"We demand independence!": dramatic message from Scottish public as sensational new Ipsos TELEPHONE poll is FIFTH in a row to show outright majority for Yes

As I suspected from Kevin Pringle's retweet this morning, the new Ipsos telephone poll for STV News does indeed extend the unbroken sequence of Ipsos polls showing an outright pro-independence majority - it's now five in a row, or seven of the last eight.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos / STV News, 25th-31st January 2024)

Yes 53% (-1)

No 47% (+1)

If rounded to one decimal place (a practice the Daily Express and the "press regulator" IPSO thoroughly approve of, let's not forget!) the numbers are even better - Yes 53.3%, No 46.7%.  The turnout filter has worked firmly in the favour of Yes, though - before that was applied, the lead was tighter.

Journalism is to a large extent about choosing priorities, about deciding for readers and viewers which stories and which aspects of stories are worthy of their attention, so I think a few eyebrows are going to be raised at how STV have framed this poll on their website.  The independence numbers are mentioned fleetingly, almost as an afterthought or as if they are of no great interest, and the Yes lead is dismissively described as "small".  Is a six point lead actually "small"?  Admittedly it's not overwhelming, it doesn't show a Yes camp which has surged out of sight, but I think "small" is pushing it.

STV could also have deemed the most interesting aspect of this poll to be the fact that it continues to show the SNP with some sort of cushion over Labour in Westminster voting intentions, which significantly undermines the narrative coming from practically all online polls that Labour have either wiped out the SNP lead or whittled it down to almost nothing.  But they've chosen not to make viewers aware of that context and have instead focussed almost entirely on the fact that Labour have slightly cut the deficit since the last Ipsos poll.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 39% (-1)

Labour 32% (+2)

Conservatives 14% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-)

Greens 4% (+1)

Reform UK 3% (+2)

Alba 1% (-1)

 

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election): SNP 40 (-8), Labour 13 (+12), Liberal Democrats 2 (-2), Conservatives 2 (-4)

It's tempting to think that as the only telephone pollster active in Scotland at the moment, Ipsos may be more accurate than other firms, and that the above numbers may be a signal that the SNP could yet get out of jail and come through their current predicament with their status as majority party in Scotland, and third largest party in the Commons, intact.  That's certainly possible, but past history doesn't really tell us one way or the other.  The final Ipsos poll of 2019 was reasonably accurate but not really more so than other firms.  In 2017 Ipsos substantially overestimated the SNP lead - but then so did almost everyone else.

It should also be noted that even if Ipsos are right and other firms are wrong, the SNP would be left with very little in the way of a safety net.  Due to how the voting system works, any further slippage in their support would put them in line for very substantial seat losses and the likely loss of their majority.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 39% (-)

Labour 30% (+3)

Conservatives 14% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-1)

Greens 6% (+2)

Alba 1% (-2)

Reform UK 1% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 33% (-)

Labour 31% (+5)

Conservatives 13% (-2)

Greens 11% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-1)

Reform UK 2% (+1)

Alba 1% (-1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2021 election): SNP 55 (-9), Labour 41 (+19), Conservatives 15 (-16), Greens 10 (+2), Liberal Democrats 8 (+4)

Incredibly, and completely out of line with what online polls have been showing of late, the seats projection suggests the pro-independence majority at Holyrood would be maintained, albeit only just.  Pro-independence parties in combination would have 65 seats, while the unionist parties would have 64.  So there's not much doubt that an SNP-led government would also be maintained on these numbers.

It shouldn't go unnoticed just how desperately bad this poll is for the Conservative party - they're in line to lose more than half of their Holyrood seats, and they've almost been overtaken by the Greens in the popular vote on the list ballot.

As you'd expect from a poll that still shows a substantial SNP lead, the data tables for the Westminster question show a strikingly different pattern of vote-switching from online polls that have reported a more even race.  The SNP have actually retained almost as big a proportion of their 2019 vote (75%) as Labour have (77%).  Just 14% of SNP voters from 2019 are now in the Labour column, which is only slightly bigger than the 13% of Labour voters from 2019 who now plan to vote SNP.  However, because far more people voted SNP in 2019 than voted Labour, that still means in absolute terms that around twice as many people have switched from SNP to Labour as have moved in the opposite direction.  

