Battlegrounds 2011 : Scottish National Party

We are now into the last week of campaigning and with the exception of a small event happening in London today, all the parties will be gathering their resources for a finish push before the polls open in a little over 140 hours time, and to lead up to polling day (as well as analysis of the polls, reporting on little hiccups of the various campaigns and putting our own necks on the line with a grand forecast for everything) I will be posting the battlegrounds for each of the parties in the various assemblies and parliaments and a guide to what to watch out for in the English and Northern Ireland locals as well as the AV referendum, so let's get the ball rolling with the battleground for the Scottish National Party.

	Defence Battleground		Target Battleground
Number	Name	% Majority	Name	% Swing
1	Almond Valley	0.01%	Glasgow S	0.06%
2	Cunninghame N	0.13%	Linlithgow	0.44%
3	Aberdeen Central	1.38%	Stirling	0.61%
4	Falkirk West	2.56%	Edinburgh Eastern	0.89%
5	Clackmannanshire	2.77%	Airdrie and Shotts	1.31%
6	Argyll and Bute	2.81%	Clydesdale	1.85%
7	Midlothian South	3.72%	Glasgow, Kelvin	2.23%
8	Kilmarnock	4.01%	Midlothian North	2.59%
9	Perthshire South	4.46%	Dumbarton	2.63%
10	Western Isles	5.04%	Falkirk East	3.05%
11	Dundee City West	8.43%	East Lothian	3.36%
12	Mid Fife	9.06%	East Kilbride	3.38%
13	Aberdeen, Donside	13.08%	Glasgow, Cathcart	3.50%
14	Inverness & Nairn	13.55%	Edinburgh N	3.62%
15	Aberdeenshire E	14.10%	Aberdeen South	3.66%
16	Dundee City East	16.52%	Cumbernauld	3.94%
17	Angus South	19.66%	Edinburgh Central	4.05%
18	Angus North	20.94%	Caithness	4.28%
19	Perthshire North	21.50%	E’burgh, Pentlands	4.49%
20	Moray	25.89%	Dunfermline	4.55%
21	Banffshire	39.16%	Cunninghame S	4.61%

The real question for the SNP will be how many of their defence seats can they hold (which read as a list of "How on earth did Labour lose that?") Almond Valley (the new Livingston constituency) according to the calculations only went SNP by four votes in 2007 and if Labour cannot win that then Iain Gray will have serious problems on his hands. The latest polls suggest that on the constituency level there has been a swing of 2% from Lab to the SNP (suggesting that the SNP will pick up six Labour seats) but the real swing has been from Con to SNP (7%) and from Lib Dem to SNP (9%) and add to that a Con to Lab swing of 5% and a Lib Dem to Lab swing of 7% and it is clear that Scotland is on course to become a two party constituency state (with only possibly Shetland staying in Lib Dem hands and Eastwood staying in Conservative hands)