SNP take clear lead in Scotland

Peter KellnerPresident
May 16, 2011, 3:50 AM GMT+0

One month ago, Labour looked set fair to achieve a triple triumph on May 5: 1,000 gains in English local council contests, outright victory in Wales and, the biggest prize of all, returning to power in Scotland.

Wales and England still look good for Labour, but Scotland could be the one that gets away. YouGov’s latest survey shows the SNP with a 13 point lead in the constituency section and a ten point lead in the regional section.

For much of last year, Labour and the SNP were level-pegging. Then, last autumn, Labour took the lead in Scotland, just as it moved into a lead over the Conservatives in Britain as a whole. Labour retained its lead in Scotland until mid-March, since when the SNP has made steady and substantial gains. But this time, the change has NOT been matched in Britain as a whole, where Labour remains comfortably, though not vastly, ahead of the Tories.

How do we explain Labour’s slump in Scotland? Here are figures from two YouGov polls conducted six months apart.

As far as Westminster is concerned, Labour’s support has remained much the same, slightly more than the 42% it achieved in last May’s general election. In net terms, there has been a modest swing from Conservative to SNP – nothing to get to get too excited about.

But the story in the constituency section of Holyrood is very different. Here, Labour’s support is down eight points, while the SNP is up 11 points. From a comfortable six-point lead and the prospect of a return to government, Labour has collapsed to a 13-point deficit and the danger of a crushing defeat.

Two things are dragging Labour’s support down. The first is that people who would vote Labour in a general election are less likely than Conservative or SNP supporters to turn out next week. 70% of general-election Labour voters say they are certain to vote next week, compared with 75% of SNP voters and 80% of Conservative voters.

Secondly, and more seriously, one in five people who would vote Labour for Westminster say they plan to vote SNP next week. That amounts to up to 200,000 voters, or an average of almost 3,000 per constituency. (The SNP is picking up similar proportions of general-election Tory and Lib Dem voters, though the absolute numbers involved are far smaller)

In short, it’s not that Labour’s support as a Britain-wide party has declined: it’s the prospect of the party regaining power at Holyrood that turns many Scots off. One factor is that the campaign has raised the profiles of both Alex Salmond, the SNP First Minister, and Iain Gray, Labour’s leader – and Gray has suffered in comparison. On a head-to-head comparison, when Scots are asked who would make the better first minster, Salmond leads Gray by two-to-one.

Recent movements have been so sharp that Labour must hope that volatility works for them in the final days of this campaign, and that most voters who think of themselves as basically Labour will return home – prompted, perhaps, by Labour’s local ability, demonstrated last May, to get its vote out. But if these things don’t happen, Labour is heading for a bad defeat. Even Gray himself could be in trouble. It would take a swing of just 3.5% to the SNP for him to lose his own seat of East Lothian. Currently the Scotland-wide swing from Labour to the SNP is 6%.