Local government, London Mayoral and Scottish Parliamentary elections on 6th May

[Emrys]

9. Another poll released today, this one from Opinium/Sky News

Link to tweet

Opinium @OpiniumResearch
🚨 BREAKING 🚨

New Scotland poll with @SkyNews

Despite divisions between Salmond and Sturgeon the SNP have increased their support. Margins are still very tight, but this puts them back on course for a majority.

https://news.sky.com/story/scottish-elections-sturgeons-snp-set-for-majority-but-salmonds-alba-unlikely-to-get-single-seat-sky-news-poll-12268966

Opinium
@OpiniumResearch

Constituency vote:
SNP 53% (+7)
Con 21% (-3)
Lab 18% (-2)
Lib Dem 6% (NC)

Regional list vote:
SNP 44% (+2)
Con 22% (NC)
Lab 17% (-2)
Green 7% (NC)
Lib Dem 5% (NC)
Alba 2% (NEW)

"Other" on the list vote will include Galloway's AFU, among a slew of other minor parties.

Any conclusions at this stage (and even up to the election itself) are highly tentative, and there's always the margin of error to take into account. On its website, Sky News wrote:

If these results are translated roughly into seats, the SNP will get an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament of 13.

The SNP would have 71 seats, while the Conservatives would be on 27 seats, Labour on 21, the Greens on 6 and Lib Dems on 4.

On these results Alba is unlikely to have enough support to get a single seat.

This calculation could be subject to big shifts from comparatively small changes to the voting share, however.

https://news.sky.com/story/scottish-elections-sturgeons-snp-set-for-majority-but-salmonds-alba-unlikely-to-get-single-seat-sky-news-poll-12268966

A follow-on tweet illustrates how sensitive all these polling results are to methodology:

Link to tweet

Opinium
@OpiniumResearch

Caveat: Unlike in our previous poll, we have not prompted for the Green Party in the constituency question, given they are standing so few candidates. This will explain part of the increase in support for the SNP.

Yesterday's main excitement (which maybe shows how turgid this lockdown election's been so far) came from a BBC Scotland Nine news magazine interview with George Galloway where the interviewer tried to question him about the startling inconsistency/hypocrisy in his attitude to working with the Tories:

Link to tweet

indy swim 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
@indy_swim

George Galloway getting VERY ANGRY in this car crash interview on the Nine tonight 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 (1)

[Twitter video]

indy swim 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
@indy_swim

George Galloway getting VERY ANGRY in this car crash interview on the Nine tonight 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 (2)
[Twitter video]