Another key difference with online polls is that the raw number of respondents who have moved from Conservative to Labour since the last general election (26) is almost as many as those who have moved from SNP to Labour (33).  Additionally, the percentage of 2014 Yes voters, and also of current Yes voters, who plan to vote Labour is smaller than online polls suggest at 17% and 14% respectively.  All in all, then, Ipsos are suggesting Labour's coalition of support remains a touch more unionist in character than we've seen in data tables from online polls.

Among Remain voters from the 2016 EU referendum, the SNP still lead Labour but only by 45% to 34%.  That's a bafflingly small gap given that Labour are now a firmly pro-Brexit party, and perhaps points to an area where the SNP could gain some traction if they change their campaign priorities and start aggressively reminding voters of what Labour's stance on Europe actually is.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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Ipsos poll incoming - could it be a fifth Yes-majority poll in a row?

Back in the days of the indyref, the way you could tell a few hours in advance, and with a high degree of reliability, whether a poll was going to be favourable for Yes or for No was by looking at who retweeted the references to it.  If Kevin Pringle retweeted it, it would be good for Yes, or if someone like Ruth Davidson retweeted it, it would be good for No.

Earlier today, Emily Gray of Ipsos tweeted that her firm has a new Scottish poll coming out - I would guess this is one of the regular series of polls for STV News.  Kevin Pringle then retweeted her.  I hope I'm not tempting fate, but given that the last four Ipsos polls in a row, and indeed six of the last seven, have shown an outright Yes lead, it seems unlikely that Mr Pringle would retweet if that pattern hadn't been maintained.  However, he could of course be thinking more of the party political voting intention numbers, because the last Ipsos poll differed from most other firms by showing a substantial SNP lead for the general election.

It seems pretty likely that the poll will be good for either Yes or the SNP, or possibly both.  Time will tell - check back to Scot Goes Pop later today to find out.

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It's official: the Norstat independence poll has Yes drawing level on 50% of the vote

You might remember that about ten days ago, the Sunday Times published a poll from Norstat, which recently took over Panelbase.  On the independence question, it showed Yes closing the gap to just one percentage point before the exclusion of Don't Knows - which raised the obvious possibility that Yes might have drawn level at 50/50 on the rounded headline numbers after Don't Knows were stripped out.  However, it was impossible to know because for some reason the Sunday Times didn't bother to mention those numbers in their write-up of the poll (or they didn't as far as I could see).

I drew a blank when I initially looked for the Norstat data tables last week, but I've just found them, and the headline result is the one we were hoping for.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Norstat / Sunday Times, 22nd-25th January 2024)

Yes 50% (+2)

No 50% (-2)

Rounded to one decimal place, the figures are Yes 49.6%, No 50.4%.

I also couldn't find any sign of percentages for Alba in the Sunday Times write-up, which I had assumed meant that Alba weren't even offered as an option to respondents.  However, it turns out they were offered as an option on the Holyrood list question, and were on 3% of the vote.  It's difficult to know how to interpret that, because Panelbase typically produced more favourable results for Alba than other polling firms, often as high as 5% or 6%, so if Norstat have continued with exactly the same methodology as Panelbase, 3% should arguably be seen as a slightly disappointing result for Alba.  However, that's a very big "if".

Also of interest in the data tables is the further evidence of how complex Labour's coalition of support has become, which may prove to be a major problem for them either before or after the general election.  Among likely voters, no fewer than 25% of Yessers from 2014 are now planning to vote Labour, as are 19% of people who would vote Yes in a new referendum right now, and indeed 20% of people who voted SNP in the 2019 general election.  In terms of raw numbers, 54 respondents have switched from SNP to Labour since 2019, compared to only 28 who have switched from Tory to Labour.  We know from the independence question that many of those SNP-to-Labour switchers must still be pro-indy, which means Labour are actually more reliant on Yes voters than on unionists if they wish to make progress in this election.  That puts them in an awkward position given that their default setting is to pump out relentless Brit Nat propaganda which would be far more likely to appeal to former Tory voters.

