Latest poll shows more than half of Scots will vote for the nationalists next year
New polling reveals that support for the SNP is continuing to grow in Scotland, a month after they secured an historic landslide at the election.
According to the data, compiled by TNS, of those certain to vote in next year’s elections to Holyrood, 60 per cent said they would vote for the SNP in the constituency section of the ballot.
This would represent a 10 percentage point increase on the share of the vote it secured in Scotland in the General Election and a 15 percentage point increase on the share of the vote it secured in the constituency section at the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections.
Scottish Labour, currently in the midst of a leadership contest, has polled 19 per cent on the constituency vote, down by almost 13 percentage points on its performance in 2011. The Conservatives are on 15 per cent (up one point, while the Lib Dems have sunk to just 3 per cent of the vote, down by almost 5 percentage points compared with the last elections to Holyrood.
Under the additional member electoral systems used to elect MSP, in addition to voting for a constituency MSP, voters are also asked to cast a vote for a political party in their region. List MSPs are allocated accordingly in order to balance out under-representation of parties by the first-past-the-post constituency poll.
On the constituency poll the SNP are, according to TNS, on 50 per cent of the vote, up 6 percentage points compared to 2011. Labour are on 19 per cent (down by just over 7 points), the Conservatives are on 14 per cent (down just over 1.5 points) and the Lib Dems are on just 5 per cent of the vote, roughly the same as their 2011 performance.
Continuing the post referendum bounce meanwhile, 78 per cent of voters told TNS that they were either certain or very likely to vote in next year’s election, up from the 50 per cent turnout seen in the 2011 elections.
43 per cent of respondents indicated that they felt the UK General Election result made independence more likely, with 39 per cent saying it made no difference.
Asked how they would vote in a referendum on EU membership, 49 per cent of Scottish voters said they would vote to stay in, with just 19 per cent wanting to leave. 26 per cent said they had not decided how to vote on the issue.
Commenting on the results Tom Costley, head of TNS Scotland said:
“Clearly there is a long way to go until the Scottish parliament elections, so it is too early to tell whether the rise in support for the SNP represents a continuing trend, or whether it reflects a “honeymoon” period with the party’s new Westminster MPs.
“The strong support for continuing EU membership may reflect both this factor and the strong advocacy by Nicola Sturgeon, who remains a popular figure: the case for the EU has yet to be tested in the full-blown political campaign that will precede the referendum.”
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
18 Responses to “The SNP giant continues to grow”
Mauro Andrade
Yeah, but it’s only now that the SNP has hammered Labour in its key ex-industrial heartland, taking all Labour seats North of the border bar one, many of which were supposedly rock solid safe seats (i.e., Glasgow, Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath etc).
This gives the SNP a much stronger case to call for another independence referendum, especially if they win convincingly in the Scottish assembly elections next year. In these, frankly, revolutionary circumstances the question of the internal political stability of the SNP comes to the fore. In an SNP Scotland, moving ever closer to independence, are left and right nats comfortable bedfellows for the long term? Harold is right; there are many centre-left new SNP MPs, but equally, there are a good few who are, to put it mildly, not centre-left at all, they simply want independence. The woman Harold mentions as having being on the QT panel last week actually used to be a Tory until she defected to the SNP in 2000.
This will start to become an issue, one which, should Labour play its cards well, it ought to be able to exploit in its efforts to win back some of those 40-50 Scottish seats.
Harold
I agree, it may not become an issue for a while, years even, but Conservatives and Socialist normally join together in their separate parties because of their political views. Nationalists (not just the SNP) have one over-riding cause, which is also Labours mistake of joining the Tories in the Union campaign of last year. Northern Ireland is an example where Republican and Unionist are more important than left or right. What happens when you discuss political policy? If a SNP Leader proposed privatising the NHS would they all support or if a different leader proposed nationalising the railways, water and electricity in Scotland would that be equally supported, let alone discussions about tax and education.
LindaJStone
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