The latest monthly Record/Survation poll (formerly in partnership with this blog) is out, and it’s a corker. As per previous polling posts here, the vote share is the change on last month, and the seat change is since 2011. And as usual, the ‘kippers would win some seats, but the Scotland Votes model doesn’t include them. I’ll run this again with a better predictor when I can fish it out.
| Parties | Constituency | Region | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vote share (+/-) | Seats (+/-) | Vote share (+/-) | Seats (+/-) | Seats (+/-) | % | |
| SNP | 48 (-2) | 65 (+12) | 39 (±0) | 2 (-14) | 67 (-2) | 51.9 |
| Labour | 28 (+2) | 5 (-10) | 22 (-1) | 22 (±0) | 27 (-10) | 20.9 |
| Conservative | 13 (+1) | 1 (-2) | 12 (-2) | 13 (+1) | 14 (-1) | 10.9 |
| Liberal Democrats | 5 (-1) | 2 (±0) | 7 (-1) | 4 (+1) | 6 (+1) | 4.7 |
| Scottish Greens | – | 0 (±0) | 13 (+3) | 15 (+13) | 15 (+13) | 11.6 |
| UKIP | – | 0 (±0) | 7 (+1) | 0 (±0) | 0 (±0) | 0 |
| Others | 7 (+1) | 0 (±0) | 2.1 (+1.2) | 0 (-1) | 0 (-1) | 0 |
There’s two substantial changes here, and two only. First – Labour would see their worst ever Holyrood result by some margin, reduced to barely a fifth of the Parliament. Second – this is the best poll I’ve ever seen for the Greens. We’d be up from 2 to a massive 15 seats, and would be narrowly the third largest party. Bear in mind the UKIP caveat, which would probably hit Labour hardest but would also chip one or two off the Greens and Tories.
Astonishing.
#1 by Allan Faulds on February 19, 2015 - 8:00 am
My predictor makes it;
Party – Seats (Cons/Regional)
SNP – 66 (65/1)
Lab – 27 (5/22)
Con – 12 (1/11)
Green – 11 (0/11)
LD – 6 (2/4)
UKIP – 7 (0/7)
The SNP’s constituency strength really buggers the rest over – e.g. my model has Tories at 13.7% and Greens on 12.7% in Mid & Fife region, which should comfortably give each two seats there – but both win only one because the SNP overhang so much. Likewise, I have us on a whopping 19% in Lothian, more than enough for three, yet we only get two MSPs. (It may simply be that my predictor cannot handle us getting such a high vote share and starts giving weird results!)
#2 by John Gowers on February 19, 2015 - 12:12 pm
Can someone please explain the 2016 bar graph?
#3 by James on February 20, 2015 - 4:24 pm
Hi John – the bar graph is just the regional seats, that’s why it looks so odd.
#4 by craig on February 19, 2015 - 3:08 pm
neo-liberalism of ever flavour on offer …… no real left alternative 🙁
#5 by Dr Ew on February 19, 2015 - 6:23 pm
As a Green and an active campaigner for independence I think this looks like an almost ideal scenario for the 2016 Parliament. Much as I respect the current SNP leader and many of their terrific activists, this lead up to the Westminster vote flatters them slightly as well as building the impression that Scotland is in thrall to one monolithic party. That’s not a heatlhy situation, indeed may even damage the prospects of securing independence. While I want to see as many SNP MPs as possible this May, next May we might be better served by a SNP Government that relies on Greens for a majority. I know the poll scenario above doesn’t mean that, but seeing the Greens rise to become the third largest party in the Scottish Parliament would be a huge step in the right direction. Here’s hoping something close to that is what actually materialises but, meantime, there’s a lot of politics to happen. Exciting times though, eh?