Polls, debates and manifestos, the Scottish campaign so far

The Scottish parliamentary election is now just 32 days away, and with things heating up there’s a fair amount of polling going on. Another poll from Panelbase was put out today, showing a slight SNP lead. The Scottish polling is very distinct from the Welsh polling in that it’s being done by lots of organisations (only YouGov has polled Wales) and in that the polls are very very close. Below are the latest polls from the six companies that have polled Scotland.

Polling Company/Publication	Date	Constituency Vote					Regional Vote
		Lab	SNP	Con	LD	Other	Lab	SNP	Con	LD	Green	Other
Panelbase/Sunday Times	29/03/11	37%	37%	13%	8%	5%	32%	37%	11%	7%	5%	8%
YouGov/Scotsman	28/03/11	39%	40%	11%	5%	5%	39%	32%	12%	5%	6%	6%
TNS-BMRB/STV	27/03/11	38%	37%	14%	7%	4%	35%	35%	14%	8%	3%	5%
ICM/SNP	14/03/11	39%	35%	13%	10%	3%	37%	34%	13%	9%	4%	3%
Progressive Scottish Opinion/Mail on Sunday	13/03/11	43%	37%	11%	5%	4%	44%	37%	11%	4%	2%	2%
Ipsos MORI/Times	16/02/11	36%	37%	13%	10%	4%	33%	35%	13%	10%	6%	3%

At the last election the seats in the Scottish Parliament were 47 SNP, 46 Labour, 17 Conservatives, 16 Lib Dems, 2 Greens and 1 independent. If we feed the above polls into Scotland Votes brilliant seat projector we get:

Polling Company/Publication	Lab	SNP	Con	LD	Green	Other
Panelbase/Sunday Times	52	53	12	8	3	1
YouGov/Scotsman	58	48	12	5	5	1
TNS-BMRB/STV	54	49	17	8	2	1
ICM/SNP	55	45	14	11	2	1
Progressive Scottish Opinion/Mail on Sunday	62	50	11	5	0	1
Ipsos MORI/Times	48	50	15	11	4	1

For those who are wondering, the ‘other’ is Margo MacDonald, a former SNP member who has represented a Lothians list seat since 1999. You may notice a few trends in the polling, firstly the electoral system shows a slight bias towards Labour. A couple of polls are a bit iffy looking; I wouldn’t trust the ‘Progressive Scottish Opinion’ poll that much in particular. TNS-BMRB do not have a promising record, their last poll showed a sizeable and unlikely Labour majority, for example, but this one seems to be more in line with the others so it may have just been a rogue. Panelbase are new to the polling scene, so their trustworthiness is not yet measured either. Though, of course, no polling company is ever 100% accurate and it is not out of the realms of reason that one of these out of line results or new pollsters have hit onto something the older, more established pollsters haven’t. An interesting feature that the two traditional established telephone polling companies (ICM and Ipsos MORI) both show the Lib Dems doing noticeably better than the newer online pollsters, who tend to show better results for the Greens and ‘Others’ as being better. This is line with a similar trend in British national polling, where minor parties perform better in online polls.

None of the polls are particularly encouraging for the Lib Dems, though some are less discouraging than others. The latest YouGov Lib Dem result is fairly out of line with their previous poll (taken at the end of Feb) and like I said, I wouldn’t trust the ‘Progressive Scottish Opinion’ one all that much. The Greens are shown as improving in most polls, which will make them happy, though they only have 2 seats as it is. The Tories are generally shown as losing seats, but this is most likely an effect of Labour and the SNP performing so strongly, and possibly a lesser desire to turn out with the Tories in government at Westminster. Scottish opinion polls have also occasionally demonstrated a tendency to underestimate the Tories, and while the party is hardly Scotland’s most popular party what support it has is very strong (arguably the party is down to its core vote).

The big story of these polls however is the closeness of the election between the SNP and Labour. In one sense this is a surprise. There is a Conservative/Lib Dem government at Westminster, the argument goes, Labour voters should be full of bile and excitement to turn out, but Labour have a big problem, and that problem is the Scottish Labour Party leader, Iain Gray.

ICM asked ‘Putting aside your own party preference, which one of the following do you think is best qualified to be First Minister of Scotland?’ and got results of Salmond: 43% Annabel Goldie (Conservative): 10% Iain Gray: 9% Tavish Scott (Lib Dem): 3% and Patrick Harvie (Green): 1%. Similarly YouGov asked a slightly more forced question between just Salmond and Gray and got 42% Salmond and 29% Gray. New pollster Panelbase showed participants pictures of the four main party leaders and tested for recognition. 85% recognised Salmond, 39% recognised Annabel Goldie, 27% recognised Gray and 19% recognised Tavish Scott.

Leaders, schmeaders, you might say, it’s all about policies isn’t it? I wish it was, but the truth is that leaders and personalities are increasingly important in British politics, witness the election debates last year. Indeed, after the election, Ipsos MORI released a post-election study which showed that for the first time British voters had identified party leader as being as important as policies.

