A new poll shows the party losing 14 seats
The SNP will today launch their election manifesto in the full knowledge that for them, the only way is down.
Considering that the party took 56 of the 59 available seats in 2015, the question now is have we seen peak SNP? The answer is that we probably have
According a poll out over the weekend, the SNP are on the lowest share of the vote they have received in Scotland since 2014.
According to the SurveyMonkey poll for the Scottish Sun on Sunday, the SNP are now on 39 per cent of the vote, well below the 50 per cent vote share they received at the 2015 General Election and the 46.5 per cent vote share in the constituency vote in last year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.
The Conservatives will be quietly confident of making significant gains in Scotland as a result of the poll showing the party to be on 29 per cent of the vote, up from 14.9 per cent in 2015 and the 22 per cent they secured when MSPs were elected last year.
Scottish Labour also have some encouragement in this poll, which puts them on 25 per cent, up from the 24.3 per cent of the vote they secured on what was an abysmal night in 2015 and the 22.6 per cent they secured in the constituency section of last year’s election to Holyrood.
The Scottish Lib Dems meanwhile are on four per cent of the vote, down from the 7.5 per cent they secured in 2015 and the 7.8 per cent they secured in the constituency vote of last year’s Scottish Parliamentary election.
According to the Scotland Votes website, such polling would see the number of seats held by the SNP in the Commons fall from the 56 won in 2015 to 42.
The Conservatives would take 12 seats, up from the one they currently hold. This would include taking Moray from the SNP’s Deputy Leader, Angus Robertson and Perth and North Perthshire from the Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, the SNP’s Pete Wishart.
Labour would make a modest gain of one seat, taking Edinburgh North and Leith from the SNP, to go with Ian Murray’s seat of Edinburgh South which it currently holds.
The Lib Dems meanwhile would see the number of MPs it returns from Scotland increase from one to three, which would include a return to Parliament for Jo Swinson, taking the seat she held until 2015 from the SNP in East Dunbartonshire.
The same data suggests that Scotland is the only part of the country where voters believe Jeremy Corbyn would make a better Prime Minister than Theresa May.
The survey finds that 48 per cent of voters in Scotland prefer Corbyn for Number 10 compared to 45 per cent who said the same about Theresa May.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward
4 Responses to “Have we already passed peak SNP?”
Alasdair Macdonald
As is par for your course Mr Jacobs, you are being selective in the evidence you choose to base your propaganda on. There have been a number of polls since the GE was announced, and a proper interpretation would take account of trends and compositing of the data.
Even if the SNP were to lose 14 seats, they would have 42 out of 59, which is more than 70% of the total. Mrs Thatcher said this was sufficient for independence.
You are clearly parroting your Tory masters line that ANY losses equates to TOTAL loss.
Professor Dr D.Ben rees
i am distressed that Labour will only gain one more seat in Scotland when they had a massive following a few years ago. It is a mystery that no seat in Glasgow will support La bour, and by doing so- they support the nationalists, a creed that does not fulfill any of us but create dismay and hatred, Scots return to Jeremy Corbyn, a true socialist.
Alasdair Macdonald
What about today’s poll in Scotland which puts the SNP on 43% and both Tory and Labour on 25%?
What do you have to say about the projections from that, Mr Jacobs?
uglyfatbloke
It’s not Corbyn that’s the problem in Scotland so much as Dugdale, who is doing what she can to help get nats out and Tories in. If the nats lose 14 seats that will be 11 more for Theresa May and Dugdale’s McMafia will bear a good deal of the responsibility for that.