United Kingdom General Election 2024 : (Date to be confirmed)

[Conservatopia]

30 point lead? Any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead.

[Torrain]

A trio of Scottish polls have been released, each showing an SNP -> Labour swing. Norstat and Savanta both record their first lead for Scottish Labour:

• Savanta: 4% Lab lead
• Norstat: 5% Lab lead
• YouGov: 1% Lab lead

All polling was conducted between the coalition break-up and Swinney assuming office as First Minister, so he may steady the ship and recover a lead. It does appear in line with the medium-term, though:


See here for full details, and links to cross tabs.

[DL]

A trio of Scottish polls have been released, each showing an SNP -> Labour swing. Norstat and Savanta both record their first lead for Scottish Labour:

• Savanta: 4% Lab lead
• Norstat: 5% Lab lead
• YouGov: 1% Lab lead

All polling was conducted between the coalition break-up and Swinney assuming office as First Minister, so he may steady the ship and recover a lead. It does appear in line with the medium-term, though:


See here for full details, and links to cross tabs.

Make that a quartet of polls - Redfield and Wilton just released a poll showing Labour leading the SNP 38-31 - needless to say this would give Labour a sh**t load of seats in Scotland and the SNP would lose dozens and dozens

[Pres Mike]

A trio of Scottish polls have been released, each showing an SNP -> Labour swing. Norstat and Savanta both record their first lead for Scottish Labour:

• Savanta: 4% Lab lead
• Norstat: 5% Lab lead
• YouGov: 1% Lab lead

All polling was conducted between the coalition break-up and Swinney assuming office as First Minister, so he may steady the ship and recover a lead. It does appear in line with the medium-term, though:


See here for full details, and links to cross tabs.

Make that a quarter of polls - Redfield and Wilton just released a poll showing Labour leading the SNP 38-31 - needless to say this would give Labour a sh**t load of seats in Scotland and the SNP would lose dozens and dozens

Doesn't Labour need seats in Scotland to form a majority? I don't know why someone in Scotland would vote for the SNP in the general election. Independence isn't going to happen and you are throwing away your votes to help one of the main parties form a majority. Its like voting third party in the US

[Oryxslayer]

A trio of Scottish polls have been released, each showing an SNP -> Labour swing. Norstat and Savanta both record their first lead for Scottish Labour:

• Savanta: 4% Lab lead
• Norstat: 5% Lab lead
• YouGov: 1% Lab lead

All polling was conducted between the coalition break-up and Swinney assuming office as First Minister, so he may steady the ship and recover a lead. It does appear in line with the medium-term, though:


See here for full details, and links to cross tabs.

Make that a quarter of polls - Redfield and Wilton just released a poll showing Labour leading the SNP 38-31 - needless to say this would give Labour a sh**t load of seats in Scotland and the SNP would lose dozens and dozens

Doesn't Labour need seats in Scotland to form a majority? I don't know why someone in Scotland would vote for the SNP in the general election. Independence isn't going to happen and you are throwing away your votes to help one of the main parties form a majority. Its like voting third party in the US

If we are looking at the 2014-2019 political era, yes. Scottish seats were theoretically necessary for Labour to win, and the SNP's existence therefore was just one reason why many noted how unfavorable the political geography had become for Labour. Labour "wasting" many votes while not being able to win more than 1 Scottish seat hurt when converting votes to seats in FPTP. You have to remember though to look at things from the perspective of Scotland and Scottish voters: voters who support the SNP (or other such parties at times in Catalonia, Quebec, Flanders, etc) don't see themselves in the other parties. It's not voting third party if voters behaving differently in this devolved region makes Scotland into a Unionist - Nationalist duopoly rather than a Labour - Tory one.

Now though? Labour could easily win a majority without Scotland. If Reform voters end up back with the Conservatives, Scotland is merely the difference between beating or matching Blair's result. If the Conservative voters remains split, then the SNP could win every Scottish Seat and Labour still would be pushing 500.

However, Labour are likely at the moment (and probably the future since a GE is not too far) are going to probably win the most seats in Scotland. And it may not be close. Remember how Labour were wasting votes in SNP-held seats? Well that means there are many central-belt areas where things get interesting if the SNP-Labour margin narrows even by a bit like in 2017.  And it has narrowed considerably over many months of SNP infighting, criminal investigations, as well as Labour just doing well nationally. Add on the fact that approximately half of Labour's current vote is primed along with the other unionist electorates to vote tactically against the SNP, depending on the seat, and things are very complicated for the SNP in a GE. The SNP hasn't won a local by-election this year, and there have been many. And they lost Rutherglen Westminster By-Election in a landside thanks to all these factors. Maybe things will be different in two years after Labour take power and are the national incumbents, but there is a good chance the situation stays the same.

[DL]

I don't know why someone in Scotland would vote for the SNP in the general election. Independence isn't going to happen and you are throwing away your votes to help one of the main parties form a majority. Its like voting third party in the US

I will bring in a Canadian perspective here. From 1993 to 2011, the Bloc Quebecois (sort of the Quebec equivalent of the SNP in Scotland) kept winning about 50 out of 75 Quebec seats in federal elections (there are always about 20 seats they can never win because they have too many non-Francophones in the them). But by 2011 people in Quebec became susceptible to the argument that electing do-nothing BQ MPs at the federal level was a waste - it was not advancing the cause of Quebec sovereignty and it was also disempowering Quebec in the federal government by having MPs that would be in perpetuel opposition - so in 2011 the BQ crashed from 52 seats to just 4 seats and they did almost as badly in 2015 when Trudeau swept Quebec and people wanted to get rid of the Tories.

