There was a comment I saw in the moderation queue about 24 hours ago, which I had intended to respond to at some length when I had a spare moment, but for the life of me I can't find it now. It started by saying something like "it's obvious that the SNP, Labour and Reform are all now roughly tied at 30% of the vote". That's a perfect example of the 'electoral illiteracy' I was talking about on Friday, because people are clearly looking at the raw result in Hamilton and thinking they can apply it to Scotland as a whole, without taking any account at all of what makes the constituency of Hamilton different from Scotland as a whole. It's as silly as looking at a by-election result in Buckinghamshire and assuming you'd get exactly the same percentages for each party in Coatbridge.
In the by-election, Labour's vote was actually down two points on the 2021 election. Remember that nationally Labour were at a record low of just 21.6% on the constituency vote in 2021. So the trend in Hamilton, far from suggesting that Labour are at "around 30%" nationally, actually suggests that they are at around *20%*.
The SNP's vote on Thursday was down seventeen points on 2021. However, in 2021, the SNP's national vote share was at a record high of 48%, so a seventeen point drop would imply they are in the low 30s - still ten points or more ahead of Labour.
With Reform it's harder to say because there's no real 2021 baseline to measure from. It may be that Hamilton is not particularly a favourable or unfavourable seat for them, and that their 26% of the vote is a reasonable estimate of how they might have performed anywhere else in Scotland on Thursday - albeit in a by-election context where people are perhaps more likely to cast a protest vote against government parties.
But what that leaves you with is: SNP roughly in the low 30s, Reform roughly in the mid-20s, Labour at roughly 20%. That may not be as good as we'd want, but it's self-evidently not an even-stevens position.
(And yes, I'm aware that Stew responded to my previous blogpost with a multi-tweet rant on Twitter - I'll give my thoughts on that in a fresh post later.)
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ReplyDeleteReform will not win in Scotland any time soon.
DeleteDeclan removing his comment is the only sensible thing he has done on SGP. The guy is a bam.
DeleteProblem is that Larkhall is particularly fond of Reform. I live there. There are a lot of people with what I think are outdated opinions about race and religion. Larkhall probably raised the vote for Reform considerably.
ReplyDeleteColonel Ruth Davidson courted the orange squad during her spell as branch manager of the Conservatives. The Labour crowd seem to be following her grubby lead with their choice of a Low Flying Orange Jimmy although no doubt many of the orange walkers were seduced by Farage's message of hate.
ReplyDeleteThe new Orange Order/Labour Party MP reminds me of their choice in Govan when Jim Sillars won. Their choice showed their contempt for the people of Govan. Sad that the people of Hamilton seem to deserve Labour's contempt.
DeleteAnd they also seem to want Labour’s cut backs on WFA and Disability and other benefits. There is no remedy for ignorance in a constituency that listens to the BBC and reads the Mail and the Express.
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