Are we going to get through yet another Saturday night without a full-scale Scottish poll? Well, the night is young, maybe something will appear at midnight. What we do have is a UK-wide seat projection based upon 270,000 YouGov interviews, of which presumably around 20,000 will have been in Scotland. So although the model is untested (it’s not the official YouGov projection model that proved reasonably accurate in 2017), it deserves to be taken seriously, and it offers good news for the SNP.
Conservatives 349
Labour 213
SNP 49
Liberal Democrats 14
Plaid Cymru 5
Greens 1
If that turned out to be the final result, it would be an absolute catastrophe for the Liberal Democrats – they’d be six down on their pre-election tally, and only two up on their 2017 showing. I would guess that around 4 of their 14 seats would be in Scotland, but if they’re really underperforming badly, perhaps I shouldn’t even make that assumption. But let’s say four Scottish Lib Dems for the sake of argument, and Ian Murray holding Edinburgh South for Labour. That would only leave space for five Scottish Tory seats, a drop of eight. In psychological terms that would be a really dramatic step forward for the pro-independence movement.
It’s striking that the Tories are only projected to have a middling overall majority of 48, in spite of their double-digit GB-wide lead. That suggests they could possibly be denied a majority if their lead is cut to six or seven percentage points – but time is running out for that to happen. A large number of postal votes will be cast in the near future.
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UPDATE: We may get more information soon on an exact forecast for Scotland, because details for individual seats are being mentioned. For example, this tweet from Tim Shipman –
“Some good news for the LibDems, Datapraxis model has Jo Swinson holding a 4 point lead over the SNP and likely to benefit from any pro unionist tactical voting”
I’m not sure on what planet the Lib Dems only being 4 points ahead in their leader’s seat is supposed to be good news for them – I would have expected it to be far higher than that. That’s a drop of 6 points on her lead in 2017. Perhaps it’s 4 points before tactical voting is taken into account, that would make more sense.
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I have two more constituency previews in today’s edition of The National – this time it’s Lanark & Hamilton East and East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow.
