Heartening YouGov poll adds to weight of evidence that support for independence is Humza-proof – but leadership crisis deepens as SNP vote drops five points and Yousaf hits abysmal approval rating of minus 25

That gives Yousaf a dismal net approval rating of -25.  And his boasts during the leadership debates of being phenomenally popular with SNP voters have aged very badly as he barely even stays in positive territory (+4) with people who voted SNP in the 2019 general election.

To be blunt, the direct comparisons between Yousaf’s net ratings among all respondents and those of other party leaders are deeply concerning.  He is way behind the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (-6), and also a little way behind the UK Labour leader Keir Starmer (-19), although there may be some consolation in the fact that Starmer is almost as unpopular as Yousaf is.  (Indeed, Starmer’s ratings have very suddenly fallen off a cliff – he had a positive rating in the previous YouGov poll.) Incredibly, Yousaf is virtually level-pegging with the UK Tory leader Rishi Sunak (-27), an almost unprecedented situation for an SNP leader in modern times.  And although Yousaf does have an advantage over the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross (-36), it’s not an especially enormous one.

There’s also grim news for the SNP’s “Trendies” who have been lecturing the Alba Party for two years about how no party can expect to do anything but fail with a leader as unpopular as Alex Salmond.  As it turns out, there’s very little to choose between how the public rate Mr Salmond and Mr Yousaf, with 34% saying Mr Yousaf will be a better First Minister than Mr Salmond, and 28% saying he will be worse than Mr Salmond.  That’s a gap that barely even reaches the level of statistical significance.  Presumably the Trendies’ conclusion will be unavoidable – if Mr Yousaf is no more popular than Mr Salmond, the SNP can be expected to fail very badly under his leadership.  

One really big surprise from the poll is that, so far at least, Nicola Sturgeon’s reputation is astoundingly untouched by recent revelations, with 53% of respondents saying she was a good leader for Scotland (an increase of three points from the previous poll) and 31% saying she was a bad leader.  That underscores that the problem here is very definitely a Humza-specific problem, not a ‘whoever happened to be carrying the can’ problem.  Only 9% of respondents think Yousaf will be a better FM than Ms Sturgeon, with 41% saying he will be worse.

This is the latest in a long string of polls from a variety of different firms suggesting the Yes vote has either held up or even increased slightly as the SNP vote falls – thus implying support for independence has become decoupled from support for the largest pro-independence party. With Don’t Knows left in, the No lead has actually dropped since the last YouGov poll from eight points to six.  The SNP’s troubles and the ongoing Humza leadership crisis have also failed to diminish the public’s appetite for an independence referendum, with 44% wanting one within the next five years, and with only 42% opposed.

A clear majority of the public now feel that Scotland should not require permission from London to hold an independence referendum.  51% think no permission should be required, compared to 39% who take the opposite view.

So Humza is on course to lose us the precious pro-independence majority at Holyrood, although admittedly it would be close.  The SNP and Greens in combination would have 63 seats, and unionist parties combined would have 66.

First-past-the-post would just about rescue the pro-indy majority in this case, but the SNP’s seat losses would still be heavy, with Anne McLaughlin, David Linden and Alison Thewliss among the high-profile casualties.

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