New polling shows no sign of the reported Labour revival among younger voters
Labour has failed to see a post-Corbyn boost in Scotland, according to new polling.
TNS asked respondents who said they would vote in the constituency section of next year’s elections to Holyrood who they would vote for. According to the data Labour remains languishing on 21 per cent, running second to the SNP on 53 per cent.
This represents a 2 percentage point drop in support for both parties since the last poll.
Support for the Conservatives is unchanged at 12 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats are on 6 per cent, up one percentage point.
Asked how they would vote in the regional list section, of those who expressed a preference, 52 per cent said the SNP (up 1 point) and 23 per cent said Labour (down 1 point to 23 per cent. Support for the Conservatives and Lib Dems is unchanged at 11 per cent and 6 per cent respectively, while the Greens have fallen 1 point to 5 per cent.
There was similarly little change in voting intentions in the regional list section of the Holyrood vote. Among those who expressed a preference, 52 per cent intended to vote SNP (up 1 percentage point) and 23 per cent said Labour (down one point).
11 per cent said they’d vote for the Conservatives and 6 per cent for the Liberal Democrats (no change). Support for the Greens in this section was down 1 point to 5 per cent.
In a fairly gloomy assessment of the poll for the Labour Party Tom Costley, head of TNS Scotland said:
“People are still getting to know the new Labour leaders and what they stand for, so it’s not surprising there has been little immediate impact on voting intentions.
“One crumb of comfort for Labour may be that the overwhelmingly negative media commentary on Corbyn’s election appears not to have affected the party’s Scottish support, though the poll was carried out before his recent statement that he would never authorise the use of the UK’s nuclear deterrent if he became prime minister.
“Neither did the poll show signs of the reported Labour revival among younger voters: the party’s support in Scotland among the 16-34 age group was only 13 per cent, down four points on the previous month and a fifth of the SNP’s support in this age group (68 per cent).”
Those polled were also asked how they were planning to vote in the forthcoming referendum on EU membership. The data show that 47 per cent plan to vote to remain a member of the EU, two points down since TNS last asked this question in May.
18 per cent said they would be voting to support withdrawal from the EU (down one point), while 29 per cent said that they were undecided how they were going to vote. 5 per cent said they would not be voting at all.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
8 Responses to “A gloomy forecast for Labour in Scotland”
arthurfaeleith
Why do you keep going on about your sister? And are you sure she has tax raising powers? Bizzare delusions of grandeur by proxy.
JAMES MCGIBBON
Arfur fae leef. What are you on tonight.
arthurfaeleith
You keep on talking about your sis. Why?
And is it because you’re a working class Glaswegian that you can’t pronounce ‘th’?