As a counterbalance to my post about the run of relatively unimpressive YouGov subsamples for the SNP, here’s some better news from Opinium (well, “better” if you leave aside the enormous Tory lead at GB level).
Britain-wide voting intentions (Opinium):
Conservatives 38% (+2)
Labour 23% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 15% (-5)
Brexit Party 12% (+1)
SNP 5% (n/c)
Greens 4% (+2)
UKIP 1% (+1)
Scottish subsample: SNP 48%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 11%, Brexit Party 9%, Liberal Democrats 7%
The subsample figures shouldn’t be taken as seriously as YouGov’s, because Opinium don’t properly structure/weight their Scottish subsamples. Nevertheless, we can certainly draw some reassurance from the fact that this is the second Opinium poll in the space of a week to put the SNP on a hefty 5% of the Britain-wide vote, and with a bit of luck that might mean that the SNP’s recent dip in YouGov polling has been caused by random sampling variation rather than by real changes on the ground. Time will tell.
No other pollster has yet picked up the slump in Lib Dem support across Britain that Opinium are reporting, so we should take that finding with a pinch of salt until it’s corroborated. But at the very least, it looks unlikely that the Lib Dems have been making any more progress over the last week.
There’s also no cause for panic about the 15-point Tory lead across Britain, because Opinium have recently emerged as the most Tory-friendly pollster, producing figures for the Conservatives that are several points higher than other firms. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, of course, but there’s a degree of uncertainty about whether the Tories are really that far ahead. In any case, we know that the electorate is extremely volatile at the moment, and that the situation can change very quickly. In particular, I’d have thought that Remain voters in England may well coalesce mainly around one party as the official campaign progresses – that party might be Labour or it might be the Lib Dems, but at some point people are going to stop looking for perfection, and start looking for the best option to stop Boris Johnson.
