Great news in the Daily Mail, what a great poll for the SNP! When I heard that the Daily Mali had commissioned a Scottish poll in the middle of the brouhaha caused by the opposition haverings over al-Megrahi, I feared we would be staring into the abyss - from halfway down. Instead I had a rather pleasant surprise, as you can see from Yougov:
Westminster figures
SNP on 25% - up 7.34% on our performance in the last UK General Election - and 2 points up on the Scottish sub-sample in August
Labour on 33% - down 5.87% on 2005
Cons on 19% - up 3.17%
Lib Dems on 16% - down 6.63%
Holyrood constituency
SNP tops it on 33% - up .07% on 2007
Labour 31% - down 1.17% on 2007
Cons 16% - down .6%
Lib Dem 16% - down .17%
Holyrood Additional Member
SNP 27% - down 4% on 2007
Lab 28% - down 1.96% on 2007
Con 17% - up 4.09%
Lib Dem 15% - up 3.7%
Greens 6% - up 1.96%
Best First Minister
Salmond 32%
None of them 24%
Don't know 16%
Gray 12%
Goldie 11%
Scott 6%
Harvie 1%
Interesting that Gray is only one point ahead of Goldie, and that both 'None of them' and 'Don't know' beat both of them and Tavish Scott into an assemblage of cocked hats.
Independence
Temproarily down to 28% - it'll be back up to 78% soon (go on, you know you want to).
Megrahi
Right/wrong - 43/51, 6% dk. MacAskill should stay - 62% or go - 32%
Pretty good, considering the faux fury at the time.
9 comments:
Outstanding Calum, buy that man a beer!
Sarcasm, or your most reality-detached post ever?
The Megrahi bit proves what I've said all along - a fairly even split, not the overwhelming opposition to MacAskill's decision that Iain Gray was talking about the other day. If you look at the margin of error, it could be pretty much 50/50 - and I find that the 50 against are generally easily persuaded.
That said, heavens, Calum, you must be terrified of Kevin Lang. The Lib Dems have gone up 4% since the last poll - a huge amount,a third of our previous rating, a 33% increase - but that's not enough for you - you chose to compare it to 2005. We generally go up quite a lot during the course of a campaign, so I think that the 16% isn't a million miles away from where we started the campaign in 05.
Remember that in 2007, on what was not a brilliant day for us, we had a healthy swing to us in North and Leith. This and today's poll just shows that Kevin Lang is in pole position to take the seat from Labour.
Oh dear Calum, some of the SNP completely disapprove of the Daily Mail. Ye'll be blacklisted. ;)
Good poll though.
I have to admit the polls have been kind to the SNP and as you say, a Daily Mail polls of all polls.
lol, yeh the independence poll goes up and down like a Yoyo..
Caron, no-one's afraid of Kevin. From our canvass it looks like he'll be third or fourth, depending on how the Conservatives perform. If the Greens stand a candidate they'll be competing for third as well, so Kevin could end up fifth. Lib Dems appear to be losing votes across Edinburgh hand over fist at the moment - as showed up in the Euro result.
I'm told by people in other constituencies that they see the same thing happening - Edinburgh East has become a two-way contest between the SNP and Labour, Edinburgh South and Edinburgh South West between Labour and the Conservatives with us making up ground and looking to be in the contest when it comes, North and Leith is SNP/Labour and a fair way back to the Conservatives currently shading in third place.
The most interesting contest might actually be Edinburgh West where both the SNP and the Conservatives have made up an awful lot of ground in recent years (the Euro result showed Lib Dem 24.1%, Con 22.2% and SNP 20.5%) and the race was on between us to see who could be first to overtake the Lib Dems. John Barrett ducking out makes it even more interesting - I don't know whether the Conservatives will wing any central party resources at it, but I do know that the local Conservative party in Edinburgh West want to take back the seat they lost in 1997 and have been working their lists. Sheena Cleland, the SNP candidate in Edinburgh West, has been working hard and seems to have got some traction, building on the hard work of our councillors out that way. Sheena's been sharpening her elbows to fend off the Conservative challenge, but it's going to be some battle between them to see which one takes over John Barrett's seat.
I think the lurch to shrill authoritarianism that the Lib Dems have gone through under Nicol Stephen and Tavish Scott in Scotland and under Nick Clegg in UK terms has been damaging for the Edinburgh party, and I've got friends in the Lib Dems down south who feel that their party is misfiring because it now talks more about winning seats than about what it stands for. I think they'd probably join the SNP if they lived here. The Lib Dems need to get liberalism back into the heart of the party before the Rennard lunacy destroys what they are, leaving an empty shell. There are good people in the Lib Dems in Edinburgh but they're not the ones coming forward as Parliamentary candidates - with the exception of Gordon MacKenzie (if he's standing again) and John Edward if he wins the nomination in Edinburgh West.
I'm confident in the work that the SNP is doing. We're heading in the right direction, we've got campaigning to do and hearts and minds to win yet, but I'm very happy with where we are in North and Leith and I'm looking forward to polling day.
You could always join us, you know ...
Calum
Well even if you apply the changes in vote share to Edinburgh North and Leith from the Daily Mail Poll, you still get the SNP coming a distant fourth, with the Lib Dems challenging Labour:
Labour 23.86 (-5.87)
LibDem 22.55 (-6.63)
Conservative 21.86 (+3.17)
SNP 17.53 (+7.34)
Re shrill authoritarianism, who was it that wanted to ban 18-21 year olds buying alcohol in off licences?
If polls were voters you might have a point...
Raising the minimum age of purchase for off-sales is, of course, born of a deep and abiding concern for the well-being of Scotland youth.
I don't think John Edward will get the chance, we will see soon enough
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