Tuesday 17 February 2009

Excellent opinion poll

The latest Times' Populus opinion poll is fantastic. The Scotland sample, with an enormous population of 136 unweighted, is excellent news for the SNP, bringing us in at 31%. Even better is when the sample is weighted and drops to 85 (yup, below a tenth of what you need for a decent result), and the results are:

SNP 42%
Con 20%
Lab 19%
LD 15%
Green 2%

There you have it! Crank up electoral calculus and you get a Scotland result of

SNP 47 seats (including North & Leith)
Con 3 seats
Lab 1 seat
LD 8 seats.

That'll do fine, thanks. If only real elections were this easy ...

The wee things:
Labour would keep only Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill
How would the Lib Dems manage to hold onto 8?
Cons would take out Jim Murphy and Russell Brown.
Nats would be Nat-tastic (of course) all across the country, removing Danny Alexander, Malcolm Bruce, Des Browne and Gordon Brown.

An excellent poll, even if the confidence interval might be *ahem* a little on the large side. Having said that, I was at a meeting of about 1,000 people in October where everyone was intending to vote SNP - conference is very unified these days.

Just for a laugh, let's put the poll results through the European election:
SNP 42%
Con 20%
Lab 19%
LD 15%
SNP first seat (highest vote) SNP calculation is 42/2 = 21
SNP second seat. SNP calculation is now 42/3 = 14
Con third seat. Con calc is now 20/2 = 10
Lab fourth seat. Lab calc is now 19/2 = 9.5
LD fifth seat. LD calc is now 15/2 = 7.5
SNP sixth and final seat.

SNP three seats, each of the other parties one. I think 2% probably underestimates the Greens, though, let's give the Greens another couple of points from the Lib Dems (the Greens quite often take votes from the Lib Dems):
SNP 42%
Con 20%
Lab 19%
LD 13%
SNP first seat (highest vote) SNP calculation is 42/2 = 21
SNP second seat. SNP calculation is now 42/3 = 14
Con third seat. Con calc is now 20/2 = 10
Lab fourth seat. Lab calc is now 19/2 = 9.5
SNP fifth seat. SNP calc is now 42/4 = 10.5
SNP sixth and final seat.

SNP 4 seats, Conservatives 1 seat and Labour 1 seat. I like that!

Mind how you go!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Things are getting dire for them when you consider the porkies
in this list of Labour's latest spin

With these follow ups.

Glasgow Labour's school policy

Iain Gray undermined

Calum Cashley said...

I've got sympathy for councils looking at their school estate and wondering where to start after decades of negligible investment followed by the farce of PFI/PPP creating schools which are not fit for purpose, built on the cheap with all corners cut as architects have pointed out.

Mr Purcell is being a tad disingenuous but, to be fair, his other option was pinning the blame where it really lies - on his own party and that would hardly help him to do what he really wants to do in politics - stay leader of Glasgow Council until he gets to open the 2014 Commonwealth Games - paid for by ...