I sat down and watched the first Scottish Leaders Debate the other day. Now, I must first give a couple of notes. I have lived on the Southern coast of England all my life. I have only ever set foot in Scotland for one family holiday of sailing across the Scottish Lochs as a teenager, the highlight of which was my sister’s nightmare of my father feeding the dog to the Loch Ness monster (besides the lovely scenery and locals of course!). I try to follow Scottish politics as best I can, but I don’t have quite the same cultural frame as an actual Scot, and, I am not nearly as exposed to these people as others. In fact I do think this debate was the first time I’d ever heard Tavish Scott speak.

That said, I was struck by several things in the Leaders Debate. I was impressed by Alex Salmond, who was his usual blokey, accessible, but knowledgeable, self. I noted the way he seemed to only talk about independence sparingly, and mostly concentrated on policies like the council tax. He was effectively able to paint Iain Gray out as a flip-flopper. He was very much about the team, drawing attention to the work of his Cabinet, who he lavished praise upon, a clear attempt to deal with the oft used attack that the SNP is a one man band.

Gray on the other hand, just didn’t really seem to sparkle. When audience members or his fellow leaders attacked him or his party he looked awkward, and uncomfortable, staring off in weird directions and looking a bit peeved. He did have one really good moment when he attacked Salmond over Megrahi, however.

I was impressed by Annabel Goldie. I could clearly see where she got her ‘Aunt Annabel’ reputation from, but she came across as warm and seemed to be the only one who could knock Salmond out of his stride, as she reminded him of all the things that he had to negotiate with the Scottish Conservatives in order to pass bills and budgets. The Conservatives have behaved wonderfully strategically in Holyrood, pragmatically and effectively negotiating with the SNP and then reminding everyone of it at election time. As Goldie reminded viewers of her part in the government’s policies Salmond looked like a man whose deal with the devil had finally been revealed. I have oft heard mixed reviews of Goldie, particularly, actually, from Tories, but to me she now seems to be the Tories best electoral asset North of the border.

The party would seem to agree, for their website centres on a big picture of Goldie and on the right sits the usual facebook ‘like’ box, which is not for the party, but rather for Goldie herself. This branding, with an intense focus on Goldie, is not dissimilar to the party’s attempts to associate with Cameron in Britain as a whole, and suggest that ‘Goldie’ may be a more popular brand in Scotland than the party. Outside the debates, however, the party has had some trouble with candidates in Glasgow.

I would like to comment on Tavish Scott, but literally the only thing I can recall is a brief discussion with the debate moderator over his poor First Minister polling numbers. Scott commented that if you added in the ‘undecideds’ he would be the most popular, which, while true, doesn’t strike me as particularly likely mathematics. The Lib Dems have a big problem in Scotland in that they seem to have little new or unique to say and it is being presented by a man who strikes me as being perfectly pleasant and competent but not particularly interesting. This is kind of a shame, because the Lib Dems always do particularly well under popular charismatic leaders - think Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy or even Nick Clegg pre-election.

If the Scottish Lib Dems collapse on polling day a lot of the blame will rightfully go towards Westminster and the Coalition, but in my opinion the Scottish Lib Dems may need to question their own policies and leadership as well. It is perhaps a statement of sorts, as well as of the internal troubles within the Lib Dems that today a Scottish Lib Dem MSP actually endorsed Salmond for First Minister. John Munro is standing down at this election (so no consequences!) but represents the Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency, roughly analogous to Charlie Kennedy’s, which is a key SNP target in this election. Combined with the high profile resignation of the party’s sole Central Scotland MSP (now running as an Independent) and the Lib Dem candidate for Clydesdale who accidentally forgot to put in his nomination papers and you have a Lib Dem campaign which gives off a look of being in turmoil. If the Lib Dems collapse in this election many will blame the Westminster coalition and Clegg, but the reality is they may need to look at themselves.

I would love to talk about the Greens, but unfortunately they weren’t invited to the debate, haven’t released a manifesto, and as far as I can tell have no exciting lurid tales of internal fallings out! From what I can tell, however, they seem to be chugging along well enough.

The thing with the leader’s is when it comes to polling day there is always undecided voters, and the big danger for Labour is that voters go into the polling booth and ask themselves the question ‘Who do I want to be First Minister?’, which is not, itself, an unfair question, considering. This poses a big danger to Labour, because purely on the polling data alone you can see how that question is going to end up going.

Finally, there have been two manifestoes released at the time of writing (well three if you count UKIP), which are the Conservative Party’s and the Lib Dem’s. If you’re interested you can read the fully Tory manifesto here (it’s about 27 pages), and the Scottish Lib Dem one here (about 81).

Once all the manifestos are released I’ll give them all a look over and create another blogpost. Any comments about the campaign from Scottish candidates, activists, or voters are more than appreciated.