The title of this blogpost is a rather niche nod to the "Ip Ip Ip Ipswich" headline that heralded the Liberal landslide in the 1906 general election. Actually that's a warning from history for Starmer, because just sixteen years later the Liberals had been reduced to third place, and they never recovered their former position.
The Ipsos poll isn't as important as it sounds, because the Scottish subsample is comprised of only 111 respondents, and I'm not aware of any evidence that Ipsos separately weight their Scottish subsamples in the way that YouGov do. However, there is some indirect significance to the poll, which I'll explain shortly.
GB-wide voting intentions (Ipsos, 31st May-4th June 2024):
Labour 43%
Conservatives 23%
Greens 9%
Reform UK 9%
Liberal Democrats 8%
SNP 5%
Plaid Cymru 1%
Scottish subsample: SNP 43%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 17%, Liberal Democrats 8%, Greens 3%, Reform UK 3%
What's unusual about this poll is that it was conducted by telephone. All of the recent full-scale Scottish polls showing a Labour lead were conducted among volunteer online polling panels, but when Ipsos have occasionally conducted full-scale Scottish phone polls in the past, they've tended to show more favourable results for the SNP than the online polls have. The most recent one was in January, and showed a 7-point SNP lead at a time when most online polls were already showing Labour either level or slightly ahead. So if that disparity is still holding true, it could be that a phone poll right now would show either a small SNP lead or a dead heat. That's one of the key reasons, along with some of the better-than-expected MRP projections, for wondering whether the SNP may actually be slightly better-placed at this point of the campaign than some commentators are assuming.
This is nearer what I fully expect to happen on polling day. SNP will gain seats in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteOh, Declan. Let your inner Skier fly!
DeletePolitics isn't you thing, if you predict the SNP to pick up seats.
DeleteI'm beginning to think Declan is Skier after all. Remember there was nobody to touch Skier when it came to inventing new careers, family members, nationality etc, so a new identity would be a piece of cake.
DeleteWTF why the obession get a life. I betting 2 above comments are IFS
DeleteI betting you got poor grammar and no can spell obsession.😁
DeleteI agree IFS seems to be obsessed with me and raging whenever SNP are showing signs of success.
DeleteIFS is always honest enough to put his name to his comments so I think he's being criticised unfairly. With so many anonymous posters (yes, I get the irony!), it's impossible to know who's saying what.
DeleteNot this again. He does not put his name to his comments. He
Deleteputs a set on initials which are absolutely not his name. And he consistently misrepresents what others have said, introduces straw man arguments, and generally talks shit. He also disappears occasionally, at which point certain anon posters start to post similar messages to his. Coincidental I am sure. He has already admitted that he has never knocked doors or canvassed for Indy. He is a sad wee troll. I’ve already suggested to him that he takes some time out. Fingers crossed. It’s for his own good.
Not this again! Few, if any, use their real name. The point is IFS always identifies himself unlike his critics Mr Anonymous. Why don't you have the courage to do the same and put some sort of 'signature' to your abusive comments?
DeleteAnon at 10.50am - well you would lose your bet ya numpty. None of the above comments are from me. Declan and you anonymous numpties seem obsessed with me.
DeleteAnon at 4.58pm - I have called you out in the past for being a liar and a troll and nothing has changed. No I have not admitted anything you said not to anyone and certainly not a troll like you.
DeleteTotal anonymous morons are always moaning when I post and moan when I don't post - obsession - numpties.
Declan I respectfully asked you a simple question. On what basis do you say Swinney is the second best FM after Sturgeon. I asked you to share your reasoning. No reply from Declan.
DeleteDeclan you are a Pratt who likes to play the victim and a liar who makes up stuff just like anon at 4.58pm. I am and never have been " raging when SNP show signs of success. "
A real bunch of lying trolls on SGP these days.
Declan getting excited about a Scottish sub sample of 111 people. What a numpty. Declan you lied about me previously when you said I had forecast a big defeat for the SNP - you know fine well I didn't make any forecast on this election for any party.
DeleteDeclan is a proven liar. Now who else do I know who is a proven liar and is proud of it because he thinks he is supporting the SNP - Scottish Skier.
IFS, I've virtually abandoned the site because of the plethora of anonymous critics trying to force you off the blog. Nobody appointed this pompous twat as site moderator and I'd rather read your contributions than listen to his sanctimonious whinging any day of the week. Time James clamped down on these anonymous posts.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I was the anonymous poster at 10:39 and I'm not IFS although I do enjoy his reports from Skier and the Duggers.
