It's a great pity that we're four days away from a general election rather than an independence referendum, because we'd be on the brink of victory in the latter if tonight's new Norstat poll is to be believed.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Norstat)
Yes 50% (+1)
No 50% (-1)
That's still significant, though, because in some past general election campaigns independence support has tended to tumble in the polls, often largely unnoticed. My assumption has generally been that this happened because a UK campaign would progressively suck Scottish voters into a "Britished" mindset, albeit temporarily. It may be that the Labour comeback is disguising the fact that voters are actually becoming more resistant to that process and are viewing this campaign through a Scottish lens as never before.
Scottish voting intentions for the UK general election:
Labour 35% (+1)
SNP 31% (+1)
Conservatives 13% (-1)
Reform UK 8% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-1)
Greens 3% (-1)
Alba 1% (-1)
Seats projection: Labour 28, SNP 18, Conservatives 6, Liberal Democrats 5
I'm actually reassured by that, because it's a picture of stability that totally contradicts the message of yesterday's Survation MRP poll which suggested there had been a hefty swing to Labour over the course of the campaign. The SNP remain close enough to Labour to have a good chance of winning a substantial haul of seats, and if they recover just slightly, or if they're being underestimated just slightly, an outright national victory remains possible. On the other hand, they're also in a perilous position because the voting system would punish them heavily if there's even a small slippage in support, or if the polls are overestimating them.
For all the hype about Labour, note that they are projected to be one seat short of an overall majority in Scotland, so they're not expected to be back to the total dominance they enjoyed pre-2015. I'm not totally convinced the projection of six seats for the Conservatives, even though it was calculated by John Curtice himself, really passes the smell test given that their national vote share would be their lowest in history. If that projection is an overestimate (and if it is an overestimate, it could just as easily be a severe overestimate as a small one), it would probably work in the SNP's favour. So twenty seats may not be totally out of reach for the SNP even if they remain slightly behind Labour on the popular vote.
Leaders' net ratings:
John Swinney (SNP): -7
Anas Sarwar (Labour): -9
Keir Starmer (Labour): -13
Nigel Farage (Reform UK): - 39
Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -44
Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -60
And the above is the reason why I remain of the view that the SNP are probably in a better position right now than they would have been if Humza Yousaf had still been leader. Swinney isn't Mr Charisma, he isn't doing anything exceptional, but he's not actively repelling or enraging voters, which may be half the battle at the moment.
In The Sun's write-up of this poll, which is penned by the notorious Conor Matchett of the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal from 2021, there's an extraordinary claim from an anonymous Liberal Democrat source that the Lib Dems are "nailed on" to oust Drew Hendry in the Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire seat. Well...I'm not on the ground, so I can't say whether it's right or wrong, but intuitively it sounds like a stretch. The Lib Dems are starting from a fairly distant third place in the notional 2019 results for that seat, and even if they reckon their fake bar charts are paying dividends and giving them momentum, it's hard to believe their canvass returns are comprehensive enough in such a geographically vast constituency to tell them for certain that they're going to win. I'm not ruling out that the prediction will prove true, but it also wouldn't be the first time in recent general elections that the Lib Dems have been light-years out in a claim about a result in the Highlands. We'll see.
