Another Scottish polling disaster for Burnham: a majority of voters want Scotland to become an independent country, and the SNP have a FIFTEEN point lead over Labour

Someone asked on the previous comments thread whether it was true that a new Survation poll showed that Andy Burnham is the most popular politician among Scottish voters.  Yes, it is true (albeit with certain caveats that I'll come to later) but it seems extremely churlish to focus on that detail when pretty much everything else in the poll is so wonderful for the independence movement and for the SNP.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation / Diffley Partnership, 13th-24th August 2026)

Yes 52% (-)

No 48% (-)

This is the third Survation poll in a row to show a Yes majority, which looks pretty significant given that Survation haven't particularly been favourable for Yes in recent times.  They had No in a clear lead last year, so what we're seeing is consistent with a relatively recent swing in favour of independence.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election: 

SNP 34%

Labour 19%

Reform UK 18%

Conservatives 11%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 5%

Restore Britain 4%

The Westminster numbers pretty much snuff out any hope for Labour that the Burnham bounce has in itself been enough to get them back into the game in Scotland.  The recent Find Out Now poll, which was the only other full-scale Scottish poll of the Burnham era to date, showed very similar numbers.  While one poll could have been leading us wildly astray, it seems much less likely that two polls showing the same thing are both rogue polls.  It's quite possible that Survation's numbers would put the SNP on course for a 2019-style landslide with more than three-quarters of the Scottish seats in the House of Commons.  And remember that we're right in the middle of Burnham's natural honeymoon period at the moment - so if anything you'd expect things to improve for the SNP from here.

As far as the personal ratings for leading politicians are concerned, Burnham is ahead - but these are net ratings which subtract the percentage of respondents who are not satisfied with each politician from the percentage who are satisfied.  That arguably gives Burnham an advantage over someone like John Swinney, who has had a much longer period of time to build up a minority group of voters who are unhappy with him.  It doesn't necessarily mean that voters as a whole prefer Burnham to Swinney.  As you may recall, Humza Yousaf had really poor net ratings during his time as First Minister but generally was still ahead of Anas Sarwar on the straight question "who would you prefer to be First Minister?"  No such direct comparison will ever be made between Swinney and Burnham because they are not in competition with each other for the same political office, but the fact that the SNP are so far ahead of Labour on Westminster voting intentions in particular is not easily reconcilable with the belief that voters prefer Burnham to Swinney.

More details and analysis will follow shortly...

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