Scottish Parliament Election, 6th May 2021

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To be held on May 6th.

This year the election will carry more significance than it normally would, given that if the Scottish National Party does as well as Nicola Sturgeon anticipates they will (especially in the wake of Brexit), it will pave the way for a second independence referendum.

How well does everyone anticipate the Scottish National Party to do in this year's upcoming election contests to the Scottish Parliament?  Can the SNP at least match their 2011 performance?  

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From mid-January, so I am surprised no one has posted this yet:

Scottish nationalists set for record majority, boosting independence push

The SNP is expected to win 71 of 129 seats in the Scottish parliament, eight seats more than it won in the last election in 2016, according to the poll carried out by Savanta ComRes and published in The Scotsman newspaper.

The only other time the SNP has won a majority was in 2011 when it won 69 seats under former leader Alex Salmond.

Johnson’s Conservative Party may lose 14 seats in the Scottish parliament and the opposition Labour Party may lose three, the poll found, leaving the Conservatives with 17 seats and the Labour Party with 21.

If you're a unionist, the news is grim. 

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From mid-January, so I am surprised no one has posted this yet:

Scottish nationalists set for record majority, boosting independence push

The SNP is expected to win 71 of 129 seats in the Scottish parliament, eight seats more than it won in the last election in 2016, according to the poll carried out by Savanta ComRes and published in The Scotsman newspaper.

The only other time the SNP has won a majority was in 2011 when it won 69 seats under former leader Alex Salmond.

Johnson’s Conservative Party may lose 14 seats in the Scottish parliament and the opposition Labour Party may lose three, the poll found, leaving the Conservatives with 17 seats and the Labour Party with 21.

If you're a unionist, the news is grim.  

whats the good news for unionist?

The increasingly public civil war going on between SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, and former leader Alex Salmond:





It probably won't make much difference in terms of this upcoming election, but it could be fatal to hopes of Scottish independence.  

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Reminds me of Chantal Hébert's book The Morning After.Turns out that on the night Québec was only a couple thousand votes away from voting to separate from Canada, premier Jacques Parizeau and Bloc leader Lucien Bouchard weren't even on speaking terms, in addition to having completely contradictory plans to achieve independence, to the extent they had any plans at all.

I'd support the SNP if I were Scottish, but sadly it wouldn't surprise me to find out that there's this kind of chaos behind the scenes.

I personally think Scotland is better off in the longer-term remaining under the aegis of the United Kingdom for primarily economic reasons, even if the arrogance of their English neighbors can be grating at times.    

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From mid-January, so I am surprised no one has posted this yet:

Scottish nationalists set for record majority, boosting independence push

The SNP is expected to win 71 of 129 seats in the Scottish parliament, eight seats more than it won in the last election in 2016, according to the poll carried out by Savanta ComRes and published in The Scotsman newspaper.

The only other time the SNP has won a majority was in 2011 when it won 69 seats under former leader Alex Salmond.

Johnson’s Conservative Party may lose 14 seats in the Scottish parliament and the opposition Labour Party may lose three, the poll found, leaving the Conservatives with 17 seats and the Labour Party with 21.

If you're a unionist, the news is grim.  

Now it looks like though the SNP will still win an overall majority, they will have even less seats than they did ten years ago:

SNP could win narrow majority in Scottish election, poll suggests
The SNP could win a narrow majority of seats after the Scottish Parliament elections, a poll suggests.

Survation’s opinion poll for the Daily Record found Nicola Sturgeon’s party would win 67 seats at the election on May 6.

The poll put the other parties on a total of 62 seats, giving the SNP a majority of five.

This is based on the party taking an average of 50 per cent of the constituency vote and 38 per cent of the regional list vote.

Fieldwork for the poll of 1,011 Scots was carried out on Thursday and Friday last week.

It suggests Scottish Labour would win 24 MSPs at the Holyrood elections with 20 per cent of the constituency vote, though the polling was carried out before Anas Sarwar was elected as the new leader of the party.

The Conservatives would lose their spot as the largest opposition party despite receiving 21 per cent of the constituency vote, going from 31 to 21 MSPs.

