 for Kate Forbes, and -30 for Ash Regan.

*  *  *

You can read Find Out Now's write-up of last Friday's Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll on independence, showing a 4-point Yes lead, HERE.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.

Ash Regan 1, Kate Forbes 2 : That, for what it's worth, is my recommendation of how to vote in the SNP leadership election

Before I start, one or two people asked me yesterday if any media outlets had picked up on the new Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll showing that Kate Forbes has significantly extended her lead with the general public.  It took a little while, but quite a few newspaper websites started reporting the poll this afternoon, including The Independent, The National, The Journal (Ireland) and most importantly of all the Great Yarmouth Mercury.  I have very happy memories of spending time on Great Yarmouth beach in the long hot summer of...well, whichever long hot summer that was.  Click on the links to read the various reports of the poll, which of course also shows that Kate Forbes has the lead among SNP voters from the 2019 general election, SNP voters from the 2021 Holyrood election, and Yes voters from the 2014 independence referendum.

A rather presumptuous Humza Yousaf supporter tried to leave two comments on this blog earlier, in which he took it as read that I'd now be transferring my (second preference) support from Kate Forbes to Humza Yousaf because of the latter's rather vague and insubstantial comments yesterday about how he "might consider" using a snap Holyrood election to seek a mandate for independence.  Isn't it thrilling when politicians say at the last gasp of an election campaign that they "might consider" doing something?  You'd almost be inclined to think that if they had any intention of actually doing it, they'd have given a much more definite commitment and mentioned something about it far earlier.  Nevertheless, the commenter was still inviting me to believe that this new "maybe, possibly" position meant Yousaf was now more radical on independence strategy than Kate Forbes.

In spite of my extreme cynicism about the Yousaf campaign, I didn't dismiss this development totally out of hand, because I'm always only too eager to see indications of a "sinner repenteth".  So last night I looked at Yousaf's exact words with great care, and - to be blunt - I could not see any sign at all of a shift in his stance.  Even leaving aside the fact that a promise to "consider" something is worthless, because it's impossible to hold anyone to it (they can just say later on that they "considered" it and decided against), Yousaf is making clear he'd only consider a snap election AFTER the mythical "sustained supermajority" for Yes is achieved.  So if you think there's any chance of getting a snap election out of Yousaf this year, or next year, or even within the next five years, you can totally forget it.  If he becomes leader, you'll be able to ask him at any time why he didn't deliver the snap election he promised to "consider", and he'll inform you that he hasn't even needed to consider it yet, because there's no sign of that ever-elusive sustained supermajority.  And what's more, he'll tell you that's your own fault.  "No use looking at me, guys, if you want independence or a snap election, you'll just have to go out and knock on some more doors."  That will be his permanent, all-purpose excuse for doing absolutely nothing about independence for the entirety of his leadership - which is precisely what he intends to do.  There's a very good reason why Ben Macpherson (effectively now the SNP's first openly anti-independence parliamentarian) has backed Yousaf and not Forbes or Regan.

Let's be honest, what Yousaf has done is his own personal version of "The Vow" - which appropriately enough was run in the very newspaper that we now fondly know as "the Daily Humza" (although it'll revert to being "the Daily Anas" in around two weeks from now).  He's throwing out "ifs" and "maybes" and "we'll sees" in an act of last-minute desperation.  The real significance of it is that it probably indicates one of two things: either a) he thinks he's losing the election as things stand, or b) he thinks the election is too close to call, or that there isn't enough information to be confident he's currently ahead among members.  Just like the original Vow, if it does the trick, the ultra-vague promises to "think about possibly doing things" will vanish in a puff of smoke within seconds of the result being announced.

Back in the real world, the disappointing truth is that no good outcome to this leadership election is available anymore.  What we needed is an SNP leader who continues with Nicola Sturgeon's policy that an election must be used to seek a mandate for independence now that the referendum option has been closed off.  Sadly, both of the frontrunners are hellbent on ditching the Sturgeon plan, and although Ash Regan would actually further improve on what Sturgeon was offering, all of the polling evidence suggests that she is too far behind to have a realistic chance of becoming leader.

But when you can't have the best outcome, what you mustn't do is throw in the towel - you have to fight all the way to keep the flame alive and make sure the worst case scenario doesn't happen.  There are now two realistic priorities for independence supporters - a) to keep the cause of independence alive by ensuring Humza Yousaf does not become First Minister, and b) to lay down a marker on strategy by demonstrating to the new leader (hopefully Kate Forbes) that there is substantial ongoing support within the SNP for the Sturgeon-Regan plan of winning an independence mandate via an election.  Fortunately, there's no need to choose between those two priorities - you can have both, because this election will be conducted via a preferential voting system.  What will achieve the desired effect is voting as follows...

