As you may remember, one of the points of confusion about Channel 4’s recent Survation poll was a set of Scottish voting intention figures for Westminster, which eventually proved to be merely a subsample (albeit an unusually large one) that hadn’t been correctly weighted. However, Survation have now reweighted the results in line with Scottish target figures, and it turns out that the position for the SNP is as favourable as it originally appeared.
Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (Survation, 20th October – 2nd November):
SNP 40% (+4)
Conservatives 27% (n/c)
Labour 23% (-3)
Liberal Democrats 7% (n/c)
The percentage changes listed above are measured from a Survation poll for the Daily Record that was conducted just slightly earlier (with a small amount of overlap between the fieldwork for the two polls). I have a feeling Survation would probably argue that the Record and Channel 4 polls are not directly comparable because they were conducted slightly differently, but at the end of the day they’re both online polls weighted to Scottish target figures.
The Record poll caused some concern by showing an unusually low SNP vote by Survation’s normal standards. Many of us wondered at the time if it was just a freakish result caused by random sampling variation, and the swift recovery in the new poll would tend to support that theory. So the 4% gain for the SNP should really be seen as a reversion to the mean rather than as real progress – the last-but-one online Survation poll had the SNP on 41%, and the one before that had them on 42%. Nevertheless, if replicated at a general election, the new figures would see the SNP making substantial seat gains, especially at Labour’s expense.
