After two years of silence on the Scottish polling front from Panelbase, since June they’ve been quite regular, with another poll conducted earlier this month emerging on Sunday night. It’s taken me a couple of days to get to a full post as I’ve been busy. Oh, and as a little bit of housekeeping, there’s now a Ballot Box Scotland Facebook Page!
Display format;
- Party – Vote% (Change vs last poll by agency / Change vs last election or referendum)
Holyrood Voting Intention and Projection (Tracker)
Constituency;
- SNP – 39% (-2 / -8)
- Conservative – 27% (+1 / +4)
- Labour – 24% (+3 / +1)
- Lib Dem – 6% (nc / -2)
- Green – 3% (nc / +2)
Regional;
- SNP – 37% (+2 / -5)
- Conservative – 26% (nc / +3)
- Labour – 22% (+2 / +3)
- Lib Dem – 6% (-2 / +1)
- Green – 6% (-1 / -1)
- UKIP – 2% (nc / nc)
Compared to the last Panelbase poll, the biggest shifts are basically Labour and the Lib Dems shuffling back to roughly where they were two polls ago. 37% for the SNP on the list vote is actually the highest they’ve polled since before the snap GE in 2017 – but remember that Panelbase has tended to find that a bit higher than the rest of the pack. On the other side of the pro-Independence coin, that may be why they are the most pessimistic pollster for the Greens.
Overall though, as has been the trend for 2018 there’s not a lot of serious movement here. This poll happens to have been carried out over the exact midpoint between the 2016 and 2021 elections (4th of November).
Combined with a complete lack of national elections in 2018 and the dominance of Brexit, it’s perhaps not surprising that no one is really giving much thought to shifting their Holyrood vote. Perhaps as we now enter a pre-election rather than post-election period, 2019 will see things begin to ramp back up.
If we project that into seats it might look like;
- SNP – 57 (+2 / -6)
- Conservative – 34 (nc / +3)
- Labour – 29 (+3 / +5)
- Lib Dem – 5 (-3 / nc)
- Green – 4 (-2 / -2)
That gives the pro-Union majority at Holyrood we should all be used to seeing from polling at the moment, though that high SNP list vote would see a handful more regional seats peppered about the country. For the Greens to drop a third of their seats meanwhile is their second worst figure since the election. A poor showing too for the Lib Dems, holding steady on 5 although typically they’ve been coming in with at least one more seat.
After the relative excitement of last month’s Survation, which had Labour and the Lib Dems on more constituencies than 2016 for the first time since this site kicked off, this projection is back to purely SNP-Con flips.
Westminster Voting Intention (Tracker)
- SNP – 37% (-1 / nc)
- Conservative – 28% (+1 / -1)
- Labour – 25% (+1 / -2)
- Lib Dem – 7% (+1 / nc)
- Green – 2% (nc / +2)
- UKIP – 2% (nc / +2)
As per usual, it’s pretty static on the Westminster front. Given the margins at play in many constituencies, the bouncing around the margin of error that seems to be prevailing shoogles a few seats about each time, but it’s up in the air as just how that’d play out should the UK Parliament collapse in a heap. Which isn’t exactly looking unlikely at the moment…
Independence Voting Intention (Tracker)
- Yes – 43% (+2)
- No – 52% (nc)
- Don’t Know – 5% (-2)
Once Don’t Knows are excluded;
- Yes – 45% (nc / +1)
- No – 55% (nc / -1)
Wake Scotland up when there’s movement on this question… ?
Brexit Voting Intention
- Remain – 61% (+2)
- Leave – 34% (-1)
- Don’t Know – 4% (-2)
Once Don’t Knows are excluded;
- Remain – 64% (+1)
- Leave – 36% (-1)
???
