We’re deep into the ‘fog of war’ stage of the campaign. “SNP’s hopes of a majority continue to fade” say the Scotsman about their new ComRes poll, with ‘continue’ and ‘fade’ looking like weasel words given that a YouGov poll on the exact same day shows the SNP on course for a majority.
Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
SNP 46% (-3)
Conservative 25% (+2)
Labour 20% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-)
Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:
SNP 38% (-2)
Conservatives 23% (+2)
Labour 17% (-1)
Greens 7% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 5 (-1)
Alba 1% (-2)
The Scotsman’s write-up of the poll (written, naturally, by Conor Matchett, notorious for the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal) vaguely suggests Alba are on a “similar” level of support to All for Unity, UKIP, the Abolish the Scottish Parliament Party and the Scottish Libertarian Party. I would guess that probably means those other four parties are also on 1% of the list vote, but that isn’t actually spelt out.
The ComRes and YouGov polls are difficult to reconcile in several ways. YouGov suggested that the Tories are going backwards on the constituency ballot, allowing Labour to draw level with them and the SNP to further extend their huge lead. ComRes shows the complete opposite, with the Tories increasing their constituency vote to an unusually high 25% and the SNP lead dropping to an unusually low 21 points. That’s the main reason YouGov show the SNP with an overall majority and ComRes do not – which makes it all the more odd that the ComRes spokesman quoted in Matchett’s piece claims that the way the SNP could still win a majority is by substantially boosting their own list vote. Yes, of course that’s a theoretically possible way of doing it, but the much more plausible way would be by securing the sort of margin over the Tories on the constituency ballot that the YouGov poll is pointing to.
ComRes and YouGov also contradict each other on the Green list vote, which is a point of great importance for the pro-indy majority. YouGov have the Greens surging to an unusually high figure, ComRes have the Greens going backwards. Clearly they can’t both be right. My gut feeling is that YouGov are probably closer to the truth, but we’ll have to await more polls to find out.
Seats projection (with changes from 2016 election): SNP 62 (-1), Conservatives 32 (+1), Labour 22 (-2), Greens 8 (+2), Liberal Democrats 5 (-)
The above projection is my own calculation using a predictor website, and differs from the nonsensical projection in Matchett’s piece (good luck trying to get his figures to add up to 129).
SNP: 62 seats
All others: 67 seats
SNP SHORT OF MAJORITY BY 3 SEATS
Pro-independence parties: 70 seats
Anti-independence parties: 59 seats
PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 11 SEATS
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