Now, to be clear, I would be only too delighted if that was true. We need Labour to be defeated in this general election and we need to maintain a pro-independence majority among Scottish seats at Westminster. I have no time at all for the crazy notion that what pro-independence voters should be doing at the election is "getting rid of useless SNP MPs". However, delusionalism is not going to help SNP MPs retain their seats. We have to be clear-sighted about how serious this crisis is if we're to have any chance of resolving it.
The evidence that a significant minority of former SNP voters have moved to Labour is plain as day. Skier vaguely claims that SNP voters are going missing in the polls and that the weightings somehow show this, but in fact in the latest Survation poll, the unweighted number of respondents who recall voting SNP in 2019 is pretty close to being in line with the correct figure, and thus not much weighting has had to be applied. Once the turnout filter has been added, 69% of SNP voters from 2019 have kept faith with the party, while 21% have gone to Labour. By contrast, Labour have retained 90% of their 2019 voters and lost only 8% to the SNP (the latter group probably includes a fair few disillusioned Corbynistas).
Because far more people voted SNP in 2019 than voted Labour, the 21% of SNP voters who have since switched to Labour amounts to more than six times as many actual people as the 8% of Labour voters who have moved in the opposite direction. So it's not rocket science as to why the SNP lead has contracted in some polls, and disappeared altogether in others. Instead of pretending this hasn't happened (real votes in the Rutherglen by-election give the lie to that anyway), the SNP would be better advised to make the strategic changes required to win some of those voters back as a matter of urgency.
Yea hes completely lost the plot. The only question is does he actually believe what he is spouting or is it just him being him and spouting reams of rubbish which he will deny saying when its does not come off.
ReplyDeleteJames, as you know I am not well versed ( well not versed at all ) in the intricacies of polling but I thought this Skier revelation may interest you.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen his independence Ski chart for a while now. You know the one that says we don't need to do anything and independence will just happen. Can't be long now!
Oh and he has now told us that the reason Sturgeon resigned is because the Britnat media were beastly to her. Not much of an independence leader then Skier if some bad press sends her running for cover. Funnily enough I think her press has been a lot worse since she resigned.
Belgian Skier is always good value comedy-wise but there's always the slight danger that some unwary person might think he knows what he's talking about. Supremely confident cluelessness has caught people out before.
ReplyDeleteThat's precisely the "astroturfing" James warns about in the comments here:
Deletehttps://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2024/02/one-quarter-of-those-planning-to-vote.html?showComment=1707044965171#c1644044134569473174
People with agendas—"we can all agree this is encouraging news for the SNP", "Humza is growing nicely into the rôle", "it is clear all independence supporters should rally behind the SNP"—post the same pish over and over and over and over in the various comments sections of Yes blogs in order to seem to be support for the bollocks they're promoting.
In Skier's case, his message is more creative with irrelevant diversions into his storied adventures in public toilets and the fractal that is his purported family's countless backgrounds. Whatever the sentence needs: he's married to it. But ultimately his message is Wheesht for Indy and he gets very upset if anyone has the audacity to open their trap instead of listening to him.
Sterling fella, I’m sure.
I miss Skier. He brought a welcome note of hilarity to the site with his ever-changing nationality, his extensive foreign family, his vast and multi-faceted career in various areas of expertise and, of course, his specialist subject of unisex toilet availability in the Scottish Borders. He is wasted in the Dughoose where they take him seriously and fail to appreciate his comic genius. Come back Skier, we could all do with a laugh now that the SNP have abandoned independence.
DeleteFirst Minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf told the BBC: “I don’t fear a general election at all. I see it’s a huge opportunity. There’s no getting away from the fact that 2023 was a difficult year. I’m not going to treat you or your listeners as fools.”
ReplyDeleteSaid as he treats them like fools.
The difference with Skier is he doesn't even feel the need to pretend. He knows his readers well.
Thank you James, you've answered a question thrown up by previous posts. I wondered how you were so confident that voters were throwing their support at labour (so very, very cheaply) from the polls. I suspected there was at least an element of what happened in Rutherglen, where former SNP voters were answering "don't know" or "won't vote" in the poll, allowing an existing, largely static Labour supporting base to appear far bigger than previously.
ReplyDeleteNope, that's not what I said, and you're categorically wrong about what happened in Rutherglen. The idea that SNP voters, and SNP voters alone, stayed at home in their thousands while supporters of Labour trooped to the polling stations in general election-type numbers is fantastical, delusional, and embarrassing. In the real world, a low turnout affects all parties, and the Rutherglen result wouldn't have been possible without substantial numbers of direct SNP-to-Labour switchers.
DeleteIndeed. The mantra that Rutherglen was a non event because the turnout wasn’t up at general election level is total nonsense, but repeated frequently, even in the comments here. Several people keep pushing it. With repetition, it sticks.
DeleteRutherglen was a taste of the battering the SNP will get in the coming general election. Talking down the inevitable is no way to prevent it from happening.
@Bortwiskels. There’s nothing illegitimate about SNP to Labour switchers. I’m not among them—Starmer’s attitude towards the Gazan genocide is utterly disgusting to me—but I sympathise with the fundamental point: Labour won’t deliver independence, but neither will Humza’s SNP. When Indy is off the table, the SNP is pointless.
DeleteSince a Labour government will mean more austerity and more privatisation of the NHS which a Labour majority in the Scottish Parliament would support then there's reason to vote SNP and for the Scottish Parliament where appropriate vote ALBA.
DeleteColour me naive, but I was probably projecting my own feelings onto the Rutherglen result. We're I unionist voter I'd have been desperate to back labour to get the SNP out, had I voted SNP I would've stayed at home given they'd just elected a leader with no interest in self determination and thrown the MP I had voted for under the bus. I thought that would have played a larger part than I guess it did.
DeleteTo various anons, with Independence apparently not even a consideration in this election, there's a lot of Scottish votes up for grabs. But anyone paying attention to what's on offer will soon see they all look distinctly the same, unappealing and toryish. If 21% of former SNP voters see enough in Labour to defect to them, imagine what a party with policies we havent seen done to death and fail to deliver for the past 40 years could do!
Well, we did have 2 general elections with Corbyn in charge of Labour, promising very distinctive policies. He did quite well in Scotland in 2017.
DeleteStrangely enough when the polls were good for the SNP WGD numpty Irish Skier didn't see anything wrong with their credibility. Skier first and foremost is an SNP propagandist. He will lie ( admitted that himself in a post and saw nothing wrong in doing so ) and come up with any silly proposition to defend the SNP. This is the cheapskate who demanded James returned £20 he had previously donated to a SGP fundraiser when James subsequenly joined Alba.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't calling your numbers and polling knowledge into question, I only wondered how you'd come to those opinions, answered in your article (previous vote is measured.)
ReplyDeleteTo say one party's support stayed at home was the only factor would be simplistic (in a by-election that was far from straightforward), but I was wondering how you were measuring movement away from the SNP. 21% SNP to Labour is far more than I had imagined, and if the SNP want to remedy that they need to start asking the public what we want, and forming a story that tells voters how they'll implement it from the opposition in WM.
The opposition is powerless in Westminster. An overall majority commands total power there.
DeleteThat’s why the SNP traditionally campaigns on independence during Westminster elections. Now they’re feart of Indy, though, all they’ve got is waffle. Best of luck with that, Continuity Squad!