Although we haven’t had much in the way of polling lately, it’s still been a busy auld time of it. I’ve been run off my feet with by-elections and home move stuff for the past while, though the former are beginning to slow down and the latter is largely wrapped up nicely. That’s as good a time as any for another poll to be available to analyse, which brings us to this Survation (link to tables) on behalf of Progress Scotland.
This follows only a couple of months on from their last go, so I wonder if this is going to be a new and frequent pairing? It’s also notable that they are really doing bumper samples for these: the last one was 2,000, this one is 3,000. That brings the margin of error down a little bit compared to the standard 1,000 sample poll (down by about 1.3%, to put a number on it).
The previous Survation covered the 10th – 13th of September 2024. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Regional Vote
Absolutely none of the changes here are work remarking on, as it’s all single-digit shifts which even at that large sample size is still within margin of error. That means the SNP are still a smidge ahead of Labour, the Conservatives a distant third, and there’s a real battle for fourth place. What shifts we do have means that battle has gone from an exact tie between Reform, the Greens and Lib Dems to a mere statistical tie, with Reform ticking up one and the Lib Dems down one.
Constituency Vote
Shifts over on the constituency vote are somewhat more notable, or at least, one of them is. Labour are down a fair chunk on this vote, giving the SNP a clear lead on this side of things. It’s the other Pro-Union parties that appear to gain, but as those are all single-digit increases it’s hard to say much other than that Labour’s support has likely shifted within their own constitutional camp.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
Despite the relatively small shifts on the regional vote in this poll, Labour’s constituency vote slip translates to quite a significant churn in seats. That’s because in the last poll Labour had induced quite a significant overhang, winning more constituencies than their fair proportional share. This time around that pressure on proportionality has almost entirely dissipated, and you can see that with the Gallagher Index dropping from 6.8 last time to 4.0 here. What that does, combined with the small vote upticks for them, is allow a lot more seats to go to the Conservatives and Reform than the last poll.
That would leave only two vaguely credible governing arrangements: either a grand coalition between the SNP and Labour (again, emphasise that I’m using that loosely, it doesn’t need to be a formal coalition government) or the three mainstream Pro-Union parties. Unlike some other recent polls, the Traffic Light arrangement isn’t viable, and Reform merely bolster the Pro-Union side rather than give it a majority in this projection. That’s a slightly easier arrangement to be in than directly relying on them for support.
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
The shifts versus the last poll begin are again somewhat more significant when it comes to Westminster. In an ordinary poll Labour’s three point dip would be at the edge of margin of error, but given the larger samples in both this and the last one it’s a bit more than that. As with the Holyrood constituency vote, this takes them from tied to behind the SNP. This isn’t as stark as the most recent Norstat and they’d likely still retain a clear lead in seats (even a majority) given the spread of each party’s respective vote, but this isn’t where Labour would want to be not even six months into government.
As with the Scottish Parliament figures, we see a slight increase for both the Conservatives and Reform on this vote too. For whatever reason, the Lib Dems have done very badly on this side of things, leaving them just a point ahead of the Greens, who’ve bumped up two. Even Alba are up a bit on this vote, to a level that would get them PR seats under my preferred system.
As has been the case for much of the year, the constitutional question stands in stark contrast to the support spread across parties. It remains very close between the Union and Independence, narrowing again here to everyone’s favourite 52:48 split. I know I keep banging this drum, but simply beating the SNP at one (or a handful) of elections clearly is not in and of itself going to reduce support for Independence.
No amount of tallying up the vote for Pro-Union parties in other bits of the poll and gleefully tweeting that number is going to substitute for actually selling a compelling vision to voters! If you want to resolve this question (one way or the other, this advice really applies to both sides) then you need to give people a reason to firmly settle in your camp.
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
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