Scoping the scale and geography of Labour’s Scottish collapse – hopefully we’ll get some constituency polling this week
One of the big unknowns about GE2015 is how Labour is going to fare in Scotland where at GE2010 it retained 41 of the 59 Westminster seats. Clearly anything that could erode that total could have massive impact on the overall outcome.
There have only been three Scotland only polls in the past eight weeks all of them suggesting that EdM’s party is in serious trouble and could possibly lose a lot of seats while it is making inroads in England and Wales.
There’s little doubt that the IndyRef had changed the political weather there – the big question is what will be the impact on individual seats?
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There are so many different areas for analysis. Is the SNP explosion an even all Scotland experience or are there certain types of seats, those where IndyRef YES did particularly well for instance, where the SNP is making the most progress?
Thankfully Lord Ashcroft is including some Scottish seats in his programme of single constituency polling the next batch of which is expected to be made public in the next few days. I don’t know whether the Scottish dimension will be looked at in this round but it is coming.
One feature of the Ashcroft constituency polling is the two stage voting intention questioning which we’ve talked a lot about here. After the standard one a second constituency specific question is put and this can produce very different outcomes. Elements like the incumbency impact or tactical voting can show up.
One seat I’m really hoping to see included is Danny Alexander’s Inverness which in the past had been a four way marginal with the winner securing not much more than a quarter of the vote.
Whatever I’m hoping that our understanding of the coming election will be greatly enhanced by the next round.