The latest Survation Scottish Poll from 30 March gives us a baseline for how the parties are doing in the Holyrood campaign.
- the SNP ahead in both constituency and list votes, on 49% and 37% respectively.
- the Tories sit on 21% and 18% neck and neck with Labour 20% and 19%.
- the Greens on 11% in the list which puts them ahead of the Liberal Democrats who are on 9% and 8%.
- the Alba Party is reported as 3% which is well short of the 5% that is needed to have a chance of winning List seats.
However it’s early days and polling figures could change very quickly.
Survation also report on the respective popularity of party leaders:
The polling for Alex Salmond isn’t lookng very helpful for the Alba Party. His ratings are worse than Boris Johnson.
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Effects of Holyrood Inquiries
The Survation poll included a question asking if Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond had gone up / down in people’s estimation after recent appearances during the Holyrood Committee Inquiry and the independent Ministerial Conduct Inquiry. Again, not good news for Mr Salmond.
A Help or a Hindrance?
And finally, when asked if Alex Salmond helps or hinders the cause of Scottish Independence, he is seen as hindering it. Altogether an extraordinary – and sobering – result for the former FM who brought us an SNP majority administration and then negotiated the Edinburgh Agreement for the 2014 referendum.
This poll was published on 30th March and clearly the polling actios were done some time before that. Alex Salmond made his announcement of Joining the Alba party and standing for Holyrood on 26th of March. It is clear that this poll is entirely misleading and probably produced with the intention of arriving at just this sort of result.
In the first days after Alex’s announcement, while there was still at least two other List only parties in the running, most people were speaking about the stupidity of splitting the vote and sqandering the benefits of tactical voting. Since then both AFI and ISP have folded and we now only have one realistic List Only Independence party. Give it another week or two then we may geta real picture of what might happen.
Unfortunately the SNP have not been helpful through this period. The continue to push for both votes SNP where in 6 out of the 8 regions these votes have normally been wasted, despite huge numbers casting them. It’s not clear whether this is personal animus toward Alex Salmond or reluctance to have another view on the process of independence within Holyrood.
In my view there is some discontent within some of the independence supporting population with the path taken by SNP although Nicola Sturgen has been personally popular. It would be no bad thaing to have another voice in the parliament and another parliamentry leader to speak positively rather than, as now, we get Nicola interviewed then 3 Unionist leaders “Crying her Doon”.
If you look at the link given in the article it gives the dates when the fieldwork for this poll was done – it was done on 29th and 30th March. That’s some days after Alba was launched.
This is a poll that will act as a baseline for how things progress over the next five weeks. It’s not the whole picture – that will come only when the results are announced – but it’s the first glimpse of where we are.
I think you’re right that it would be no bad thing to have other Parliamentary voices to speak positively about independence. If Lorna Slater, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, is elected then we will her very able voice in addition to Patrick Harvie who is already there. I think Colette Walker of ISP and Dave Thompson of AFI would also have been good Parliamentarians. Personally I don’t want to see Alex Salmond there. I know we have a lot to thank him for over the past four decades but I think his personal reputation is now too tarnished. ( I don’t mean by the court case because the not guilty result of that is beyond question. I mean by his behaviour towards his women staff, behaviour which he himself has owned to.) From the findings of this poll, it seems I’m not the only person to think that.