Two new polls bring little Christmas cheer for Corbyn
The SNP end the year on a high, according to new polling published today.
The final poll of 2015 by TNS of public attitudes in Scotland has seen the SNP’s lead north of the border increase as a result of slippage in Labour’s support.
Less than six months away from elections to Holyrood, SNP support in the constituency section of the vote remains the same as last month on 58 per cent among all those expressing a preference as to how they would vote.
Scottish Labour are on 21 per cent (down three percentage points) whilst the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats remain steady on 12 per cent and 4 per cent respectively. Other party are up two points to 4 per cent.
Results of the polling around the regional list section of the vote put the SNP up two points to 54 per cent, Scottish Labour down five points to 20 per cent and the Conservatives up one point to 12 per cent. The Lib Dems are down one point to 4 per cent and the Greens on 9 per cent (down four).
According to the Scotland Votes website, replicated uniformly next May, such results would see the SNP win 78 seats, nine more than they already hold in the Scottish Parliament. Labour would lose 12 seats, falling to just 25.
The Conservatives would remain steady on 15 seats whilst the Lib Dems would lose all but three of the five seats they hold at present. The Greens would pick up seven seats to get nine in total.
Commenting on the findings, Tom Costley, the head of TNS Scotland said:
“The past month has seen the political agenda return to devolved issues such as healthcare and transport, with opposition politicians attacking the SNP government’s record on hospital provision and on maintenance of the Forth Bridge. The criticism appears to have had little or no effect on support for the SNP.”
He continued:
“One interesting feature of the poll is that the number of those who say they are certain to vote in 2016 has been declining, and now stands at 58 per cent, down from 64 per cent as recently as the TNS poll in September. The turnout in Scotland in the May 7 general election was 71 per cent.
“It may be that, faced with the SNP’s huge lead in the polls, a number of voters feel that their vote would not influence the result. However, it seems unlikely that turnout in May will be as low as the 50 per cent recorded in the 2011 Holyrood elections.”
The results come as the secretary of state for Scotland David Mundell today launched a scathing attack on the SNP’s failure to devolve powers away from Holyrood to local communities.
Citing the devolution agenda in England, Mundell used a speech to declare:
“On the crucial issue of breaking up the central government monolith, it’s now Westminster – and a Conservative government – which is setting the pace and leading the way.”
After the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), representing Scottish Councils, slammed the SNP’s budget last week as ‘totally unacceptable’, he continued:
“There is now a real risk that Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, and indeed the towns and counties of Scotland as a whole, will be left behind – stuck in a 1990s time-warp of centralised, Holyrood-dominance.”
The poll in Scotland comes amidst similarly gloomy findings in Wales. According to polling commissioned by WalesOnline, three-in-ten adults in Wales are less likely to vote for Labour since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.
Jeremy Corbyn may be celebrating 100 days as Labour leader today, but based on the findings of both these polls he will have little cause for cheer.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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30 Responses to “SNP end the year on a high”
John Symon
Evidence for this?
Intolerant_Liberal
‘That is because when Labour forgot the class that it was supposed to represent the SNP was more than happy to take over.’
It looks like you are bang on the money. The poor of England are being reduced to poverty again through mismanagement, ideology and class discrimination. But then what can you expect when you have a party full of rich posh boys, and when Milly Bland said ‘I would rather have the Tories in power than do a deal with the SNP’ What an utter berk!!!!
Ken Bell
Tell me about it…
I may live in Scotland, and I did vote Yes in the IndyRef, but I am actually from Manchester and come complete with a Bernard Manning accent to prove it. When my health finally collapsed in about 2009 I was living just outside Burnley and the system sort of worked and sort of looked after me.
Housing benefit paid the rent, and for some reason that was quite legal, I got to keep the difference between the fixed amount paid by the state for that level of housing and the actual rent which was a lower amount. Then the scummy Tories came in and put a stop to that within a month of taking office. Then my housing benefit got reduced and I had to pay a tenner or so out of my own pocket. Then I had to find 20% of the council tax – it just went from bad to worse. The icing on the cake was when the council closed down all its public toilets to save money. Trust me, if you walk as slowly and as badly as I do, then you quickly learn where every bog in town is just in case you get caught short.
Scotland isn’t perfect and the SNP make mistakes, but their heart is in the right place and they want my vote. Labour didn’t want it, and as Rachel Reeves said just before the last election, Labour were not the party of the claimants.
Come next year’s Scottish General Election I will vote SNP in my constituency. Malcolm Chisholm is the current MSP and he is retiring and Labour has put forward some woman who messed up the Edinburgh trams, so that takes care of that.
I have promised a mate of mine who is in Labour that I will vote for his lot on the Lothian list, but to be honest he is as fed up with Labour as the rest of us. That said, if the only options are Labour, the Greenies or some Trotscum then I don’t have much choice.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Labour is it?
Intolerant_Liberal
My commiserations for the Bernard Manning accent. I’m from the ‘other’ city, slightly westward from you Mancs!!! I have a number of Mancunian mates and have to put up with their ups and downs over the further adventures of Man U and Man C…
Anyway, the Tories are committing class war on the broad mass of working class people again, and largely few of the affluent anywhere seem overly concerned about it, as long as their futures are assured. What happened to the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign? Did it become ‘Make Poor People History’? I do wonder. When Labour abandoned the broad mass of those who are working class by accent, area they live or economically, and still expected us to blindly vote them in, and getting nothing in return, other than watered down Tory policies, most people saw through it. It seems to be a general trend in the world that a globalised economy is about utter selfishness and greed, with the heavily inferred idea that the poor are going to suffer and to get on we must crap on those below us, and suck up to those above us. A nation of soulless and empty sycophants, screwing each other over, just like the good ol’ USA. A nation that is so dysfunctional truth becomes lies, and lies become the truth. A nation where pro lifers kill people and think they’re right, with no sense of irony. If America was a family, it would be the most dysfunctional family of all.
JAMES MCGIBBON
Check powers given to the Scottish Parliament.