Labour could end up with less than 10 seats north of the border
Scotland’s place on the front line of today’s election has been reinforced by the final Scotland-wide poll of the campaign.
Released last night, the Panelbase poll has put the SNP on 48 per cent of the vote followed by Scottish Labour on 26 per cent, Conservatives on 14 per cent, the Lib Dems on 5 per cent, UKIP on 3 per cent, the Greens on 2 per cent and others on 2 per cent.
According to Electoral Calculus, replicated universally across Scotland such a result would hand the SNP 48 out of Scotland’s 59 seats, gaining 42 on the number they won in 2010. Labour would see the number of seats they hold fall to 12 from the 41 secured under Gordon Brown. All other parties would lose Scottish representation in the House of Commons.
Interestingly the poll finds that 50 per cent of respondents said that Ed Miliband’s decision to rule out any deal with the SNP made no difference to how they intend to vote. 34 per cent said that it made them less likely to vote Labour. Among those planning to vote SNP today, 57 per cent said that Miliband’s statement made it less likely that they would vote Labour.
Among former Labour voters, 70 per cent said they had decided not to vote Labour as a result of the party’s close association with the Conservatives during the independence referendum.
Meanwhile, Professor John Curtice’s final poll of polls for the What Scotland Thinks website covering polls between 29 April and 6 May puts the SNP on 49 per cent, Labour on 26 per cent, the Conservatives on 15 per cent, the Lib Dems on 6 per cent and UKIP and the Greens both on 2 per cent of the vote.
According to Electoral Calculus this would hand the SNP 50 seats in the new parliament. Labour would lose all but 8 seats whilst the Lib Dems would keep just 1 seat in Orkney and Shetland.
Barring some miracle, Labour are in for a rough night north of the border.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
17 Responses to “SNP surge continues in final poll”
Selohesra
I don’t know enough of their methodology and maybe bookies will lose but
1) media and mainstream politicians demonizing UKIP as racists may make people keep quiet about UKIP sympathies – also polls have some weightings for don’t knows based on previous elections where UKIP barely featured
2) quiet Tories are perennial problem in recent years (perhaps BBC bias has something to do with that?)
3) Internet polling can have very unrepresentative sampling and phone polling can be skewed to some extent depending how you ask the question which depends on who paid for the poll
4) This time will be very complicated and need to look at constituency by constituency basis rather than national trend
Selohesra
I don’t know enough of their methodology and maybe bookies will lose but
1) media and mainstream politicians demonizing UKIP as racists may make people keep quiet about UKIP sympathies – also polls have some weightings for don’t knows based on previous elections where UKIP barely featured
2) quiet Tories are perennial problem in recent years (perhaps BBC bias has something to do with that?)
3) Internet polling can have very unrepresentative sampling and phone polling can be skewed to some extent depending how you ask the question which depends on who paid for the poll
4) This time will be very complicated and need to look at constituency by constituency basis rather than national trend
Leon Wolfeson
So, several things routinely corrected for and a complaint polling isn’t valid, somehow.
Never mind.
(I’m ignoring the whining about the truth of most UKIP supporters views, and the whining about the government-toe-sucking BBC)
Selohesra
As I said bookies may be wrong – stranger things have happened. Polls (even compliant polling) has been wrong in the past too though
uglyfatbloke
..and I’m not convinced about ‘shy’ Ukip voters. I think they’re mostly pretty loud about being Kippers and may be getting over-represented in the pollsters allocation of ‘don’t know/won’t say’ votes.