Amusingly, it looks like the Sunday Times asked for a downright leading question to be asked as one of the supplementaries, but still didn't get the result they wanted or probably expected.  Respondents were asked if they would support the reintroduction of university tuition fees or a graduate tax "if it led to more university places for Scottish students", but even with that extremely strong nudge they still said no by a margin of 43% to 33%.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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You reap what you sow - Starmer overreaches himself with his obsessive "antisemitism" smears against left-wingers, and ends up losing huge numbers of votes among the Muslim community

You'll probably have encountered the "It Was A Scam" hashtag on social media, referring to the deeply cynical but remarkably successful attempts of an establishment cabal to get false or wildly exaggerated allegations of antisemitism against left-wingers to stick in the public consciousness, with a view to bringing down a Corbyn leadership which couldn't be dislodged in any other way.  Keir Starmer's involvement in that process would make it richly ironic if it turned out that he overreached himself by thinking uncritical support for Israel is the passport to electoral success, and ultimately lost huge numbers of votes among Britain's Muslim community (much bigger than the Jewish community, remember) due to his stance on Gaza.

A new Survation poll of British Muslims commissioned by the Labour Muslim Network is being billed as the first hard proof that Starmer is indeed paying the penalty.  However, a touch of caution is called for here, because the poll is being reported in a misleading way.  It's being suggested that Labour's support has "halved" among Muslims since the general election, but that seems to compare the 86% support Labour actually received in the 2019 general election with a 43% figure in the poll before the exclusion of undecideds.  That's an apples-and-oranges comparison because there were no "undecided votes" in the general election.  

Once undecideds are removed, the Survation poll still shows a dramatic drop in Labour's vote among Muslims since 2019, but it's not quite the total collapse that is being suggested...

Labour 60%

Greens 14%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Conservatives 8%

SNP 4%

So that's actually around a twenty-six point drop for Labour since 2019.  There's not much doubt that Starmer's stance on Gaza is largely the culprit, because 85% of respondents say that the conflict in Gaza is important in determining how they will vote, and only 5% disagree.  Starmer also has a negative personal rating in the poll, with 40% regarding him unfavourably and only 29% favourably.

That said, Muslims only make up around 5% of the UK population, so a 26-point drop among Muslim voters equates to around a 1-point drop among voters as a whole.  So if you want to know why Muslim anger about Gaza hasn't really impacted the national polls, that's the reason.  The dangers for Labour are that the anger about Gaza will extend to large swathes of non-Muslim voters, perhaps particularly in the student population as we saw after the Iraq War, and also that disproportionate geographical concentrations of Muslims could lead to Labour losing specific seats under first-past-the-post.

In case you're wondering, there's no published Scottish subsample in the poll - Survation have crudely split the sample into "London", "North West [of England]", "Yorkshire and the Humber", "West Midlands", and "Other", with Scotland being lumped into the latter.  Which is really odd, because the SNP at 4% of the GB-wide vote implies significant numbers of respondents were from Scotland.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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Ski Sunday (again)

There are probably some Scot Goes Pop readers who haven't been here long enough to know that Scottish Skier, one of the regulars who dominate the Wee Ginger Dug comments section, used to be a regular on the Scot Goes Pop comments section instead.  He 'defected' to WGD in 2021 after throwing his toys out of the pram because I joined the Alba Party without his permission.  (That sounds like a joke but it's actually more or less true!)  However, "Independence for Scotland" has kept us updated on Skier's somewhat exotic ongoing output over the last three years, and I was startled to learn today that he's apparently been claiming that SNP voters have not actually been drifting to Labour at all, and that the collapse of the SNP lead in the opinion polls is therefore a mirage.

Now, to be clear, I would be only too delighted if that was true.  We need Labour to be defeated in this general election and we need to maintain a pro-independence majority among Scottish seats at Westminster.  I have no time at all for the crazy notion that what pro-independence voters should be doing at the election is "getting rid of useless SNP MPs".  However, delusionalism is not going to help SNP MPs retain their seats.  We have to be clear-sighted about how serious this crisis is if we're to have any chance of resolving it.

The evidence that a significant minority of former SNP voters have moved to Labour is plain as day.  Skier vaguely claims that SNP voters are going missing in the polls and that the weightings somehow show this, but in fact in the latest Survation poll, the unweighted number of respondents who recall voting SNP in 2019 is pretty close to being in line with the correct figure, and thus not much weighting has had to be applied.  Once the turnout filter has been added, 69% of SNP voters from 2019 have kept faith with the party, while 21% have gone to Labour.  By contrast, Labour have retained 90% of their 2019 voters and lost only 8% to the SNP (the latter group probably includes a fair few disillusioned Corbynistas).  

