The informal, self-selecting polls on the SNP leadership election have so far generally shown Kate Forbes in the lead, so it’s interesting that a properly conducted poll is now showing the same picture.
Net ratings on the question of whether each individual would do a good or bad job as First Minister (Ipsos UK, 16th February 2023):
Kate Forbes: +13
Angus Robertson: +7
Stephen Flynn: -1
Joanna Cherry: -3
John Swinney: -4
Shona Robison: -7
Humza Yousaf: -17
Other potential leadership candidates were asked about, but it would give a misleading impression to include their net ratings in the above list because the vast majority of respondents didn’t know who they are and thus weren’t able to offer an opinion on them.
For those who believe that Scotland’s hopes of becoming an independent country hinge on Angus Robertson failing to win this leadership election, an analysis I have a degree of sympathy with, there’s good and bad news here. The good news is that if Kate Forbes stands, Mr Robertson would suddenly look like the underdog rather than the favourite. The bad news is that there are credible reasons for doubting whether she’ll stand (her youth and her six-month-old baby), and if she doesn’t Mr Robertson would on these numbers become frontrunner by default.
Just as an aside, it’s interesting that slightly more people know who Kate Forbes is than know who Angus Robertson is, even though Mr Robertson has been in frontline politics for much, much longer. (In fact, when he first became a parliamentarian, Ms Forbes was still primary school age, although she seems to have been attending an all-ages school in India at the time.)
Of the lesser-known candidates, only Màiri McAllan stands out to me as having a flicker of a chance. This poll doesn’t particularly help her or damage her, because it gives her a net rating of +1, with 59% of respondents not knowing who she is. It’s a strange thing – Ms McAllan is 30 years old and Ms Forbes is 32, and yet in spite of that small age gap my instinctive reaction is that Ms McAllan is too young and Ms Forbes isn’t. Maybe it’s not so much chronological age that tips the balance here, but instead Ms Forbes’ greater experience at a senior level in government.
Humza Yousaf, meanwhile, may reflect on his numbers and decide to sit the contest out. It looks impossible for him to win from this starting point. I do feel it’s his streak of arrogance that has been his downfall, which is tragic in some ways because he is arguably the most conventionally charismatic person in the Scottish Government.
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