The Holyrood electoral system was explicitly designed to make one-party majority virtually impossible, some say to “dish the Nats”. Sure enough, eight years of stable but unambitious coalition have been followed by three years of stable minority administration.
The polls suggest Parliament has settled into a relatively constant formation, with two large parties competing for first place, two medium sized parties competing for third place, then Greens and sometimes others. The most obvious coalition shapes are a large party plus a medium party, given the unlikelihood of the grand coalition.
To narrow that down still further, the Tory brand has never been properly decontaminated in Scotland, despite the odd sensible young buck on their Holyrood benches, and neither Labour nor the SNP could formally go into coalition with them here. You can’t point and shout at London cuts implemented by your Deputy First Minister’s Ministers at Westminster.
This also means the Tories’ partners down south are also off the table come May next year, at least as far as Ministerial office goes. To my mind, this leaves a limited range of options for the next Scottish Government. They are, starting with the most likely (based on current polling):
- Labour minority. They’ve seen how it’s worked for the SNP, and they quite like the idea of not having to share office, even if they’d share power with Parliament.
- Labour supported by another party more informally. The Confidence and Supply model might allow them to be propped up by the Lib Dems, or potentially by Green MSPs.
- SNP minority supported through Confidence and Supply. It’s hard to see them coming out ahead of Labour in May, semi-irrelevant though that is for making a majority.
- Either an SNP or a Labour formal coalition with the Greens. Again, looking at the numbers, it’s even less likely for the SNP and Green votes to make 65, so that alone puts Labour as the most likely partner. On the pro-side for either large party, we’re not contaminated by Westminster. However, the actual policy differences would be stark, starker than the (non-constitutional) differences between the two largest parties themselves.
Today’s poll in the Mail on Sunday is just another straw in the wind, but it is clearly blowing against the SNP and also the Lib Dems. I haven’t seen a non-SNP-commissioned poll which had them close to Labour at the top, and it’s been a while since the Lib Dems were as close to the Tories as they used to be. This one is also current, conducted this week, unlike the last one to get attention, which was from early August.
Voting intention
Constituency/list/seats
Constituency:
Labour: 39%/36%/55 (+9)
SNP: 29%/26%/35 (-12)
Tory: 16%/15%/18 (+1)
Lib Dem: 11%/12%/16 (0)
Green: na/6%/4 (+2)
Other: 5%/5%/0
(note, I used Weber Shandwick’s predictor, and am not sure if it reflects the new boundaries. Either way, the result was one more Green MSP than John Curtice estimated for the Mail on Sunday)
Again, the SNP couldn’t form a two-party majority with anyone except Labour, and SNP plus Green plus either Lib Dem or Tory isn’t a majority either. Conversely, Labour would only ever need any one of the three largest parties to win any given vote, and given how well Bruce Crawford’s dealt with the need to find Labour or two others, that would look pretty tempting.
This would be a radically changed Holyrood after May. A massive swath of the SNP back benches would be out after one term, and the fight for first and second place would be very clear. Salmond would surely be gone as leader, too, despite the desperate counter-polling, which would almost certainly lead to a mouthwatering contest.
Labour’s substantial lead over the SNP in voting intention would put them 20 seats ahead, yet the Lib Dems’ constituency strengths mean they wouldn’t fall much behind the Tories. The gap for third would still be very clear, though, at least in votes. As Malc suggests, if you back the Coalition, why vote Lib Dem instead of Tory? The Green Group would double in size but no longer hold the balance of power. One wee thought – an extra one percent on the Green list vote from the Lib Dems, and we’re up three more to seven. It’s going to be a hard-fought eight months.
#1 by Despairing on September 5, 2010 - 2:22 pm
Perhaps it’s the subject for another post, but what would make a minority Labour government interesting would be the reaction of the SNP to government proposals.
Would they do what Labour has done for the last four years, with opposition for opposition’s sake? Would the SNP vote against every government initiative just because it’s a Labour government?
Or would they have seen the effect it had on their term in power, and actually vote with the government on those things they agree on? Or abstain on uncontroversial items? (And are there any uncontroversial items in politics??)
#2 by Stuart Dickson on September 5, 2010 - 5:03 pm
– “I haven’t seen a non-SNP-commissioned poll which had them close to Labour at the top… “
Huh?
So the Ipsos MORI poll passed you by? A 3 point gap is non statistically significant in a 1013 respondent poll.
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2656
#3 by James on September 5, 2010 - 6:23 pm
Fair enough, but there’s not much similar here: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/scottish-voting-intention
#4 by Jeff on September 5, 2010 - 8:49 pm
Great post James.
However, I’m not convinced that Labour and the Lib Dems couldn’t work together. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t see how the Lib Dems working in London with the Tories would stop a separate group of MSPs with separate policies from working together in spending a separate budget?
Infact, I’m not even convinced that the SNP wouldn’t work with the Conservatives if the numbers added up and part of the deal was an independence referendum.
It’s not like the Tories would be playing an SNP offer off against a Labour one…
#5 by Andrew BOD on September 5, 2010 - 10:23 pm
The best deal for Scotland is a Labour-SNP coalition.
Forgetting constitutional matters for a second, both these parties are centre-left and would naturally vote with one another on a number of issues if they weren’t whipped into sectarian opposition. Many ex-Labour voters have switched allegiance to the SNP, and I suspect this time round, vice-versa. A deal like this would also see an end to ‘opposition-for-opposition’s-sake’, something which drives many people up the wall with frustration.
