The Month in Polling: an SNP majority, but no “Independence Supermajority” yet

In the three weeks since we last looked at Scottish polling, Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the Ministerial Code only to be slammed by a partisan Parliamentary Inquiry, and survived a No Confidence Vote that even Labour and the Liberal Democrats decided appeared ridiculous. Alex Salmond launched his bid to return to Parliament with a pro-independence splinter party, which has at least managed to unite all the other splinter parties behind it, and the first setpiece Leaders Debate took place.

And it’s the SNP and Greens who are gaining the most from events: last month I was projecting that the SNP would win 66 seats (a majority of three, and a net gain of three against 2016) and the Greens would win 8 (a net gain of two). This time it’s 67 and 9 respectively, pushing the pro-independence total to 76 seats. The Tories and Labour look like incurring further losses: last time I had the Tories on 28 (a drop of 3), now it’s 27. I had Labour on 22 (a drop of two), and now they stand at 21. The LibDems remain at five, their 2016 total.

Glasgow is where the extra Green seat looks likely to come from, with the vacancy left by Tory Adam Tomkins being filled not by Sandesh Gulhane — second on the Conservative List — but by Kim Long, who will join Patrick Harvie. The other big change looks set to be in the North East, where Fergus Mutch is now in pole position to win back Aberdeenshire West for the SNP. However, Alexander Burnett is high enough on the Tory Regional List that he’ll return to Holyrood in any case, and the Tories now look set to hold on to their four Regional seats. With Maggie Chapman still looking likely to gain a Regional seat for the Greens, it’s Labour who look like losing one of their seats, with Mercedes Villalba looking likely to lose out.

But the big wildcard is, of course, Alba. Out of the eight polling companies to have completed and published opinion polls in the last six weeks, only two have come out since Alex Salmond announced his candidacy with the party. One of them, by Survation, put Alba on 3%: not enough to win any seats, but certainly enough to act either as a minor spoiler for the SNP in the Highlands & Islands, or a major spoiler for the Greens nearly everywhere else. Another poll, published this weekend by Panelbase, put them on 6%: enough for six seats, three of which would come at the expense of Tories, and one at Labour’s expense (the SNP and Greens would each miss out on an extra seat as well).

Interestingly, at the other end of the Scottish political spectrum, Panelbase detected support for a party led by another old hand at Westminster, with George Galloway’s All For Unity polling at 4%. Again, this isn’t enough to win them any seats, but combined with the presence of Alba, looks like acting as a spoiler for the Unionist parties. Galloway has identified there being three major Unionist parties competing for the same vote as a problem, has identified an umbrella party as the solution, but not predicted the outcome, that there would now be four Unionist parties competing for the same vote.

At this time we don’t yet have enough data to factor Alba or AFU into the Nowcast properly… Hopefully that will evolve over the next week.

Hartlepool: the Wildcard By-Election

I’m currently predicting a Labour hold in Hartlepool, but that’s driven by swings in nationwide opinion polling. The lead is small enough to be overwhelmed by former Brexit Party voters switching to the Tories, but the question is, will that actually happen?

The projections suggest a Reform UK vote share in Hartlepool of 22% but that strikes me as incredibly soft, and reliant on voters making the connection between Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, and Richard Tice’s Reform UK. The more that happens, the harder the Tories’ job gets.

But even if voters do peel away from Reform, there’s no guarantee that they’ll actually go to the Tories. There are parts of the Red Wall where former Labour voters have used UKIP and the Brexit Party as a gateway to voting for anyone but Labour, even the Conservatives. And some right wing voices have pointed to Labour’s opposition to Brexit at the referendum and argued that voters have long memories. But voters’ memories may be longer than those voices believe: there are plenty who haven’t forgotten or forgiven the Thatcher years either. It’s entirely possible that without a credible non-Tory alternative, voters could revert to old habits.

Hartlepool does have a history of sticking it to Labour: in the days when the Borough had a directly-elected Mayor, it kept electing independent candidate Stuart Drummond, originally H’Angus the Monkey, the mascot at Hartlepool United. Now, the Borough is run by a coalition of Independents (who briefly dabbled with the Brexit Party) and Conservatives, though the Conservatives are the junior partner. And at the last election in 2019, the Tories could only field five candidates when there were 11 seats available, which suggests that the local organisation isn’t great — a suspicion reinforced by the choice of a candidate from Hambleton in Yorkshire. Labour might — might — get away with it.

Indeed, the biggest threat to them doing so might come from disaffected Labour supporters taking their chances with the Northern Independence Party. They’ve been making a lot of noise on social media (though that noise is largely, “Hur hur, Keith Starmer, lol”) and have selected a former Labour MP as their candidate, but we don’t yet have any indication if their online presence is backed up on the ground. And there’s no real polling data to suggest that they’re having an impact, but that begs the question as to whether it’s the data or the impact that is missing. But certainly, Labour activists will be hoping that after the result, the NIP is the whippet that didn’t bark.

Airdrie & Shotts: it’s happening. That is all.

There’s not much to say here: this seat used to be a Labour stronghold but the writing was on the wall when the equivalent Holyrood constituency fell to the SNP’s Alex Neil in 2011. The Westminster constituency was caught up in the 2015 landslide, and remained in SNP hands in 2017 when Labour managed a modest recovery. As things stand, there’s no serious prospect of this changing hands, but don’t forget that it’s scheduled for a week after the Scottish Parliament elections. Again, with the SNP looking to gain seats and Labour expected to lose them, you would assume that the SNP will have the momentum going into the final week of the By-Election campaign.

Westminster polling: Labour recovering in Northern England

The polls look slightly less bad for Labour than they did this time last month: the size of the projected Tory has dropped by ten, with Labour looking at 221 seats versus 219 last month. Keir Starmer will be relieved to see that the swing against Labour in Northern England has been neutralised, enough for the loss of five Northern seats to turn into five gains, four of which are clustered in northern Greater Manchester. Polling companies that break the North into its three Government Regions are still recording a small swing to the Tories in the North East, but it’s no longer enough to cause any losses.

More disappointing news comes for Starmer in Wales, where Labour’s net losses are increasing, London, where Labour’s net gains appear to have been wiped out, as has the projected gain Labour were looking at against the SNP in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath. At the moment it looks like the SNP would now regain that from Neale Hanvey, who defected to Alba last week.

Indeed, the SNP are probably the ones cheering Westminster polls at the moment (even if you disregard Kantar putting them on 7% of the GB-wide vote): perhaps the start of the Holyrood campaign has boosted them, but the net losses to Labour and the Tories projected last month have this month turned into net gains from the LibDems. The one ray of light for the LibDems is they’re now set to hold on to all their seats in England.

All in all, the Tories’ recent momentum has stalled, but with the next big release from lockdown due next week, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they experience another bounce. Labour will just have to be patient, and hope they can recover lost ground in time for Polling Day.