DeleteOwen. Call me RIFS. Does that identify me? Good. Read the posts from your pal IFS. Abusive, filled with misrepresentation of the comments of others, intolerant, and persistently negative about the Indy movement and the SNP. By his own admission he has never knocked doors or canvassed for Indy. Why should he not be called out? Why is he posting here ? What is his motivation, other than hatred of the SNP? It’s reasonable to conclude he is a Troll. I believe he is a troll. I do not know if he wants Indy. My opinion is that he doesn’t care about Indy. No one is forcing him off of this site. At worst people are laughing at him and taking the Micky. It’s not what I’d like to see on here, but when he attacks posters with abusive language and misleading comments he is going to get comeback.
DeleteRIFS (some 'witty' reference to IFS perhaps?), why is this directed at me? My only 'crime' was to point put that IFS always took ownership of his remarks and to suggest you do the same - we'll see how long that lasts.
DeleteWhy is he posting here? Because he has an interest in the subject matter presumably. His opinions might not measure up to your high standards although I don't recall any contribution from you apart from attacking IFS (maybe I'm wrong but that's what happens when you make your points anonymously). Ironic isn't it?
I support independence but I have also grown to hate the SNP. Does that mean I fail your purity test ad a genuine independentista? The ultimate arbiter of who posts here and what they say is the blog author and I regret to inform you that is not you although you seem to have a high opinion of yourself. If you don't like abusive comments, try cutting back on them yourself.
Come 2026 I'm actually considering SNP 1 Alba 2
ReplyDeleteI received a call from Ipsos this morning. The first ever time I've been asked my opinion on a political event. Curiously, one of the questions was who I thought would be a better PM - Sunak or Starmer. The fella seemed surprised when I said neither.
ReplyDeleteDid it sound like a Scottish poll or a UK one?
DeleteThe fella had to think “which bloody box do I file that under?” and presumably put you in Don’t Know. Did they ask a “squeeze” follow up question, to try to get you “off the fence”?
DeleteI'm sure he said it was for a Scottish sub sample, James.
DeleteSorry folks, that last message was from Ken Rooney.
DeleteThe IPP also increased its seats in that 1906 election. Whatever happened to them?
ReplyDeleteWell, their objective was realised, so I suppose that's the main thing.
DeleteTheir objective was home rule, not independence.
DeleteIf you campaign for a few slices of bread and get a full loaf, you've still gained your objective.
DeleteThe Labour party would be devastated to “achieve” socialism. That’s certainly NOT what their leadership, or anyone but the idealistic activists, want. Their purpose is to maintain the status quo, and milk it for all it’s worth, like the SNP.
DeleteI think the back biting between the Anglo centric labour and tories is helping other groups and the SNP in particular.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see how the leaders of the London parties would get on stuck in the Trossachs with nothing but a light bulb and a bottle of orange squash.
DeleteI watched (on Youtube) the third of the new Ponsonby&Massie podcast with Prof Ailsa Henderson explaining the MRP polling method. It's a long watch but really interesting. The detail is good and why you have to take certain aspects of the results as a health warning a la probabilities and likelihood emphasising that polls are just a snapshot of how people say the WOULD vote right now so far out from an election. The explanation of the modelling is fascinating though - if you can be bothered to listen through it all. At the beginning Ailsa Henderson goes into the detail of how they set new boundary changes and make the final decisions.
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion of which Scottish seats are predicted to be the major battles, tactical voting, what they think are the dynamics affecting voters decisions.
Gave me an understanding James of many of your previous blog comments about how polling works so hats off to you for always being informed on all of that. Complex stuff.
This?
Deletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f4lJt5SCU-4
I've been terribly disappointed at the travails of the SNP. I really do wonder at the commitment of the SNP these days. Alba and the SNP would sort it out if they truly had any sense. A bit of influence on the future politics and policies is better than none. That said, regardless if you dont vote at all, if you don't vote SNP you are doing so for right wing parties.
DeleteOn the point of "Saor" and "Alba". I love to see a fellow Gaelic enthusiast. However.
I suspect you don't mean "Joiner, "Scotland".
It's just two random words......
