Despite the feeling that there’s a bit of momentum behind Labour at GB level, they haven’t made any further progress since Saturday according to the latest YouGov poll, and part of the reason is that their showing in the Scottish subsample is utterly abysmal.
Britain-wide YouGov poll:
Conservatives 42% (-1)
Labour 33% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 12% (-1)
SNP 5% (+1)
Brexit Party 4% (+2)
Greens 4% (+1)
Scottish subsample: SNP 52%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 11%, Liberal Democrats 7%, Greens 4%
In fairness, Labour were on an unusually high 21% in the previous subsample, so this is probably just sampling variation at play and the truth may be somewhere in between the two extremes. But it certainly offers some reassurance against the idea that Labour might be starting to creep back up to the sort of level of support in Scotland where they could become a problem for the SNP.
The 9-point Tory lead will have to drop to around 6 or 7 points over the next nine days if a hung parliament is to become a serious possibility. Such a small shift is obviously achievable – but what concerns me is that the polls may be overestimating Labour this time. The numbers are weighted to how people voted in 2017, when there was unusually high turnout of Labour voters. If that isn’t replicated, Corbyn could be in an even weaker position than we currently think.
The good news, though, is that the opposite is true for the SNP – they didn’t turn out their voters in sufficient numbers two years ago, which means 2017 weighting could be slightly underestimating their potential support.
* * *
Since my last post I’ve had four more constituency previews in The National – Gordon, Glasgow East, Glasgow North and Central Ayrshire.