The Scottish Greens would go from six to 11 MSPs while the Scottish Liberal Democrats would gain one MSP, giving them a total of six.

If these polls go down even lower, that makes the likelihood of another independence referendum even dimmer. 

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Scottish Lawmakers Find Sturgeon Misled Parliament, Sky Reports

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon misled parliament when giving evidence to a committee investigating her government’s mishandling of harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond, Sky News and other British media reported.

The cross-party inquiry, which will publish its findings on March 23, found that Sturgeon gave an inaccurate account of what happened when she gave evidence earlier this month, the broadcaster said, without saying where it got the information. The decision by the Scottish Parliamentary committee was reached by a majority vote, Sky said.

Significantly, the lawmakers didn’t conclude that she knowingly misled parliament, Sky said. A breach of the ministerial code of that nature normally would be a resignation matter. A second, independent inquiry by a former Irish director of public prosecutions is looking into whether Sturgeon broke the code.

The Scottish Parliament said the Harassment Committee was still finalizing its report and would make no comment ahead of its publication.

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A nice campaign video for you all from an independent candidate, though I feel the non-Brits might not get it as intended.

His appearance reminds me of someone:

 

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Poll tracker: how will SNP fare in Scotland’s May elections?

The Scottish National party is on course to be the largest group in the Scottish parliament after May elections, although it may struggle to secure an overall majority, according to a poll of polls by the Financial Times.

(...) Analysts said the move on Friday by former first minister Alex Salmond to launch a new pro-independence party called Alba could deprive the SNP of an overall majority in the Scottish parliament after the elections. The FT poll tracker has yet to take account of Alba.

Opinion polls for the 73 Scottish parliament constituencies show the SNP and Conservatives narrowly ahead of their results at the last election in 2016.

The SNP, which gained power in Scotland in 2007, will be targeting Labour-held seats such as Dumbarton, East Lothian and Edinburgh Southern. The SNP will also be hoping to seize the marginal constituency of Edinburgh Central from the Conservatives.

A further 56 members of the Scottish parliament are elected from party lists drawn from eight regions.

The latest polls put the parties in a very similar position to the last election. The surveys suggest the Greens might do well enough to ensure there is a pro-independence majority in Edinburgh even if the SNP fails to achieve one on its own, although this does not factor in Alba’s impact.

Support for independence seems to have flagged a bit recently:

Scotland is evenly split on its key constitutional question, with polls showing supporters and opponents of independence almost exactly level. Backing for Scottish independence increased during 2020 and averaged above 50 per cent for a time before dropping in recent months.

Analysts said the fall in support for independence may be partly due to the UK’s successful coronavirus vaccine rollout. A bitter rift between Sturgeon and Salmond could also be a factor.

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So what's the likelihood the SNP can win the 69 seat majority it had in 2011, if not higher? 

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I guess this answers my earlier question:

Scottish election 2021: Hopes for SNP majority continue to fade as more support slips away, shows poll
SNP hopes of a majority at next month’s Holyrood elections continue to fade as another poll shows the party is set to narrowly miss out on returning more than 65 MSPs.

Also, if you push the undecideds, there is actually a narrow majority against independence. 

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I recall reading in an opinion page suggesting that one way the United Kingdom government could cut the legs out from under the Scottish independence movement is to offer Scotland the opportunity to join the European Single Market:

There is, however, a halfway house that London could offer Scotland. It is clear that, whatever the UK may gain from leaving the EU, the cost of leaving Europe’s single market is crippling. The current disruption may tail off but the idea of an economic or commercial benefit from leaving the single market seems absurd. Not a week passes without some new lunacy on border controls, migrant workers, supply chains or bureaucracy. The “hardness” of Brexit was a thoughtless gimmick by a bunch of cronies to seize control of the Conservatives.

If imaginative thinking could be found, perhaps a way to placate some of the discontent, then, is for Scotland to join the two Irelands in that existing single market. It need not leave the UK or join the EU. It would form with Ireland an economic “Celtic crescent” across the Irish Sea. Belfast would trade freely with Glasgow, Edinburgh with Rotterdam and Hamburg. Scotland’s economy would remain open to Europe and doubtless draw new investments and business as a result.

