The new full-scale Scottish poll from Redfield & Wilton contains numbers directly relating to the SNP leadership election, which continue with the very familiar pattern of showing that Kate Forbes is the public’s preferred choice as First Minister. I’ll come to that in a moment, but first of all let’s have a look at the Holyrood numbers from the poll, because although they’re far from a disaster, they are perhaps a cause for some concern if SNP members choose the wrong leader this month.
Redfield & Wilton poll (2nd – 5th March 2023):
Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
SNP 40%
Labour 29%
Conservatives 20%
Liberal Democrats 7%
Greens 2%
Reform UK 2%
Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:
SNP 29%
Labour 26%
Conservatives 20%
Liberal Democrats 11%
Greens 10%
Reform UK 1%
Incidentally, ignore the apocalyptic-looking percentage changes you may have seen listed on social media, because they’re measured from the baseline of the 2021 Holyrood election (since when Labour have recovered quite a bit) rather than any recent Redfield & Wilton poll.
The most eye-catching part of the above numbers is an SNP lead of only three points on the regional list, but I’m actually not overly worried about that, because we’ve seen results like it before. List results in polls are often less reliable than constituency results, and I suspect the way the question is posed has a lot to do with that.
However, an SNP constituency vote of 40% is on the low side by normal standards, as is an 11-point lead over Labour. We can only speculate as to what’s going on here, and before anyone asks, it’s got nothing to do with the “yellow on yellow action” in last night’s STV debate, because the poll fieldwork was completed before that. It could simply be the uncertainty caused by a leadership vacancy, it could be that people had faith in Nicola Sturgeon and that advantage for the SNP has now been lost, or it could be that the media presenting Humza Yousaf as the frontrunner means that the drag effect we expect to kick in if Yousaf becomes leader has already started. Whether or not the latter is the case, one thing is for sure – the SNP simply cannot afford to throw a leader as unpopular as Yousaf into the current mix. If you think things can’t get any worse, you could be in for a very nasty shock.
Once again, this poll confirms the public’s disdain for Yousaf. The preferences for leader show that, as in all previous polls from all firms, Kate Forbes is the public’s clear choice.
Preferences for next First Minister:
Kate Forbes: 25%
Humza Yousaf: 18%
Ash Regan: 14%
Now, in a sense that may not look too bad for Yousaf – it’s a significant lead for Forbes but not an enormous one (although, on the flip side, the Yousaf campaign will be alarmed to see how close they are to slipping into third place behind Ash Regan). However, as ever, this is only half the story, because it only shows positive preferences. The much more damning figures for Yousaf are always the net approval ratings, in which the number of people who don’t rate him are subtracted from the number of people who do. On that measure, Kate Forbes once again has a commanding advantage.
Net approval ratings (on question of whether respondents would support or oppose each candidate becoming First Minister):
Kate Forbes: +6
Ash Regan: -7
Humza Yousaf: -10
The Labour leader Anas Sarwar has a rating of +4 in this poll (on a question with a different wording), which is a drop from the previous poll, but nevertheless there’s not much doubt that he remains more popular than Yousaf. Approval ratings are often highly predictive of election results, so I’m afraid the message to SNP members must be a stark one: if you don’t want to risk seeing Labour in an outright lead in Scottish polls before this year is out, you simply cannot afford to elect the unpopular Yousaf as your leader.
Lastly, I must just note a touch of amateurishness on the part of Redfield & Wilton – they’ve somehow managed in their data tables to misspell the names of both Humza Yousaf and Alister Jack, which I suspect means the wrong spelling was also used when respondents were questioned.
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