Survation, 1st-4th March 2019

As ever in Scottish polling, we don’t get neatly spaced polls. We get two overlapping polls by different agencies telling completely different stories, and my Twitter mentions are worlds apart with each one. This Survation poll actually (mostly) predates the Panelbase, but seems to have been sat on for a week before details were published. Hence this appearing the day after the post about the later poll did. Confusing, right? But hey, at least it’s finally a non-Panelbase poll!

Display format;

Holyrood Voting Intention and Projection (Tracker)

Constituency;

  • SNP – 43% (+5 / -3)
  • Conservative – 24% (-2 / +2)
  • Labour – 22% (-3 / -1)
  • Lib Dem – 9% (nc / +1)

Regional;

  • SNP – 32% (nc / -10)
  • Conservative – 22% (-1 / -1)
  • Labour – 19% (-3 / nc)
  • Lib Dem – 11% (+2 / +6)
  • Green – 11% (+2 / +4)
  • UKIP – 3% (+3 / +1)

As with the Panelbase, Labour have slumped a bit in this poll – but so too have the Conservatives, though their constituency vote is up on 2016 at least. Perhaps most notable though is that the SNP have taken a big jump in the constituency vote – which given a stubbornly low List vote counts for a lot.

The big winners here would be the Lib Dems and the Greens, both on their highest support for some time. The Greens have had a couple of 12% polls in 2016-17, but for the Lib Dems this is actually their strongest poll since the election.

If we project that into seats it might look like;

  • SNP – 59 (+8 / -4)
  • Conservative – 26 (-3 / -5)
  • Labour – 22 (-7 / -2)
  • Lib Dem – 11 (+1 / +6)
  • Green – 11 (+1 / +5)

On these figures, the pro-Independence majority in Holyrood would actually grow marginally compared to now. In that sense, Survation are reverting to type in being the only agency relatively consistently finding that to be the case.

Effectively, this is down to strong SNP constituency polling alongside comparatively weak Conservative figures, which is projected to only tip a single seat the latter’s way. Our good friend overhang then ensures that becomes a combined SNP-Green majority. You can see how close run things are below, with 7 SNP seats where the projected winning margin was 5% or less. If most of these flipped, they wouldn’t be replaced by an equal number of List seats, so could shift the balance.

Again, it’s worth having a little look at my shiny new “What if Scotland did elections Scandinavian Style?” map. This just uses the list vote – always with the caveat any single ballot list system would undoubtedly be different to our two ballot system – and would come out at (vs AMS projection);

  • SNP – 43 (-16)
  • Con – 30 (+4)
  • Lab – 26 (+4)
  • Lib Dem – 15 (+4)
  • Green – 15 (+4)

Westminster Voting Intention (Tracker)

  • SNP – 40% (+4 / +3)
  • Conservative – 24% (-3/ -5)
  • Labour – 22% (-4 / -5)
  • Lib Dem – 8% (+1 / +1)
  • Others – 4%

No figures for any other party never mind hypothetical TIGers here, not that there seems to be much in the way of spare votes to go around. As with the Panelbase, Labour are down enough here that they’d likely be left only with Ian Murray. That may be grim reading for them, but they can take heart from the fact that if they’d only support Proportional Representation they could have 13 MPs instead.

Constitutional

There’s even less on the Brexit and Independence front in this poll than there was with the Panelbase – no standard polling on either issue. Instead, the only Independence question related to the timing for another referendum;

  • Never – 32%
  • At least 10 years from now – 21%
  • Between 5 and 10 years from now – 7%
  • Between 2 to 5 years from now – 10%
  • Within 2 years of Brexit – 22%
  • Don’t Know – 8%

Despite all the drama around Brexit, Scots are still not convinced that a second Independence referendum would be helpful in the near future – though, notably, 60% do believe there should be one at some point.