More signs of the Yes bounceback: support for independence is back up to 50% in new Savanta ComRes poll

Incidentally, the last poll but one from the Scotsman series was the notorious #Matchettgate fake poll which purported to have Yes on 48% and No on 52%. That’s the problem with pulling a stunt like that – all you succeed in doing is making the later polls look better for Yes.

We’ve now had four Holyrood polls that included Alba as an option, and all four have shown the party registering on at least 3% – enough to put it in the mix for one or two seats as long as its support isn’t spread too evenly across the country.  As I pointed out last night on Twitter, at the inaugural Scottish Parliament election in 1999, the Greens took one seat on 3.6% of the vote and the SSP took one seat on just 2% of the vote.  Official seats projections from polls will not show that sort of outcome for Alba because they will assume an even swing – but in practice an even swing is very unlikely to happen.

However, because the official seats projection for today’s poll is showing Alba on zero seats and the SNP falling slightly short of a majority due to a lack of list seats, the argument is being made that Alba votes are wasted and that Alba supporters should return to the SNP on the list for tactical reasons.  That could be very misguided, because there’s a core of Alba’s support that is completely alienated from the SNP – those people are not going to go back, and if we want to make sure their votes aren’t wasted, the more viable course of action could be to build on Alba’s support and get it to the 5-6% needed to win a decent number of seats.

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