Saor....sometimes words have two meanings.
https://www.tiktok.com/@caldamac/video/6951783511686745349?lang=en
Heard the Dross on R. (So-called) Scotland this morn, it must help the SNP in N. Aberdeen and Moray .E. . What a chancer is oor gloriousTory leader !
ReplyDeleteSoar Alba
He’ll win, though. Lots of strongly, anti-independence sentiment in the SNP’s old heartland.
DeleteMakes you wonder why they ever voted SNP in the first place.
Disagree entirely. It's an open question whether he'll win or lose. This is not 2017 or even 2019. The Tory vote is under heavy pressure.
DeleteRob here, tory Duguid was my MP and I'm in the Banff/Huntly area of the constituency. I would not dare say I have a clue who'll win. This seat doesn't have the ranks of squaddies around Elgin that may have helped D.Ross in his old Moray constituency. Since the last election, my neighbours and near-neighbours have become predominantly resettled English families - some of whom vote SNP. Not all farmers I might nod to are Unionist. There is a lot of unquestioning loyalty/patriotism in the older voters - I'm in my late 60s and I mean older than me - but my friendly contemporaries are at least 50/50 Yessers. Someone might get a landslide, but seriously, any prediction here depends more on luck than judgement.
DeleteThose constituencies have changed. Go to Tomintoul and it's miny Yorkshire.
DeleteNot like 70s.
Can scream whether that's good, bad or indifferent but it's a fact.
Given the demographics it was always a mystery how SNP managed to get elected in Moray. I think local people largely vote(d) SNP and the military and expats vote(d) Tory. I know that 'expat' means the same as 'migrant' but avoided using the latter so as not to provoke hysteria. With the diminution of local people as a proportion of the population, the future is there to see.
DeleteWhat does the census say about UK-internal migrants living in Scotland now, vs. 10 years before? Those patterns, in different seats, could prove to be crucial.
DeleteMoray loon is correct. Barely a Scottish accent on the speyside way these days. I'll say it clear, it annoys me.
DeleteIt’s a unionist vote, first and foremost.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the public might not like a complete 3 job chancer and those who may have voted Tory will stay away. A bit like Sunak did in part as the D day commemoration continued
ReplyDeleteWell it's clear when Starmer on a TV debate doesn't mention Scotland once, the Indy movement understands Labour is not an option
ReplyDeleteWe might get it, but not all Yes-minded Scots will.
DeleteSomething I’m looking out for in July is *where* Labour's vote comes from. I want to see how much Labour increases outright (might not be much at all, but something tells me they'll be up a fair bit across the board), and then how much it correlates with other parties lost votes. As in: who is down when Labour's up? Should be easy enough to just draw scatter plots in a spreadsheet and look at the R squared values for correlation.
Speaking of which: I'll need raw vote figures for the new constituencies, not just % shares. Anyone got a link?
Anon at 1:39 pm ... keep the jokes coming!
DeleteAnon at 2:30, you need to get real. Your dream is over, it died in 2014.
DeleteGet real, you're still on a blog 10 years later decrying something... aye but it's dead. Haha
DeleteEven when the snp lose seats anybody with a half a brain cell knows independence is still supported by a large amount of people and hardly dead forever.
DeleteLike what are you saying? 46-48% of the electorate supporting the union is unsinkable?? Lol. It's not even an arguable point.
Raw projected vote totals for all Scottish seats are at Electoral Calculus here:
Deletehttps://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/bdy2023_scot_summary.html
As an increasingly disillusioned supporter of independence it really pains me to say I have to agree with anon@1:39.
DeleteReally thought you muppets had at long last abandoned the old I support Indy but patter.
DeleteAnon @13:19
DeleteHave you ever done anything about like doorstep canvassing?
Not j7st at elections but continnualy every month
Labour vote is coming from working class Scots who feel that SNP has gone to woke, independence is a peripheral dream and fancy kicking tories out of Westminster. Or at least about 10 percent of SNP voters swinging that way. That's all it takes to make the change.
DeleteA third basically support SNP or Labour each with a bit of muddle between them.
One thing for sure, Sunak is doing his level best to undermine Tory candidates across the UK. Some of his calls have been bizarre, from standing in the rain, Titanic museum, making numbers up in a debate and now leaving Biden and Macron to complete the D Day commemoration without the UK PM. Hard to imagine Churchill leaving the beach to go and speak to some reporter in London.
ReplyDeleteWho is advising Sunak, Alistair Campbell?