‘Despairing’ makes a good point. If the SNP voted with Labour on many things anyway, without any pact, and made that intention quite clear, then that could change the whole complexion of Scottish politics. How refreshing that would be.
Despite the current polling, Labour still have to win this election. And a number of factors will come to the fore in the months ahead…
A Salmond v Gray personality contest will I’m sure, be part of the campaign, and Gray looks like coming off worst here.
Labour have yet to demonstrate any firm policy that will deal with the future cuts to Holyrood. They keep moaning about coalition cuts that they cannot do anything about. You can only cry wolf for so long.
Have Scottish Labour actually peaked too early? Perhaps the fierce opposition in Scotland to the UK Coalition gave them a wind in their sails that might die down come next May. We shall see.
#6 by Chris on September 6, 2010 - 2:46 pm
I think the election will be won and lost on the FPTP seats of Aberdeen North, Stirling, Kilmarnock, Livingston, Cunninghame N, Edinburgh E, Falkirk W and possibly Govan could go from SNP to Labour. And Dunfermline W and Edinburgh S from LibDems to Labour.
The top-up seats don’t look likely to change much, other than some compensation to the parties who lost FPTP seats. I can’t see where the extra Green seats would come from – is Margo standing again?
#7 by James on September 6, 2010 - 3:05 pm
Personally I think 2003 provides a good guide as to where extra Green seats can come from. We won seats we don’t currently hold in South, Northeast, Highlands and Islands, Mid-Scotland and Fife, plus the second seat in the Lothians. We were also not far away in the final two regions.
#8 by Malc on September 6, 2010 - 3:14 pm
I’m led to believe Margo will stand again. But that’s just to clarify – I need to do some number crunching. Incidentally Chris, you are aware of the boundary changes I take it? Only you’ve used the ‘old’ names of constituencies. The new ones have only minor tweaks in most cases, I’ll grant you, but I suspect it may have more of an impact on the top-up element than you think.
#9 by Chris on September 6, 2010 - 5:02 pm
Malc – I was looking at the website of current MSPs.
Do you mean that boundary changes will affect the regional composition or do you mean that boundary changes will affect who gets topped-up?
#10 by Malc on September 6, 2010 - 5:11 pm
Chris,
I mean both. Firstly, the constituencies change – Glasgow loses one, there’s a new seat in Angus, and Highlands and Islands takes in seats as far south as Helensburgh. It also means those MSPs who are regional MSPs at the moment are fighting it out as their seats get shuffled about a bit.
The changes to the boundaries are set out in detail here:
http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/1st_holyrood/1st_holyrood.asp
But it may be worth while going to visit J. Arthur MacNumpty (www.macnumpty.blogspot.com) for details on what it means – he’s done regional and constituency maths…
#11 by Mike Small on September 6, 2010 - 5:07 pm
Congrats on the new site, looking good.
I’m not sure the results are as ‘in the locker’ as you think. Here’s five reasons why not:
1) Megragh is going to die. Sorry its harsh but true. That stick to beat the SNP with will wither.
2) Labours new leader wont have the Scottish bounce that Brown gave them. The internal civil war that Blair has stoked is unlikely to go quietely. Mandelson, Blair Campbell and Co are likely to bleat loudly from the sidelines if the Miliband Bros try and ditch Blairism / Iraq as witnessed by recent press conferences / utterances.
3) Campaigning. The press may be gunning for the nats record butr do you really think Jackie Baillie and Iain Gray are a match for Salmond on the stump? Me neither. What are Labour running on? ‘We’ll stop the Tories?’ Er, you didn’t.
4) Where do the Liberal votes go? The Liberals are going to get massacred as the cuts start kicking in. Danny Alexander is a sheep in wolfs clothing, he’s not going to be able to stand the pressure. He is a wek point and will be ruthlessly exposed.
5) Finally, as Blair said to A Marr in a lovely piece of language ‘we live in times of great unpredictability’. Well, you know what he means, kind of.
#12 by Chris on September 6, 2010 - 5:50 pm
1.The Megrahi situation is, as you say, fluid. I think most people can see that it was a difficult decision and are not as partisan about it as those wearing Holyrood spectales think. But yes in electoral terms it is getting embarassing for the SNP, although it is hard to see anyone changing their vote over it.
2. The last election was under Blair, anyone would be better than that for Labour.
3.Clearly Alex Salmond is the star performer (although presumably his name won’t be on the ballot paper), but he now has a record to defend. The question you pose to Labour is the same when posed to the SNP. Most people accept cuts have to be made and any promises of independence-with-no-cuts would take the SNP into Solidarity type fantasy land.
The LibDem votes are very interesting. I guess you have to look at Urban and Rural separately and assume that by-and-large their rural vote will hold up. So some gains in Urban areas for Labour and if routed in the cities for the Greens and SNP in top-up seats.
It seems crazy, but indeed honourable, of the SNP to run the election around independence. It would be like Labour running the campaign on a ‘No Cuts – Squeeze the Rich’ campaign. The independence argument isn’t being won, despite 4 years of SNP leadership. It seems highly unlikely that they could pull that off against a very sceptical backdrop.
It is undpredictable. But the more predictable include the SNP falling back because Iraq primarily and Salmond for FM on the ballot papers disappearing off the agenda. Their strong showing in 2007 could make any relative success look like a failure.
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