After a bit of a lull in Scottish polling, and with fieldwork happening quite literally at the time I was tweeting “we’re well overdue” one, we’ve got one from a usual pairing of Norstat (link to tables) and the Sunday Times (link to original writeup). Although the start date for this is given as the 30th, Norstat have been keen to point out they only started fieldwork after the Chancellor delivered her budget that day, and so figures should be seen in that context. I’ve been slightly slower to report on this than usual for the reasons outlined in my linked tweet above, namely that I’m in the middle of the process of moving into the first home I’ve ever bought!
The previous Norstat covered the 20th – 22nd of August 2024. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Regional Vote
So, let’s just start with the word that’s going to define every bit of voting intention here: “ooft.” Labour taken a massive hit here, plunging from a tie with the SNP in the last poll to a fair bit behind now. This still represents growth compared to 2021, but it’s pretty anaemic by comparison to recent trends. In fact, they haven’t polled as poorly as this since December 2022. The other big losers in this poll are Alba, who are down from the joint-high of 5% in the last poll: as ever, remember that Norstat (formerly Panelbase) tend to be the outliers on Alba shares, whereas this is more of a snapping back to normal.
With the Conservatives static, albeit still on harsh losses versus the election, it’s the three smaller parties benefitting. Reform UK pull into double digits as that particular genie doesn’t seem like it’s going back into the bottle. The Greens are up a point compared to both the previous poll and the election, tying with the Lib Dems who have gained a bit more by both measures.
Constituency Vote
It’s similarly harsh for Labour over on the constituency side of things: they were already behind the SNP on this vote last time, and they’ve just fallen even further behind now. Everyone else is gaining at their expense, the Conservatives the most so, followed by another fourth place result for Reform UK. They’re just ahead of the Lib Dems, and the Greens are also up on what is a relatively strong constituency vote share for them.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
It says a lot about the state of politics in Scotland lately that a 12 seat loss for the SNP against 2021 feels, in the context, like a stunningly good result for them. For Labour meanwhile I want to use the term “bloodbath” but that doesn’t feel accurate, both because given their colour is red it feels more fitting when they are gaining loads from the SNP, and because this is still better than the election for them. This is the worst seat projection I’ve had for Labour since January 2023, and for the SNP since January this year.
This creates something of a nightmare parliament in my view. I’ve been pretty consistent in saying that if there’s a Pro-Union majority at Holyrood, I expect that to lead to a Labour First Minister. It’s one thing saying that when Labour are pretty close to the SNP in seats, however it’s something else entirely when their tally is nearly half the SNP’s. It’d already be a massive cultural shock (in national terms, at local it’s quite common) for us to end up with the first placed party not in government, and it’d get even more challenging the further behind the party leading government is.
However, the only two vaguely credible options to cobble together even a transient majority are not brilliantly credible: it’s the SNP-Labour Grand Coalition, or all of the Union parties aligning. Yeah, you try getting the Lib Dems and Reform UK to back the same budget. You could also hit bang-on 65 with Labour, the Conservatives, Greens and Lib Dems, but you could also stick wings on a pig, it doesn’t mean it’ll fly. The SNP’s continued constituency dominance in this scenario puts them and former governing partners the Greens just 3 short of a majority, so another theory could be to work with the Lib Dems, but would the latter really be up for that for five years?
By the way, as a tiny aside if you have a keen eye you might note that on the vote and seat tallies on the right hand side of the maps, I’m now just going by 2021 order. Previously, I was ordering by share, so the first placed party was leftmost and so on. Given how unsettled things have become, I was finding that ordering changed so often it was getting a pain to fidget with each time, so I’m just doing one order going forward.
Possible Majorities
Note: these majorities relate simply to passing a vote in the Scottish Parliament. They do not imply the formation of a full coalition government.
- Traffic Light: Labour, Lib Dem and Green
- Independence Bloc: SNP, Green and Alba
- Grand Coalition: SNP and Labour
- Union Bloc: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Reform UK
If anything, the biggest “ooft” for Labour is at Westminster, because this isn’t an improvement. In fact, it’s a pretty shattering loss of support. Labour lose a whole third of the support they had in July here, which seems to have gone largely to the Conservatives and Reform UK, with bits for the Lib Dems and Greens too. For Reform this means a doubling of their share compared to the election, and it’s a reminder that the assumption all of their votes come from the Conservatives is lazy and unhelpful.
Despite Labour slipping into second, the SNP’s share hasn’t changed compared to the General Election. That means whilst they’d undoubtedly make gains from Labour, it wouldn’t be a 2015 or 2019 style wipeout: instead, I’d expect the Central Belt to be a patchwork of yellows and reds, as Labour crash out in some places and hold others.
What I would add to all of these frankly abysmal negative swings for Labour is that they have had a pretty rocky start to government, but it’s early days yet. Anyone making assumptions about their prospects in 18 months’ (or, even sillier, five years’) time purely on current polling is a numpty.
However, you’d be equally daft to shrug your shoulders and assume it’s guaranteed to get better. The fact Keir Starmer won a Blair-sized majority of seats has somewhat disguised the fact he didn’t win anywhere near a Blair-sized share of the vote. Blair had some flexibility to lose support (albeit it took almost three years for the first post-97 poll to show him below his winning vote share) in a way Starmer doesn’t.
And just in case you didn’t think this poll had enough drama, here’s a flat tie between Yes and No. In fact if you were being precise it’s 50.3% Yes and 49.7% No: we usually don’t do that precision in poll reporting though, because it’s completely meaningless when we’re already talking about a roughly 3% margin of error! Indeed, as shocking as a tie might look at the moment, at just 2% shifting the changes are entirely within that margin of error.
Nonetheless this should perhaps be more worrying for Labour than the fact they as a party have been losing support. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but there has been a jaw-dropping level of complacency amongst some on the Pro-Union side, that the SNP losing one (1) election would automatically do Independence in. That idea wouldn’t budge before the general election despite the fact Independence support wasn’t falling the way SNP backing was, but it really should be abandoned when we’re still getting polls like this.
Hypotheticals
As ever, the last little bit of analysis concerns those hypothetical and more proportional voting systems that BBS likes to play about with. The use of pure FPTP at Westminster is an affront to democracy, and though Holyrood fares far better, AMS is still deeply imperfect. The examples here simply transpose the poll findings onto more proportional voting systems – the reality is that different systems would of course result in different voter behaviour.
RAMS patter.
Scandi patter.
Scandinavian Style Westminster
Discussion of Scandi Westminster.
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