The SNP has been dealt a heavy blow in the final days of the Glasgow North East by-election campaign with a sharp fall in support, according to polling evidence obtained by The Herald.Regarding Glasgow NE, my old chum Paddy Power, seems to think it's all over bar the shouting:
Respected Scottish polling company TNS-BMRB (formerly TNS System Three) has found a ten-point swing towards Labour in General Election ¬voting ¬intentions over the past six months.
Glasgow North East:
Singles Only. Applies to the winning party.
Labour 1/4
SNP 15/8
John Smeaton 50/1
Conservatives 80/1
Liberal Democrats 80/1
Mikey Hughes 125/1
As far as I can see none of the bookmakers are offering odds on the % swing in either direction- that perhaps will be the most interesting data resulting from Thursday.
6 comments:
This poll is fascinating, seemingly the second 'bad' poll in a row for the SNP. Incredible how they are so high in the Holyrood vote yet dipping on the westminster. Labour have been negative campaigning to the max lately but it has all been on Holyrood issues. And should wee Wullie Bain win in Glasgow it is questionable if he would get the whip, simply because he is at odds with a whole raft of labour policies. Playing to the gallery, no doubt!
Labour and their supporting newspapers(ie. all of them) have been playing up the them or us shite vis a vis the Tories. Playing on peoples fear of the Tories. By doing this they are merely cheating the people they claim to care about. You and I both know that no matter how many votes labour gets in Scotland, England will decide if the Tories are elected.
labour in scotland is a resilient beast, essentially becuse of the size of the public sector.People who work in it or rely upon it do fear a tory government, which of course the SNP can do nothing to stop.
It will also be intersting to see what happens when the tories do win. SNPers assume there will be mass defections from Labour to them, in light of labours impotence. However it didnt work out like that during the 80s and 90s where the Tories enjoyed huge majorities. Labour in Scotland might well benefit form a period of opposition, with its main victims being the SNP. And with the SNP in government at Holyrood it might be particularly vulnerable.
And, Glasgow North - John Smeaton might be worth a bet!....a good unionist!
The smear campaign mounted against SNP has been fairly succesful, its a shame only minimal amounts of the smear campaign has been about actual policy instead its focused on personal slant of Kerr's birthplace fiasco, Kerr's slur on university etc etc etc!!! but such is politics.
I personally think Bain will fall right in line with the labour whip, he is just making some noise right now in order to gain voters trust and secure another victory for labour.
"Incredible how they are so high in the Holyrood vote yet dipping on the westminster."
Its the Quebec phenomenon. Voters support a nationalist party to govern so that their regional/national interests are stoutly defended within the state but make sure the boat doesn't get rocked to the extent it would sink.
FD
Of course we have heard this before, but it is the first time it has happened. If in fact it really has.
How comes you haven't been doing your usual King Billy Mcneil/John greig routine over on slugger for a while?
Not sure this is really relevant to Glasgow NE but it's worth a read anyroads:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14844055
"Mr Salmond is already honing his attack on Mr Cameron: “a hard face behind a nice smile,” he says. But behind the smile there is also an ardent unionist with a sophisticated political brain. Mr Cameron is unlikely to be so stupid as to stoke Scottish enmity with slights or vindictive cuts. Devolution itself, introduced since the Tories last held office, would blunt the illegitimacy charge.
More importantly, while the Scots may not like the Tories much, they are (still) not too keen on independence either. The proportion saying they want it is stuck at roughly a third. Even that may be an overstatement: actual votes for a rupture might fall short of bravura responses to pollsters. Enough may want Mr Salmond to be first minister of a devolved Scotland for him to keep the job after the Scottish elections of 2011; few want him to be prime minister of an independent one. Recognising this problem, the SNP now markets a sort of independence lite or 2.0, designed to sound reassuringly innocuous, in which Scotland keeps the queen, the pound and its military bases (a gradualism that suits Mr Salmond more than his party’s Braveheart wing).
And far from being the most
perilous time to test the union, this may be the most propitious"
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