He does seem to be suspiciously shite at election campaigning.
DeleteMind, so was Brown. And he lost, too. Outside of Scotland, that is…
Subsamples have very wide error margins. SNP 26% ahead of Labour sounds like noise, not signal, in this case.
ReplyDeleteLook at it this way: if Labour gets a 200+ commons majority, while *still* not beating the SNP in Scotland, that's their high water mark right there.
ReplyDeleteSo Slab beating the SNP this election is a psychological prize they're certainly after. Laughably irrelevant as it may be in the commons itself, where Scots will be few and far between in cabinet, as usual.
Apart from the seats in the GE, what will be looked at obviously is the nationalist share of the vote. We really need to hope this holds up. I feel if it’s below 40% we really need to take a break in beating the independence drum for a couple of years, otherwise we leave ourselves wide open to ridicule from the UK government and unionists.
ReplyDeleteThe hope will be that come 2026 things will have improved, and we can then drive forward in the wake of a better Holyrood result.
The SNP should have kept their powder dry for 10 years after IndyRef 1 and they could now have come out all guns blazing with independence as their trump card. Instead they’ve ineffectively droned on an on about it from almost as soon as the 2014 result was announced and they’ve become the drunken old bore in the corner most folk can’t be bothered listening to any more.
DeleteThere is a bit of truth in that but I don't think it'd fair to say they expected brexit which legitimately brought it to the fore. They just couldn't get the referendum which may have won it and have been sitting with nowhere to go since
DeleteYou've got a point. It's the worst of both worlds really. They've droned on and on about indy for ten years, pissing off a large section of the electorate. Then, at the same time, they've done absolutely nothing to achieve indy in ten years, pissing off indy supporters. It's the strategy of the gravy train to keep them all in the style to which they've become accustomed.
DeleteYou have done nothing but greet like a wee wain wanting its bottle.
DeleteAnd you, the dummy they spat out?
DeleteMy, that must have been hard for you to think up.
DeleteThe trade unions are already asking Labour for pay rises, when all the promises will fall down After the elections, Labour will implode in the polls very quickly
ReplyDeleteI can understand the frustration that many on this site feel about the perceived lack of progress towards independance. However ,it is important to remember the legal challenge that the SNP face towards achieving a second referendum,which appear to be necessary in order to gain acceptance from the international community.I do feel that it is important for the SNP and all other parts of the pro indepence movement to provide dome creative thinking (think out of the box) to find a way of getting around the road block erected by Westminster.
ReplyDeleteSpelling it correctly would be a good start.
DeleteThanks for pointing the typos out.I do hope that the message is not buried by spelling errors,when typing in a hurry.
DeleteI do not disagree with your underlying point.
DeleteDon’t worry about spelling errors. The naysayers on here have no real response to what you said if that’s what they come back with. You make fair points.
DeleteAs a follow up to my comment about Westminster resistance to a refendum,I would add that the if you believe that the SNP are not serious abour independance,read their manifesto,and election literature.For example, SNP candidate for Inverness,Ske and West Roshire states:
ReplyDeleteẄith independance,we can build a prosperous economy,provide our people with opportunities they deserve,and offer the support they need at difficult times.But until then,we need to make our voice heard at Westminster on issues that affect you,your family,and community.I pledge always to be that voice.
While that candidate (Drew Hendry belives that independance is the only solution to the many problems faced bt Scottish residents,he has demonstrated the importance of SNP MPs.For example from his succesfull campaign to get commitment from the UK government to fast track benefits for terminally ill people and securing millions of pounds of private investment ro improve digital connectivity.Drew works with others to deliver better outcomes for people living,working and studying in his constituency.I think that the SNP should be given credit for their MPs who work in a hostile environment .However,as I said in a previous post they are not responsible for the legal challenge to independance.In the coming election,they are asking for a mandate to start negotiations with the UK government about a second referendum.If people stay at home,or vote for a unionist party,that is their right,but it does not help to move forward,outcomes that they may desire.
You need to spell it right!
DeleteIndypandance from spelling rules!
DeleteThe naysayers don’t like comments based on the actual facts and references. Please stop it. :) If they don’t have a reply they pick up on spelling mistakes. They have nothing else unless they go into full on abuse mode. Ooops. Incoming. Signed RIFS.
DeleteI think many families won't trust labour on tuition fees
ReplyDelete