Because far more people voted SNP in 2019 than voted Labour, the 21% of SNP voters who have since switched to Labour amounts to more than six times as many actual people as the 8% of Labour voters who have moved in the opposite direction.  So it's not rocket science as to why the SNP lead has contracted in some polls, and disappeared altogether in others.  Instead of pretending this hasn't happened (real votes in the Rutherglen by-election give the lie to that anyway), the SNP would be better advised to make the strategic changes required to win some of those voters back as a matter of urgency.

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Plaid Cymru on course to win two key constituencies, according to Survation polling

When I was looking for the data tables of Survation's new Scottish poll a couple of days ago, I stumbled across something really interesting.  Plaid Cymru have commissioned two constituency-level polls from Survation which shows themselves on course to win two tough and competitive seats at the general election.

Ynys Môn:

Plaid Cymru 39%

Labour 27%

Conservatives 26%

Reform UK 4%

Liberal Democrats 1%

Carmarthen:

Plaid Cymru 30%

Conservatives 24%

Labour 24% 

Independent - Edwards 10%

Reform UK 4%

Liberal Democrats 4%

The Ynys Môn figures seem almost too good to be true, because at Westminster level Plaid Cymru haven't held the constituency since 2001.  It was Labour held between 2001 and 2019, and it's been Tory since 2019.  You'd think with the current Labour surge that it would be Labour's for the taking, but the poll almost seems to depict a parallel world in which the Tories are proving resilient enough to conveniently split the non-Plaid vote right down the middle.

In Carmarthen, it looks from the list of candidates that Plaid face the particular problem of the man who was elected as their MP in 2019 standing against them this time as an independent.  So, again, it would be remarkable if the Labour/Tory vote conveniently split in such an even way that Plaid were still able to win.  Constituency polling has a track record of being less reliable than national polling, so perhaps we should be a bit sceptical about the above numbers, but on the face of it they're very encouraging.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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One-quarter of those planning to vote Labour are independence supporters, says new Survation poll

I wasn't sure if the problem was at my end, but there seemed to be something wrong with the Survation data tables yesterday and I couldn't find most of the results.  It looks like a new version has been uploaded today, and it contains lots of fascinating information.  

Firstly, the question of the hour: how many Yes voters have actually drifted to Labour and just how pro-independence is the current Labour vote?  Of people who would vote Yes in a new referendum (almost half the population, remember) and who are likely to vote in the general election, 70% have stuck with the SNP, 18% would vote Labour, 6% would vote Lib Dem and 3% would vote Conservative.  But Labour's own vote breaks down as 23.3% Yes, 63.4% No, or 26.9% Yes, 73.1% No if only those who know how they would vote in a referendum are taken into account.  That means Labour have a much more complicated coalition of support in constitutional terms than any other major party.  The backbone of their support is unionist, and presumably includes at least some people who have previously voted Tory for unionist reasons and who would not be happy if Labour proved to be anything but a reliably Brit Nat party (they needn't worry!).  But Labour's hopes of seat gains largely depend on retaining a substantial minority of independence supporters, who might yet be susceptible to wooing from the SNP with a genuine offer on independence - an offer that shows no sign of materialising, admittedly.  Tokenistic discussion papers on culture in an independent Scotland aren't going to cut it.

Intriguingly, the SNP may be gaining more traction than we thought by reminding people that they are much better placed than Labour to shut out the Tories.  When asked which party they would vote for if they wanted to wipe out the Tories in Scotland, respondents in the poll were almost evenly split between Labour (36%) and the SNP (34%).  

I couldn't find voting intention figures for Alba yesterday, but they're in the data tables and they're not too bad - Alba are on 2% of the Holyrood constituency vote and 3% of the Holyrood list vote.

Of the leaders' personal ratings, the two I couldn't find yesterday were both Alba politicians - Neale Hanvey and Ash Regan.  It turns out that Neale Hanvey is on -14 and Ash Regan is on -25.  Mr Hanvey's figure is affected by the unusually high percentage (39%) who haven't heard of him, while Ms Regan's surname is misspelled in the data tables as "Reagen", which may imply that the same misspelling occurred in the questionnaire when respondents were interviewed.  Here is how the two slot into the wider league table.  Some of the figures have been very slightly adjusted since yesterday due to rounding issues.

