The SNP go into Christmas backed by a record proportion of supporters.
The SNP go into Christmas backed by a record proportion of supporters
The SNP are celebrating an early Christmas present today with news that they now have a record breaking proportion of voters supporting them.
According to new polling conducted by Survation for the Daily Record, when asked how they would vote in next May’s General Election 48 per cent said the SNP, up 2 percentage points since November and up from the 20 per cent of the vote it secured in 2010.
Scottish Labour meanwhile remains on 24 per cent, down by 18 percentage points on their performance in 2010.
The Conservatives are down one point on their performance in November at 16 per cent, the Lib Dems are down one on 5 per cent whilst UKIP and the Greens are on 5 per cent and 1 per cent respectively.
According to the Electoral Calculus website, if replicated in May this would leave Labour loosing 37 seats, reduced to just four, whilst the SNP would land themselves 54 seats in the House of Commons, 48 more than they have at present. The Lib Dems would have just one seat north of the border.
Meanwhile following his election as Leader, Survation asked voters about what impact Jim Murphy would have had the helm of Scottish Labour. Whilst 14 per cent said that it would make them more likely to vote Labour, 18 per cent said it would make them less likely to do so. 57 per cent said it would make no difference at all.
A quarter of those polled said that Labour would be more successful in Scotland under Murphy’s leadership, compared to 16 per cent who didn’t think it would turn the party’s fortunes around.
Responding to the polling, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University commented:
“Murphy is not the magic bullet. It is going to require more than a new kid on the block – he has to persuade people that May is not a re-run of the referendum.”
The survey data will make for an uncomfortable Christmas for Labour. Already faced with a difficult electoral climate next May, the prospect looks ever more likely of Ed Miliband being kept in Downing Street thanks to the support of the SNP.
With Alex Salmond hinting heavily that SNP MPs might be prepared to drop the convention that stops them voting on English-only matters, a future Miliband administration risks tearing the country apart as English voters become increasingly incensed that Scottish MPs are imposing their agenda on the rest of the country.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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62 Responses to “A happy Christmas for Sturgeon as SNP ride high in the polls”
swat
No doubt that Sammo is Politician of the Year.
AlanGiles
Things can only get worse with that great graceless pudding Jim Murphy leading Labour in Scotland – an unreconstituted Blairite long after the brand has been discredited
madasafish
Mr Salmond would be delighted if “English voters become increasingly incensed that Scottish MPs are imposing their agenda on the rest of the country.”
I am sure he would do everything to exacerbate such tensions. After all, he may have lost the YES in Scotland but if the English vote to throw the Scots out, his job is done…
littleoddsandpieces
Labour would not need the SNP in the coming 4 way coalition of a hung parliament in 2015 general election, if they did a u-turn and paid out the state pension denied since 2013 that is sitting pretty unused and wrongly called a surplus, in the full and ring fenced National Insurance Fund since last year, that would deliver the more seats than the neck and neck with Tories that Labour is predicted now, with the closest to call general electin since 1945 from the lowest voter turnout in UK.
By Labour putting in its 2015 manifesto repealing Pension Bills 2010-2014
(including the flat rate pension that leaves huge numbers of
women born from 1953 and men born from 1951
with NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE and far far less state pension not more
(lots of small print)
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
By repealing the pension bills and paying out the state pension to women denied payout since 2013, and equalising the state pension at 60 for men in 2015, Labour gain the most prolific of voters, the over 60s.
And all done with nil funding cost as the money is sitting, unable to be used for anything else, as the other two thirds of what the NI only is for, a tiny part of the NHS budget and funding unemployment benefit (only 3 per cent of the entire benefits bill anyway).
And by the payout save business costs and help in cost of living in an age group that half is within the working poor, on stagnated wages a decade or more out of date, by freeing the poorest workers from paying 12 per cent of their wage per year by compulsory National Insurance contributions.
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
TN
Wonder what happened to all the hatchet job articles on here during the independence campaign re SNP….