We’re being treated to a second proper Survation poll this month, with another carried out from the 18th-21st of October for the Daily Record. I’m not sure what we did to deserve this, but wouldn’t it be nice to have such regular polling as the norm? Ahhh, I can dream.
Display format;
- Party – Vote% (Change vs last poll by agency / Change vs last election or referendum)
Holyrood Voting Intention and Projection (Tracker)
Constituency;
- SNP – 38% (-5 / -9)
- Conservative – 26% (+2 / +4)
- Labour – 25% (+2 / +3)
- Lib Dem – 9% (nc / +1)
- Green – 1% (+1 / nc)
Regional;
- SNP – 32% (nc / -10)
- Labour – 23% (nc / +4)
- Conservative – 23% (+2 / nc)
- Green – 9% (-1 / +2)
- Lib Dem – 9% (+1 / +4)
- UKIP – Not prompted
Compared to earlier in the month, this is a much poorer poll for the SNP. Not only is there no change from the relative doldrums of 32% on the list, 38% for the constituency vote is the joint lowest they’ve polled for that vote since the election; a YouGov also had them on 38% way back in mid-January.
Everyone else is looking quite rosy compared to 2016, though the Greens are the only party to come out lower on the list versus the previous poll. Oddly, UKIP haven’t been prompted for, leaving us to guess at just how much of the 4% left over is purple-tinted.
Another break from Survation trend is that Labour aren’t ahead of the Conservatives… on rounded figures, anyway. To 1 decimal place, which is more precision than is typical to report for polling here, they narrowly retained that lead.
If we project that into seats it might look like;
- SNP – 51 (-8 / -12)
- Conservative – 29 (+4 / -2)
- Labour – 29 (+2 / +5)
- Green – 10 (nc / +4)
- Lib Dem – 10 (+2 / +5)
Politics aside, how aesthetically pleasing is it having such nice, symmetrical seat shares for the Con-Lab and Green-Lib pairings?
Unsurprisingly, with the SNP on some of the lowest polling figures since 2016, they also come out with the second lowest seat count I’ve ever projected for them. The past two Survation polls reckoned there’d be a pro-Independence majority, but at 61 vs 68 for the pro-Union parties, this is more in keeping with the general trend.
In fact, this is the first time since this project started that Labour and the Lib Dems have been projected to win more constituencies than they did in 2016; albeit the usual caveats about the imprecision of projections especially per-constituency apply. The SNP would still have the lion’s share of constituencies, but at this point enough begin to chip away that only the Central, Glasgow and West regions end up risking being subject to that overhang phenomenon I’m always banging on about.
You can see how more and more constituencies are looking like they are in play on these figures by the fact 32 of them are projected to be within 10%, whereas the previous poll had 21 such close calls.
Westminster Voting Intention (Tracker)
SNP – 36% (-5 / -1)
Conservative – 27% (+1 / -2)
Labour – 26% (+2 / -1)
Lib Dem – 7% (nc / nc)
Green – 1% (+1 / +1)
For the UK Parliament, the SNP are similarly quite a bit down compared with that earlier poll, though with both the Conservatives and Labour also being down on their 2017 figures, the net effect on seats would likely be minimal.
Although they won’t win seats, it is nice for the sake of my charts that Survation have actually prompted for the Greens here – though they didn’t do UKIP.
Independence Voting Intention (Tracker)
- Yes – 41% (-2)
- No – 51% (+2)
- Don’t Know – 7% (-1)
Once Don’t Knows are excluded;
- Yes – 45% (-2 / nc)
- No – 55% (+2 / nc)
For the constitutional question, a slightly wider gap than when last polled but – surprise surprise – absolutely no change on the 2014 result.
Brexit Voting Intention
- Remain – 63% (+1)
- Leave – 32% (-1)
- Don’t Know – 5% (nc)
Once Don’t Knows are excluded;
- Remain – 66% (nc / +4)
- Leave – 34% (nc / -4)
Finally, on Brexit, absolutely no change with the last poll but as per trend showing a slightly higher preference for Remain than the 2016 referendum.