Net ratings of leading politicians:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -4

Keir Starmer (Labour): -6

Richard Tice (Reform UK): -10

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -11

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -13

Neale Hanvey (Alba): -14

Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): -17

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -20

Lorna Slater (Greens): -21

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -21

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -22

Ash Regan (Alba): -25

Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -45

Alex Salmond (Alba): -47

As I noted yesterday, the public as a whole are opposed to the SNP remaining in coalition with the Greens, by a margin of 41% to 28%.  However, the data tables show that people who voted SNP at the 2019 general election take the opposite view, by a bigger margin of 52% to 22%.  The questions the SNP need to ask themselves, though, are just how scunnered is that 22%, and are those the very voters that need to be won back?

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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SNP lead holds steady in new Survation poll - and independence support continues to ride high

There's a new full-scale Scottish poll out from Survation, which contains numbers that would have looked disastrous for the SNP a few months ago.  However, in the context of changing expectations that have moved more and more in Labour's favour, and in particular in the context of the recent Norstat poll giving Labour an outright - albeit slender - lead, it's probably fair to say the SNP will be mightily relieved to find themselves still ahead with Survation.  Indeed, nothing much seems to have changed since the last Survation poll in August, which can be interpreted as a minor win for the SNP given how Labour have piled on massive GB-wide leads since then, and especially since Christmas.

Scottish voting intentions for the UK general election (Survation / True North, 23rd-25th January 2024):

SNP 36% (-1)

Labour 34% (-1)

Conservatives 16% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+2)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election): SNP 23 (-25), Labour 23 (+22), Conservatives 6 (-), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

So the SNP remain firmly in the game, and it's still conceivable they could emerge against the odds as the largest party in Scotland in terms of both votes and seats, and if they're really lucky perhaps even cling on to their status as third largest party in the Commons ahead of the Liberal Democrats.  It's equally conceivable, though, that they could drop back a few more points over the course of the campaign, be punished by the magnifying effect of first-past-the-post, and suffer a near-extinction event that could leave them with as few as two seats.  For my money, to be truly competitive they'll need to recover to having some sort of cushion over Labour before Sunak calls the election, because the official campaign period could be very difficult for them due to saturation coverage of the UK-wide Labour v Tory horserace.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 48% (-)

No 52% (-)

This continues the pattern we've seen for almost a full year now, with independence support becoming decoupled from SNP support, and with the Yes vote thus proving largely immune to the SNP's troubles.  Significant numbers of pro-independence voters have drifted to Labour, but in most cases they haven't given up on independence in the process.

There is an impressive number of meaty supplementary questions in this poll, some on matters that are rarely asked about, and some with rather startling results.  Donald Trump would be horrified to discover the remarkable level of support for onshore wind farms among the Scottish public - 60% are in favour and only 15% are opposed.  On the other hand, I'm slightly horrified that there seems to be a narrow plurality in favour of new nuclear power stations, although I'm wondering if that's an artificial result due to the tortuous way the question was posed.  Repondents were asked if they support the Scottish Government's opposition to nuclear new-build, which not only confusingly asks about support for a negative, but also potentially mixes the whole matter up with people's feelings about the Yousaf administration.  But for what it's worth, only 32% 'support the opposition' to new nuclear, while 38% take the opposite view.

The poll once again offers evidence for the partial truth of that famous scene in Yes, Minister, in which Sir Humphrey explains to Bernard that it's possible for pollsters to produce completely opposite results on the same topic by framing the question in different ways.  By a whopping margin of 58% to 21%, respondents agree that the UK government were right to grant new oil and gas licences.  But when the same sample is instead asked about the Scottish Government's strategy presuming against new oil and gas, suddenly there's a split down the middle, with 32% agreeing with the presumption against oil and gas, and 35% disagreeing.

It's often lazily stated that Alex Salmond is the most unpopular political leader in Scotland, even though he's actually very rarely asked about in polls.  This poll is one of those very rare exceptions...

Net ratings of leading politicians:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -4

Keir Starmer (Labour): -7

Richard Tice (Reform UK): -9

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -12

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -13

Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): -17

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -20

Lorna Slater (Greens): -21

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -22

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -23

Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -45

Alex Salmond (Alba): -46

So it turns out to be true that Mr Salmond is the least popular, but only just, and the gap between him and some of his sternest critics is not as huge as they would like you to believe.  And as I always point out, it doesn't necessarily follow that his unpopularity means Alba would be doing better with a different leader.  For a small party the biggest battle is getting noticed and the biggest danger is being ignored, and having a huge name like Mr Salmond as leader ensures that Alba make headlines in ways they would not otherwise do.

