Panelbase took a little longer than YouGov to stir from their summer slumber, but came out with a shiny new poll just in time for a conference weekend. As ever in my quest to demand something akin to a nice balance of output across different pollsters, I note that Survation haven’t said anything since March if anyone wants to go poke that particular sleeping dug.
Display format;
- Party – Vote% (Change vs last poll by agency / Change vs last election or referendum)
Holyrood Voting Intention and Projection (Tracker)
Regional;
- SNP – 38% (-1 /-4)
- Conservative – 21% (+1 / -2)
- Labour – 18% (+2 / -1)
- Liberal Democrat – 11% (+1 / +6)
- Green – 6% (-1 / -1)
- Brexit – 4% (-2 / +4)
- UKIP – 1% (nc / -1)
- TIGFC – 0% (-1 / nc)
Compared to the last poll in June, there’s a slight recovery for both the Conservatives and Labour as well as continued growth for the Lib Dems, with a corresponding dip for each of the SNP, Greens and Brexit. This tells a very different story to the YouGov last month for Labour, where they had slipped into fourth place. If Survation could pop back up with a poll soon, that might help give a feel for where things lie. TIGFC weren’t even asked about this time, so they are up for the reporting chop in the near future. TIG/ChUK/TIGFC, we hardly knew ye.
Constituency;
- SNP – 42% (nc / -5)
- Conservative – 21% (+1 / -1)
- Labour – 19% (+3 / -4)
- Liberal Democrat – 10% (-1 / +2)
- Brexit – 4% (-3 / +4)
- Green – 3% (nc / +2)
- UKIP – 1% (nc / +1)
Movement in the constituency question is primarily away from the Brexit Party, with another substantial bump for Labour. Again, that’s a very different result from YouGov, love they house effects.
Now, if we project that into seats it might look like;
- SNP – 62 (-2 / -1)
- Conservative – 27 (+3 / -4)
- Labour – 23 (+3 / -1)
- Liberal Democrat – 14 (+3 / +9)
- Green – 3 (-3 / -3)
- Brexit – 0 (-4 / nc)
Basically, everyone loses seats here to the Lib Dems, with the Greens particularly hard hit and down half their seats for less than half a percentage loss in votes. This is also the first time that Brexit haven’t been expected to come out with any seats since their very first poll appearance in April. Overall, this one still keeps with the recent polling trend of projecting to a pro-Independence majority, but it’s a wafer thin at 65 versus 64 for the pro-Union side.
Doing that just for fun more proportional system I like to use to illustrate the imperfections of AMS, seats would come out at (vs AMS projection);
- SNP – 51 (-11)
- Conservative – 27 (nc)
- Labour – 24 (+1)
- Liberal Democrat – 14 (nc)
- Green – 8 (+5)
- Brexit – 5 (+5)
As ever it’s the SNP who are over-represented under the current system, whilst the Greens and Brexit end up with a much more representative haul of seats.
Westminster Voting Intention (Tracker)
- SNP – 39% (+1)
- Conservative – 21% (+3)
- Labour – 19% (+2)
- Liberal Democrat – 13% (nc)
- Brexit – 5% (-4)
- Green – 2% (nc)
- UKIP – 1% (nc)
For the UK Parliament, Brexit have again dropped quite significantly. Having polled their (then) worst since the 2017 election in the previous Panelbase, both the Conservatives and Labour have a bit of a recovery this time around.
Constitutional (Independence Tracker)
Usual Independence question;
- No – 47% (-1)
- Yes – 46% (nc)
- Don’t Know – 7% (+1)
Excluding Don’t Knows;
- No – 50% (-1 / -5)
- Yes – 50% (+1 / +5)
Yeah, that’s knife-edge. You want to know just how close? Open up those tables and see the raw number of responses was 413 vs 412. A truly decisive country we are at the moment, eh? Doing that just for fun universal swing would see it come out at 15 council areas voting Yes and 17 No.
No pure Brexit or EU question here, but they did also ask one of those pesky “if, then” hypotheticals, on how people would vote in the case of a No Deal Brexit;
- Yes – 54%
- No – 46%
As ever, I wave the big red flag that says “these give more of a sense of how people feel right now than how they will actually vote in that circumstance”, but reporting for completeness. Finally on this front, they asked whether people felt Scotland would be better of Independent in the EU or in the Union outside the EU;
- Independent in EU – 45%
- Union outside EU – 35%
- Don’t Know – 20%