One price is obvious. There would have to be some sort of customs barrier north of Hadrian’s Wall. There would be checks and there would be bureaucracy – as now between Norway and Sweden. But that is England’s fault for rejecting single market status. The Cheviot Hills could be a more manageable border than the still putative one on the island of Ireland.

How likely is that?  It seems a reasonable compromise to me.    

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I guess this answers my earlier question:

Scottish election 2021: Hopes for SNP majority continue to fade as more support slips away, shows poll
SNP hopes of a majority at next month’s Holyrood elections continue to fade as another poll shows the party is set to narrowly miss out on returning more than 65 MSPs.

Also, if you push the undecideds, there is actually a narrow majority against independence.  

Sort of. There's a YouGov poll that's much better for the SNP.

On indy, there has been narrowing and now reversal. It's possible that there's a vaccine rollout boost for 'the union'; the same energy that's keeping the Tories popular nationwide. It's possible that Salmond on the scene has went down like a cup of cold sick with soft Yes voters.

I don't know about YouGov, but Survation is indeed showing much better results for the SNP, and Scottish Labour. And much to my satisfaction, Alex Salmond is proving to be less popular than PM Boris Johnson:

Election 2021: SNP 'on course for five-seat majority with Labour in second'

A fresh survey of voting intentions and the popularity of party leaders suggests the SNP is on course to win a five-seat majority at Holyrood – with the Scottish Greens the biggest threat of denying Nicola Sturgeon’s party total control.  

Scottish Labour are set to climb to second place above the conservatives – but Mr Salmond’s attempt to return to politics is set to crash and burn with voters unimpressed with his Alba party.  

The poll also found that support for Scottish independence remains on a knife-edge, with 51% opposed and 49% in favour. However, the numbers are flipped to 2% in favour of ‘Yes’ when people were asked if Scotland was allowed to rejoin the EU after leaving the UK.

Projections based on the survey, carried out for The Sunday Post by polling company Survation, suggests the SNP will win 67 seats, giving Nicola Sturgeon a majority of five at Holyrood.

Scottish Labour is projected to win 24 seats, the same number the party won in the last Holyrood election, with the Scottish Tories coming third with 22 seats, nine fewer than they won in 2016.

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Final seats
https://twitter.com/BallotBoxScot/status/1391113844752326657

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We all knew this was coming:

Scottish nationalists vow independence vote after election win

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https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1391121713484685312

SNP 40.3, Greens 8.1 and Alba 1.7 = 50.1%, a majority for the pro-independence parties.

Barely.  To all intents and purposes, the Scottish electorate is split down the middle regarding independence, which is hardly a mandate for another referendum.  That said, there was no mandate for Brexit either in the polling or in the referendum results, and yet here we are....  

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https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1391121713484685312

SNP 40.3, Greens 8.1 and Alba 1.7 = 50.1%, a majority for the pro-independence parties.

Barely. To all intents and purposes, the Scottish electorate is split down the middle regarding independence, which is hardly a mandate for another referendum. That said, there was no mandate for Brexit either, and yet here we are....  

A majority is a majority. It doesn't really matter in this context how small it is since it eliminates the unionist argument that the SNP "only" won a majority of seats but not votes.

You're probably right.  Still, I feel like it is grasping at straws to claim that 50.1% is a majority even if it is technically correct.

There should be legislation passed in which when it comes down to independence referendums, or any similar referendums calling for entering or leaving supranational bodies like the European Union, there should be at least a two-thirds majority consistently shown in polling calling for that change before such a referendum is held so that there is truly a mandate for it.  Something that calls for that magnitude of change demands such a commanding mandate.  And that there should be at least a two-thirds majority for the referendum to be considered as having officially passed.   

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https://twitter.com/BallotBoxScot/status/1391109074138411009?s=19

Is it fair to say that southern/lowland Scotland is essentially an extension of northern England?