Polls are coming thick and fast at the moment, as befits the last few weeks before a major election. I’m doing a huge amount on Ballot Box Scotland at the moment, so to a certain degree a Savanta (link to tables not available at time of writing) with usual partner the Scotsman (link to original writeup) is welcome, because they prompt for the fewest parties of any pollster. I find that slightly annoying usually because I like maximum data, but it does give me less to write about at a busy time!
The previous Savanta covered the 24th – 28th of May 2024. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Votes
The commentary in the last poll was “nothing ever changes”, and this time it’s “basically nothing every changes”. There’s a purely margin of error single digit uptick for Labour, and that’s it. That makes this one of the wider leads for Labour in recent polls, with their average being a smidge over 3%. This is also one of the better polls for the Conservatives, which is likely partly down to not having a prompt for Reform UK.
Seats
As outlined in a (now very, very, yeesh, look at the lack of quality) old post, I’ve generally avoided providing Westminster projections here on BBS. First Past the Post is really difficult to get right, and even small errors can give huge differences in seats. At Holyrood, that’s moderated by a proportional element that means you can’t be that far off, but pure FPTP at Westminster is a different beast. In addition, plenty of others do those projections much better than I ever could, so why bother?
That said, I have pulled together a simple projection model for this campaign. Unlike Holyrood, I won’t be providing seat-by-seat projections, and I’ll provide the Electoral Calculus estimate on the votes too for comparison, but this just helps provide a little bit more context to the vote figures.
Unlike some recent polls, because the Conservatives are relatively high here, there isn’t much of a difference between the BBS and Electoral Calculus models. EC are a little more favourable to Labour, whereas I have both the SNP and Conservatives with an additional seat, but we align on the Lib Dems.
Regional Vote
Again, not a huge number of changes here. The SNP drop a margin of error single digit, leaving them tied with Labour on the proportional side of the system. The Conservatives lose 2% and the Greens gain as much, which is unlikely to be direct transfer but just the churn of slightly different samples between polls.
This also continues Savanta’s tendency to have the Greens higher than other pollsters, which I think may be partly due to still using a question that uses a “second vote” framing. Likewise, whilst 10% for the Lib Dems isn’t so strange at the moment, I do still find it really odd that they’d be so far ahead of their constituency vote, when historically it’s always been the opposite way around.
Constituency Vote
Did you guess this might also have relatively limited changes? If so, have a gold star. Again, we’re talking margin of error here, though with 2 points it’s enough to give the SNP a tiny lead over Labour. The Conservatives and Lib Dems are down a point as well, but to emphasise one final time, it’s not statistically meaningful at this size.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
The last poll actually had quite a lot of Labour overhang, due to a clean sweep in Glasgow and almost (barring Edinburgh Western) in Lothian. That’s largely mitigated here by the SNP being slightly higher on the constituency vote. That gives them a narrow lead, but still leaves the Pro-Independence camp far adrift from a majority with just 56 seats. In addition to a clear Pro-Union majority, this would offer Labour the possible alternative of the traffic light alliance with the Lib Dems and Greens to pass legislation and budgets.
How many times can I write “despite the SNP’s collapse in the polls, the same has not happened to Independence, and neither side should be complacent?” One more time, apparently. Margin of error changes narrow this a touch, but nothing remarkable.
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.
Scandinavian Style Westminster
If you find this or other Ballot Box Scotland output useful and/or interesting, and you can afford to do so, please consider donating to support my work. I love doing this, but it’s a one-man project and takes a lot of time and effort. All donations, no matter how small, are greatly appreciated and extremely helpful.
(About Donations)
