The Holyrood and Westminster voting intention numbers from the new Find Out Now poll for The National have been released, and I have an analysis piece in The National which you can read HERE.
From a pro-independence point of view the numbers are nothing short of stupendous. The pro-indy parties are projected to win 72 seats in the next Scottish Parliament, which is not only a very comfortable majority, it's also exactly the same number that was won at the 2021 election when all in the garden was rosy. If you'd asked back in July, you'd have got very, very long odds against a poll like this appearing within this calendar year, and the fact that it has done (albeit with only a couple of days to spare) is testament to just how catastrophic Keir Starmer's first few months in power have been.
Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
SNP 35%
Labour 19%
Conservatives 15%
Reform UK 11%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Greens 7%
Alba 2%
Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:
SNP 26%
Labour 17%
Conservatives 14%
Greens 13%
Reform UK 11%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Alba 6%
Seats projection: SNP 54, Labour 19, Conservatives 16, Greens 15, Liberal Democrats 12, Reform UK 10, Alba 3
PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 72 SEATS
ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 57 SEATS
PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 15 SEATS
Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:
SNP 34%
Labour 20%
Reform UK 15%
Conservatives 14%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Greens 6%
Seats projection: SNP 41, Labour 8, Liberal Democrats 5, Conservatives 3
The Westminster numbers continue the theme of things reverting to how they were before, because the seats projection is strikingly similar to the SNP landslide victory of 2019, albeit Labour would retain more of a foothold than they had in that election.
It has to be said, though, that the phenomenal pro-indy seat numbers are being run up on relatively modest SNP vote shares. How is that proving possible? Well, the Greens are doing a lot of the heavy lifting at the Scottish Parliament - their projected 15 seats would be easily their all-time high, and would put them only just behind both Labour and the Tories. A significant amount of the bumper Green support seems to come direct from people who might otherwise be voting SNP, with 17.8% of SNP voters from this year's general election saying they will vote Green on the Holyrood list.
But of course the Greens are playing no role at all in the projected pro-indy majority in Westminster seats - that's purely down to the wonders of the first-past-the-post electoral system. The SNP's Westminster vote has only recovered by four percentage points since July, but that's more than enough for a huge landslide victory when the unionist vote is as nicely split as it currently is.
The Reform surge is now working firmly in the SNP's favour in both parliaments. Farage's party is eating into the support of unionist parties far more than into SNP support. Just 2% of the SNP's general election voters would now vote Reform in a Westminster vote, compared to 11.5% of Labour voters and 18.7% of Tory voters. That differential obviously boosts the number of SNP seats in a first-past-the-post Westminster election, but actually to a lesser extent the same effect is felt at Holyrood. If Reform help the SNP to win Holyrood constituency seats, that is not always going to be fully offset by compensatory seats for unionist parties on the list.
One thing that may frustrate the SNP is the limited success they're having in winning voters back direct from Labour. A remarkable 45% of people who voted Labour in July say they would not do so again in another general election, but only 9.8% would now vote SNP. The biggest single beneficiaries are actually Reform UK, who take 11.5% of Labour votes.
Would it be dreadfully unkind of me to point out that on the 3rd of December, Stuart Campbell said -
"We’re going to call this one early: there is zero prospect of a pro-indy majority after the next Holyrood election. None. Barring a nuclear war or an alien invasion or some equally implausible revolutionary event, it’s simply not happening"
- and that two polls have been published in the month since, both pointing to a pro-indy majority after the next Holyrood election? Campbell's dwindling band of defenders assure us that he "always gets the big calls right", but that must be in some alternate universe in which these last two opinion polls never happened, where Joe Biden never became US President, where Humza Yousaf never became First Minister, and most of all where Kezia Dugdale lost that court case.
I mean, it's fine to get predictions wrong - we all do from time to time. But when you claim total infallibility, and when in reality you're just saying anything that will drain the morale of what is supposedly "your own side", I don't think it's unreasonable to hold you to account when you're as badly caught out as you have been in this case. There may or may not be a pro-indy majority after 2026, but the idea that it's an impossibility now looks ludicrous beyond words.
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