For an established party like the SNP, though, the equation is very different.  The fact that Yousaf is markedly less popular than both Starmer and Sarwar suggests the SNP are unnecessarily putting themselves at a disadvantage against Labour at the general election.  They could potentially reverse the problem by installing Kate Forbes as leader.

Rest assured that Richard Tice's seemingly not-too-bad rating is completely meaningless - it's caused by the fact that a disproportionate number of Scottish voters simply haven't heard of the man.

Incidentally, it looks like Neale Hanvey and Ash Regan were also asked about in the poll, but annoyingly I can't find their ratings in the data tables.  If anyone has more luck than I've had, please let me know.

If Kate Forbes does become First Minister this year, which is certainly a very real possibility after the general election if not before, the first thing she is likely to do is end the coalition with the Greens.  At face value, the poll supports the notion that she would be sensible to do so, with 41% opposing the SNP-Green deal and only 28% supporting it.  However, it's obviously important to see what SNP voters think, and again, I haven't yet been able to find those figures in the data tables.

Ms Forbes is by quite some distance the number one choice in this poll to replace Mr Yousaf, although just over half of respondents are unable or unwilling to express a view.

Preferences for next leader of the SNP:

Kate Forbes: 19%

Stephen Flynn: 7%

Angus Robertson: 5%

Mairi McAllan: 4%

Neil Gray: 3%

Keith Brown: 3%

Shona Robison: 2%

What leaps out here is how poorly Angus Robertson is polling in comparison to Kate Forbes, even though the two are probably roughly as well known as each other.  That could be a major problem for Mr Robertson if he does throw his hat in the ring this time.  Mairi McAllan has been punted as the other potential 'continuity candidate', and she's polling even worse than Mr Robertson, although at least she has the alibi of being much less well known at this stage than he is.

There are also Holyrood voting intention numbers in the poll...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 35% (-4) 

Labour 31% (-3)

Conservatives 16% (-) 

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 31% (+1)

Labour 29% (-1)

Conservatives 16% (+1)

Greens 9% (-)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Seats projection: SNP 44 (-20), Labour 41 (+19), Conservatives 22 (-9), Liberal Democrats 12 (+8), Greens 10 (+2)

Although the seats projection looks grim, arguably the popular vote figures are not too bad for the SNP in the context of the current lowered expectations.  They've lost support on the constituency ballot but that's been almost entirely offset by a similar drop for Labour - and surprisingly they've reopened a small lead on the list, having been level with Labour in the last Survation poll.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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Could the tide go out for Labour in Scotland?

I've rehearsed this point before, but the tragedy of the current situation is not that Labour have a very real chance of winning a majority in Scotland.  It's that Scotland is selling itself to Labour so cheaply.  There's no equivalent of the "French kiss" offer that finally brought to an end Bloc Québécois dominance.  Labour are not offering any constitutional change or progress for Scotland at all, and yet Scottish voters are seriously considering flocking back to them.

Think back to the commentary that followed the 2015 election when Labour lost Scotland.  They had been taking Scotland for granted for decades, and that complacency had finally caught up with them.  They had thought they could work with the Tories in the Better Together campaign with total impunity, and without any negative consequences to themselves, and they had been proved utterly wrong.  If they wanted to have any chance of recovering their former position, they would actually have to start listening to their ex-voters, particularly those who supported independence - you know, just as they listened to voters in Middle England in the 1990s and adjusted their policies in line with the aspirations of English voters.

And then think back to Labour's reaction to that commentary.  Listening to voters was something Labour does in England, not in Scotland.  It's the voters who are wrong in Scotland, not Labour.  It's Scottish voters who must recognise they need to change, not Labour.  And if the voters don't change, that's regrettable, but Labour losing elections would still be a price worth paying for being right about the Union.  (Can you imagine the same people, such as Ian Murray, saying that losing elections in England under Jeremy Corbyn was a pride worth paying for being right about democratic socialism?!)