All of which is to say that when people in Scotland vote in the national election this year and there is a wave of revulsion at the Tories and a desire for a change of government - I strongly suspect that a lot of Scots are going to want to jump on the Labour bandwagon and have seats at the table in the new government as opposed to electing a bunch of useless do-nothing SNP opposition backbenchers. If I was a Scot and supported independence, I'd happily vote SNP in Holyrood elections and I'd happily vote Yes in a referendum on independence - but in a Westminster election I think I'd vote Labour since that's who I want running the UK when the only other choice is the Tories.  Its not like there is no history of Scotland voting Labour - there was lots of support for independence in the 90s and 00s - but in 1997 when Scots had a chance to help dump the Tories, they elected almost nothing but Labour MPs. Why couldn't it happen again?

[Torrain]

I think that's a pretty salient comparison, and seems to be broadly upheld by the shift in polling since 2022. We've seen independence topline numbers stay pretty stagnant, and decouple from the declining SNP vote.

Further to that point, Holyrood polling has tended to show the SNP vote holding up better, supporting DL's suggestion that Labour might be receiving "borrowed" votes from SNP supporters.

See for instance, that while the Westminster elections of 2015/17/19 showed massive swings, the Holyrood elections of 2016 and 2021 showed barely a 1% swing between the major parties.

In the past few months, we have started to see the odd Lab lead in the PR list vote for Holyrood, and the first polls showing a narrow Lab lead in the constituency vote (the SNP's best metric) for the first time since 2014, were only released in the past week or two.

While there's a chance a competent Swinney government, and an incompetent Starmer government, could reverse/slow the trend, voters seem to be slowly shifting towards a "time for a change" mode in both parliaments.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Reports from Tory HQ suggests that the official 20:80 campaign is now being changed to 20:200, with every tory seat with less than 15,000 majority being marked as vulnerable and being given extra party support (and some seats with a higher majority - they mention Weston-Super-Mare in particular).

[Tintrlvr]

Reports from Tory HQ suggests that the official 20:80 campaign is now being changed to 20:200, with every tory seat with less than 15,000 majority being marked as vulnerable and being given extra party support (and some seats with a higher majority - they mention Weston-Super-Mare in particular).

And how long until every seat with a sub-5,000 majority gets cut off?

[TheTide]

Reports from Tory HQ suggests that the official 20:80 campaign is now being changed to 20:200, with every tory seat with less than 15,000 majority being marked as vulnerable and being given extra party support (and some seats with a higher majority - they mention Weston-Super-Mare in particular).

In swing terms I make that roughly 15% or less.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

I think it's the SNP held marginals; and they hope that the Nats will just fail even harder than they are.

[politicallefty]

I will bring in a Canadian perspective here. From 1993 to 2011, the Bloc Quebecois (sort of the Quebec equivalent of the SNP in Scotland) kept winning about 50 out of 75 Quebec seats in federal elections (there are always about 20 seats they can never win because they have too many non-Francophones in the them). But by 2011 people in Quebec became susceptible to the argument that electing do-nothing BQ MPs at the federal level was a waste - it was not advancing the cause of Quebec sovereignty and it was also disempowering Quebec in the federal government by having MPs that would be in perpetuel opposition - so in 2011 the BQ crashed from 52 seats to just 4 seats and they did almost as badly in 2015 when Trudeau swept Quebec and people wanted to get rid of the Tories.

I think that's a very good point, but Quebec in 2011 didn't happen in a vacuum. The Liberal Party was also decimated (and tbh, to this day, I'm rather amazed they managed to pull themselves back together). I also remember following that election and I recall that the Conservatives were not expected to win a Majority Government (doing so without even needing Quebec at all). After all, the Conservatives were toppled on a no-confidence vote. I hadn't actually thought about it before, but if the Bloc had held on, it could've been something similar to 1993 except with the Conservatives winning and the left split.

Your point is a good one and should be worse for the SNP. In Canada, the NDP winning the lion's share of the seats in Quebec was a fluke (they'd only ever won a single riding in the province before 2011). I don't think I need to mention what Scotland's political paradigm looked like before 2015. With Labour likely to win for the first time in a long time, I could certainly see Scotland wanting to be a part of government.

[CumbrianLefty]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

Levido apparently told Tory HQ just this week that "it is going to be a hung parliament at least".

[Flyersfan232]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

Levido apparently told Tory HQ just this week that "it is going to be a hung parliament at least".

tory hq right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-YDV6vC2qo

[TheTide]

Remember that Michael Heseltine (the then-Deputy Prime Minister, no less) predicted a Tory majority of 40 just before the 1997 general election.

[icc]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

I'm living in Bedford atm and they are still putting out a large amount of literature (all delivered via Royal Mail, needless to say). It really is the mark of an incredibly clueless national campaign.

[Conservatopia]

I think Tory HQ and most of the MPs know that it will likely be a Labour landslide. The base is definitely aware.

The thing is if you're the Tories you CANNOT admit this openly. You have to pretend there's still a chance otherwise people will just not vote or vote Reform.

The idea of "lol deluded tories think they can win this" is funny but not true. Tories know they will lose - but admitting this would simply increase the scale of the defeat.

The aim seems to be to keep above 200 seats if possible (200 seats is itself a devastation) so that there is a base to build from over the next 5-10 years.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The thing is if you're the Tories you CANNOT admit this openly. You have to pretend there's still a chance otherwise people will just not vote or vote Reform.

In Australia this is now known as the Zak Kirkup rule. It turns out that conceding an election two weeks before polling day destroys your entire campaign and gives your base no reason to vote for you.

[xelas81]

The thing is if you're the Tories you CANNOT admit this openly. You have to pretend there's still a chance otherwise people will just not vote or vote Reform.

In Australia this is now known as the Zak Kirkup rule. It turns out that conceding an election two weeks before polling day destroys your entire campaign and gives your base no reason to vote for you.