1st preference: Ash Regan

2nd preference: Kate Forbes  

I've heard it said by quite a few people that Ash Regan has the right message, but that she's the wrong messenger.  That should no longer be a concern because, at this stage, the purpose of voting for Regan is not to install her as First Minister, but instead to ensure that she receives a big enough share of first preference votes to make the new leader sit up and take notice.  It'll demonstrate that there is a substantial body of opinion in the SNP that can't be ignored or taken for granted.  Such an outcome will hopefully keep a de facto referendum (or whatever you prefer to call it) on the agenda.

But if you do vote Ash Regan on first preference, I cannot stress enough the importance of also using your second preference.  If you don't, you'll effectively be abstaining on the question of who will become First Minister, and nobody can afford to be abstaining when there is so much at stake.  I've rehearsed several times why Kate Forbes would be vastly preferable to Humza Yousaf, but just to briefly recap, there are two main reasons -

Firstly, although Forbes has essentially the same non-strategy on independence as Yousaf, the mood music from her is a million times better.  She talks about achieving independence within a short enough timescale that her newborn daughter will grow up in an indy Scotland.  She also puts the onus on herself to bring independence about, which means she can actually be held accountable if she fails to take sufficient action.  That's in stark contrast to Humza Yousaf, who has essentially been seeking a mandate from SNP members to do absolutely nothing for years on end, apart from meaningless fluff like appointing a "Minister for Independence".  (You could just as easily appoint a "Minister for Nuclear Fusion" or a "Minister for Exploration of the Surface of Pluto", but after ten years you still wouldn't have nuclear fusion stations or a manned mission to Pluto.)

Secondly, there would be no point in having the best independence strategy in the world if you have the wrong leader, because an unpopular leader will lose you referendums, and de facto referendums, and regular elections.  The polling evidence is overwhelming - the public like Kate Forbes and think she would be a good First Minister, but they feel the polar opposite about Humza Yousaf.  The Labour leader Anas Sarwar consistently has a better net approval rating than Yousaf, which points to a strong possibility that a Yousaf-led SNP could suffer defeat at the hands of Labour in 2026, thus bringing an end to nineteen years of SNP rule, and putting independence completely out of reach.  I would have no such concerns if Kate Forbes is the leader, because her net approval rating is generally superior to Sarwar's (and far superior to Yousaf's).

If you're going to stupidly and needlessly set yourself "sustained supermajority" targets, you must at least have a leader capable of reaching out and winning a substantial number of new votes from people who are currently unionists and who vote for unionist parties.  Humza Yousaf simply cannot do that, because polls show beyond all credible doubt that unionist voters in particular dislike him intensely.  In the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, Kate Forbes has a lead over Humza Yousaf among SNP voters and Yes voters from 2014, but she also has an absolutely enormous lead over Yousaf among No voters and people who vote for unionist parties.

No voters from 2014:

Kate Forbes: 69%

Humza Yousaf: 19%

Ash Regan: 11%

Labour voters from 2021:

Kate Forbes: 55%

Humza Yousaf: 28%

Ash Regan: 17%

Conservative voters from 2021:

Kate Forbes: 83%

Humza Yousaf: 9%

Ash Regan: 8%

Liberal Democrat voters from 2021:

Kate Forbes: 63%

Humza Yousaf: 20%

Ash Regan: 17%

(Above numbers are all taken from the new Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, conducted 7th-10th March 2023.)

Paradoxically, by banging on and on about the need for a "sustained supermajority", Yousaf has come up with the most compelling argument of all for why he must never become SNP leader or First Minister.  If you look at the above numbers, it's an absolute no-brainer - Yousaf has no means of reaching out to unionist voters and building a sustained supermajority, but Kate Forbes does.  And she's also best-placed to hold on to the Yes voters we already had in 2014 - because she holds a lead over Yousaf among those people too.

Remember when the SNP leadership first started the frantic backtracking on independence?  It was the day after the 2017 general election, and I'll always remember anonymous SNP sources (I have a sneaking suspicion of who those people may have been) briefing newspapers about how furious they were at the 'hotheads' who had prioritised independence and cost the party seats like Moray and Angus, which had been in SNP hands since 1987.  The clear implication was that independence was less important than holding Moray and Angus, and if there was any choice to be made, it was independence that had to be sacrificed.  

Well, I'm afraid it cuts both ways - if independence had to be ruthlessly ditched to win back Moray and Angus, the same must be true of highly unpopular leadership candidates.  I defy anyone to look at the constituency of Moray - currently held by the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross - and come to any other conclusion than that Kate Forbes would have a far, far better chance of winning it back for the SNP at next year's general election than Humza Yousaf would.

*  *  *

Over the last few days I've published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls - an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead.  However, as you'll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options...

The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for the fundraiser", although even if you don't do that, it'll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.

If you don't have a Paypal account, last year's fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.