Continuity just isn’t cutting it: within days of Humza Yousaf becoming leader, the SNP’s Holyrood lead has dropped in the latest Panelbase poll to just four points – the lowest in any poll for the best part of a decade

Percentage changes are measured from the Panelbase poll in the first half of March that I commissioned myself for Scot Goes Pop.

So a few things need to be explained here.  It may seem strange that the seats projection is not quite as bad for the SNP as the projection from yesterday’s Savanta poll, but that’s because it’s calculated using a different method – it looks like the Sunday Times have commissioned John Curtice to do a bespoke projection for this new poll.  And although Alba are polling well enough to win list seats, the health warning is that Panelbase significantly overestimated Alba in the 2021 election – there were several results quite similar to this during the 2021 campaign.  Normally a substantial error of that sort would be resolved after an election by means of past vote weighting – but that may not be the case here, because Panelbase seem to weight by recalled Westminster vote and not by recalled Holyrood vote.  

The pro-independence majority at Holyrood would be lost on these numbers – the SNP, Greens and Alba in combination would have 60 seats, and the unionist parties combined would have 69.

These results are obviously sobering, but there may be a silver lining.  My biggest fear was that the collapse in SNP support under Humza Yousaf would be delayed until the next general election campaign was well underway and it was far too late to do anything about it.  That would have mirrored what happened in 2017 when the SNP appeared to be in a commanding position going into the campaign, but their underlying weakness became apparent over the subsequent few weeks and by polling day they were clinging on for dear life, powerless to do much about the relentless swing to Labour.  This time they’re getting fair warning that there’s a crisis – so there’s still an opportunity for them to avert disaster, but it’s only an opportunity and none of us can force them to take it.  Now we’ll find out whether they’re going to act like rabbits caught in the headlights, or whether they’ll take one or both of the remedies that are open to them.  The obvious step is to replace the extremely unpopular Humza Yousaf as leader, and the other possibility is to put a mandate for independence back on the short-term agenda, which is the only realistic way in which Yes support can be galvanised behind the SNP in the absence of a popular leader.

One thing that strikes me is that the SNP’s Westminster MPs have already played a part in ripping up Nicola Sturgeon’s flagship policy of a de facto referendum, because they were scared that it would cost them their seats.  Now that they can see Humza Yousaf’s leadership is actually a far, far greater threat to their seats, it would be a bit odd if they shied away from taking similarly drastic action by pushing for him to be removed.  But politicians do not always react rationally or consistently, as we know.

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