#election15

So, things are looking alright for the SNP, then.

Yesterday, 29 April 2015, an opinion poll by Ipsos MORI for STV News had this set of results:

SNP: 54% Scottish Labour: 20% Scottish Conservatives: 17% Scottish Liberal Democrats: 5% Scottish Greens: 2% UKIP: 1% [https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Scotland/scotland-pom-april-2015-tables.pdf]

Now, of course, there’s all sorts of caveats you should throw in there, such as 'this is only an opinion poll' and 'this doesn’t take into account tactical voting and candidates' local popularity'. Nonetheless, this is quite an amazing poll for the SNP. The Wikipedia list of opinion polls suggests this is only the second time SNP support has been as high as this for this election and, at 34 points, it’s the biggest lead the SNP has had over Labour so far [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election#Scotland]. Compare that to the last time Ipsos MORI did this poll for STV in January 2015, when the results looked like this:

SNP: 47% Scottish Labour: 24% Scottish Conservatives: 12% Scottish Liberal Democrats: 4% Scottish Greens: 4% UKIP: 1% [https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Scotland/scotland-pom-jan-2015-tables.pdf]

All of which makes Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy’s somewhat predictable response to the April 2015 opinion poll quite confusing. When STV News asked him about it, he said: "It’s another fantastic poll for David Cameron because David Cameron can’t beat the Labour Party here in Scotland, so someone else has to do that for him and that way, David Cameron gets to cling onto power because if he’s the leader of the biggest party, the likelihood is David Cameron will remain Prime Minister." [http://news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/318815-stvipsos-mori-poll-snp-set-to-win-all-scots-seats-at-general-election/]

I must say, props to Murphy for managing to say 'David Cameron’ four times in one sentence. But seriously, if we gloss over the part about 'the biggest party getting to form the government', which has already been shown to be overwhelmingly at odds with various pieces of evidence [http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-weight-of-evidence/] and compare those two sets of results, this doesn’t seem to compute because the share of Conservative support appears to have gone up by 5 points between January and April, yet Labour support went down by 4 points in the same period, meaning the two parties were tied in the April poll once the margin of error is taken into account. Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson bragged about it in that STV News report after riding around on a tank for no apparent reason. [Quick side note: who arranges her photo opportunities? They look like such good fun.] It looks like the Conservatives are very much trying to 'secure a better future' for Scotland too, then.

STV digital political correspondent Stephen Daisley [http://news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/analysis/318894-analysis-stephen-daisley-on-the-stv-ipsos-mori-poll-on-snp-election-win/] yesterday touched on two significant potential threats the SNP now face: one is the the SNP getting complacent about their perceived upcoming success and failing to mobilise voters accordingly, the other is unionists managing to effectively mobilise voters into tactically voting against the SNP and for either Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrats, depending on the constituency. Whether Conservatives would rather vote Labour to keep the SNP out or vice versa is unclear. I would have thought the former was more likely to be the case but after listening to Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2 today [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05rk8sq], I’m rather less certain now.

In any case, it looks like the biggest loser in this year’s general election is going to be our first-past-the-post voting system, which GPEW leader Natalie Bennett has described as "an utterly failed system that doesn’t reflect the reality of British politics today" [https://www.facebook.com/thegreenparty/videos/10152767897755785/?permPage=1]. She’s right. Today, 30 April 2015, the Electoral Reform Society shared an infographic [https://www.facebook.com/electoralreformsociety/photos/a.10150267497295132.385309.137385490131/10153244901805132/?type=1&permPage=1], captioned 'For my next trick', which illustrated how problematic it would be if the SNP could get 100% of Scottish seats in the House of Commons based on 54% of the Scottish vote; because that would mean 46% of Scottish votes going elsewhere than the SNP, including 20% for Labour and 17% for Conservatives, would get no representation in the UK Parliament. Even if the SNP only win 57 out of 59 seats, that would still equate to them winning 97% of seats with about 51% of the vote.

This isn’t what I’d call terribly fair. For the SNP’s part, they have historically supported electoral reform [http://www.scotsman.com/news/salmond-likely-to-say-yes-to-av-system-1-1493826] and were elected to the Scottish Parliament under an AMS system. However, I’ve heard more or less nothing from any of the big or moderately big parties about this issue in this election, save for the Greens [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29281831] and UKIP [http://www.ukip.org/ukip_announces_plans_for_political_reform], even though I would regard it as incredibly important for political engagement and, by extension, our democracy as a whole.

As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t really like tactical voting.