The irony is that the voters in Scotland haven't actually changed - polls show that independence support is as high as ever.  Pro-independence voters are returning to Labour even though Labour are offering them nothing of what they want.  How fortunate it must feel to be a Scottish Labour candidate - you don't have to earn votes, you don't have to make painful policy sacrifices to win votes.  Unlike in England, no reflection or listening is required - you just do nothing and the votes still fly at you for no particular reason.

I suppose any country gets the politicians and politics it deserves, and if Scotland votes Labour in these circumstances, the lesson Labour will learn is that they can go back to treating Scotland with just as much contempt as they did prior to 2015, and can expect to keep being rewarded as they were in the old days.

However, there's nothing more important in politics than how reality matches up to expectations.  Objectively, the 2017 election was a superb result for the SNP, it was a landslide win on a par with Mrs Thatcher's in 1987, and yet it felt like a catastrophe because the SNP and others were expecting so much better.  Scottish Labour are now getting into the potentially dangerous position where they and others are starting to expect to win a majority - and if they fall short of that, the psychological impact could be immense.  They may have fallen in love with the idea of a Scottish comeback to a sufficient extent that being deprived of that might shock them enough to start thinking the unthinkable, and wondering if listening to Scottish voters might actually be necessary after all.

The problem is, of course, that the expectations of a Labour win are there for a very good reason - Labour already seem to have a slight lead in a contest which will be a 'home fixture' for themselves and an 'away fixture' for the SNP, and thus you'd think any further swing is more likely to be pro-Labour rather than pro-SNP.  However, there are a couple of caveats on that.  Firstly, pollsters are not unanimous in showing a Labour lead in Scotland - the most recent Ipsos poll showed a decent lead for the SNP, and as the only telephone pollster in Scotland, it's not inconceivable that Ipsos are right and others are wrong.  And secondly, even if Labour do have the small lead reported by Norstat, they've achieved it on the coat-tails of absolutely gargantuan leads over the Tories at GB level.  It's at least possible that if those GB leads slip, Labour could suffer a corresponding slip in Scotland, sufficient to nudge the SNP back into a small lead.  And while it's probably impossible for the Tories to overturn Labour's GB lead, it's certainly within the realms of imagination that the lead could be trimmed from, say, 20-25 points to 10-15.  That kind of partial reversal of the tide might yet be enough to make all the difference in Scotland.  

However, the SNP would be incredibly foolish to bank on that, and they really need to start considering major strategic changes of their own.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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Alba committee election results - this time I've been elected!

At this point I can now say a heartfelt thank you for the patience of non-Alba readers of this blog over the last few months while I was writing a disproportionate number of self-promotion posts for the Alba internal elections, which proved to be a longer process than anyone anticipated due to the re-run of the office bearer elections and the consequent postponement of the NEC elections.  I'm delighted and somewhat relieved to be able to report that my persistence did actually pay off in the end - over the weekend I was successfully elected to the Finance & Audit Committee, the Disciplinary Committee, and the Constitution Review Group.  The full list of everyone elected has now been published on the Alba website and can be found HERE (although you'll almost certainly need to be logged in).

I'm also pleased to report that there has been much more transparency than there was after the NEC ballot last month, and this time the full results, including every single stage of the complicated Single Transferable Vote count process, have been sent to the candidates.  It looks like the intention is that the same full information will be made available to all party members too, although at time of writing that hasn't happened yet.

So I'm returning to the Finance & Audit Committee after a gap of just over a year (I was previously on it as an NEC nominee), and I'm joining the Disciplinary Committee for the first time.  On the other hand, I'm no longer a member of the Appeals Committee, which I've been an elected member of since last February, because of course once I was elected to the Disciplinary Committee, I was no longer eligible to be a candidate for the Appeals Committee.  So of the four committees/groups I was a candidate for, the only one I missed out on was the Conference Committee - and in the immortal words that Meatloaf very nearly sang, "three out of four ain't bad".

Looking back over the last few weeks, my result in the Membership Support Convener election was probably better than I expected and I came within a whisker of being elected, my result in the ordinary NEC ballot was probably worse than I expected, and my result in these latest committee elections was probably better than I expected.  So the lesson is perhaps to always set preconceptions to one side, because each election is a fresh event and there's never any way of knowing which way it will go.

Congratulations to all of the other successful candidates, and I look forward to working with them over the coming year.

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