The Daily Telegraph YouGov poll - 30 April 2008

Some of you may have seen the latest YouGov poll in today’s Daily Telegraph, which unfortunately isn’t on the online edition.

I thought I would break it down into what the opinion poll means to each party. First up….

The SNP

The Nats are up on their Holyrood result from 2007. Then they got 33% on the Constituency vote and 31 on the regional list vote, now they are at 36% and 37% respectively. They are also up in terms of Westminster voting as well, rising from their 18% in 2005 to 30% now. 43% of respondents also believe Salmond would make the best first minister while 53% are satisfied with his performance as First Minister with only 26% being satisfied with Gordon Brown’s performance as Prime Minister. John Swinney is also doing well as Finance Secretary, 34% believing that he is doing a good job in comparison to 22% who think he is doing a bad job.

Labour

Oh dear… Labour are down 1% in both the Constituency vote and the Regional List vote. At Westminster level the party are down 6% from their 2005 general election result of 40% and only 11% of respondents believe Wendy Alexander would make the best First Minister. Also, 21% think Wendy is doing a good job in comparison to 60% believing she has done a bad one. Also, only 26% are satisfied with Brown’s performance as Prime Minister whilst 63% are dissatisfied with his performance as PM.

Scottish Conservatives

Down in terms of Scottish Parliament votes but as with the figures for the Lib Dems they are not in line with any other polls. We are up 1% at Westminster level and this is only going to increase when voters are presented with a “Only David Cameron can get rid of Gordon Brown” and as I showed last week 44% of people in Scotland think David Cameron is doing a good job whilst 43% think Gordon Brown is doing a good job.

Our 17% is markedly higher than the 14% YouGov gave us in August and, according to Electoral Calculus this would give us 2 Westminster seats -DCT and D&G - and put us very close in a batch of others such as Argyll, Edinburgh South and Roxburgh Berwickshire and Selkirkshire - and closing in on WAK and East Renfrewshire.

In the individual performances section which rates the performances of John Swinney – as Finance Secretary – and Wendy, Annabel and Nicol Stephen as leaders of their party Annabel fairs the best with 41% believing that she is doing a good job with only 20% thinking that she is doing a bad one.

Lib Dems

The Lib Dems are down slightly on their Constituency vote, 15% now compared to 16% in 2007. Their regional vote is slightly better up 2% on what they got in 2007. Doing less grand at Westminster where they are down 9% from 2005 – a figure that is fairly consistent with other polls. On the individual performance section the Libs will be pleased as 27% of people believe Nicol is doing a good job – which is six points more than Wendy. He also has a whopping 32% less people thinking he’s doing a bad job.

Overall

By all the stuff you’d reckon the Nats would be happy with the poll huh? Well, probably not actually. Support for independence, if a referendum was held, is at 19%, down 4% from April 2007 whilst support for the parliament staying is it is up 9 points to 34% with support for giving the parliament greater powers remaining exactly the same as it was in April 2007 – 38%.

58% of respondents also believe that the Executive is able to operate effectively with the powers it has and can have the best of both worlds by remaining in the UK. It is interesting to note that more people think that the rows between Holyrood and Westminster are essentially Salmond’s fault – with 38% thinking that, as opposed to those believing them to be Westminster’s – 35%.

Ridiculous predictions

Some ridiculous predictions - Pele predicting that Columbia would win the 1994 World Cup – they went out in the group stages, Graham Taylor predicting that England would win the 1992 European Championships – they returned from Sweden without winning a game. A certain woman predicting in 1974 that, in her lifetime, a woman would never be prime minister, the woman in questions is of course Margaret Thatcher who became Prime Minister five years later. Much more recently I’ve seen on blogger predicting that Alex Fergusson would lose Galloway and Upper Nithsdale due to it being number one on the SNP target list – didn’t happen though eh Jeff?

Anyway, the point of this post you ask. Well, just when I thought Jeff over at SNP tactical voter had stopped making ridiculous predictions, he’s surprised me. Wait for it….the SNP to win Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale. As dumb predictions go, this is pretty dumb.

Let’s look at the facts. The Dumfries Westminster seat (which prior to 2005 took in rural Dumfries) has never had an SNP member of Parliament. From 1963 until the wipeout of 1997 the seat was a Conservative seat held for the majority of that time by the late Sir Hector Munro. In the 2005 election, the first election after the creation of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (DCT) the Tories piped Labour to the seat taking 36% of the vote compared to Labours 32.3%. One of the main reasons the Tories won that seat was due to the selection of then South of Scotland MSP David Mundell as the candidate. Mundell has spent the six years since first being elected as a List MSP for the area shadowing Constituency MSP Elaine Murray and his years of hard work paid of in winning the seat.

So, for the Nats you’d expect them to select a local hard working candidate, right? Well…wrong. Whilst the last time the party selected serial candidate Andrew Wood (who is now a Councillor) they have selected a virtual unknown in Aileen Orr – who stood in Roxburgh and Berwickshire in the last Holyrood Elections finishing a distant third.

I think back to the drawing board with this prediction Jeff.

Salmond as Head of State?!?

As we approach the first anniversary of the SNP becoming the Scottish Government, the SNP had their Spring Conference, or as Annabel Goldie described it “spring love fest.”

As well as speeches presumably dedicated to how great the Nats think they are and how big and bad those nasty monsters at Westminster are there were also leaflets like the one that can be viewed here.

It seems a new newsletter, titled “Vision” was launched at the weekend. What struck me immediately was the mocked up £20.00 note on the front with who-else but Salmond on it as though he was the head of state! Does anyone else think this demonstrate the arrogance of Salmond (he was asked on a BBC podcast why is he so smug) or at the very least the immaturity of some of his team - imagine the outcry we put Annabel Goldie or David Cameron on a note or if something though, for some reason, to put Wendy Alexander on a mocked up banknote?

Does this mean that the SNP have secretly abandoned their plans for the Queen to continue as Head of State in an Independent Scotland and Mr Salmond wants to be our President?

FMQs

As terrible performances at First Ministers Questions go, today was a new low for Wendy Alexander. As many in the know will know Wendy Alexander, as the leader of the main opposition, is entitled to ask the First Minister three questions. When it came to her third question she started with “I have no further questions” proceeded to rattle on about something but when Salmond stood up to answer the Presiding Officer informed him there was nothing for him to answer.

She may as well have said “there are no other issues in Scotland” – is she that out of touch?Another woeful performance.

YouGov/Sunday Times Survey

I’ve just received some quite interesting results from a YouGov/Sunday Times Westminster voting intentions opinion poll which are not good news for Gordon Brown and Labour.

Some quite interesting findings, for example 47% of women are likely to vote Conservative compared to 27% who will vote Labour whilst in the male category 42% are likely to vote Conservative compared to 29% who are going to vote for Labour. When it comes to age range the results are rather positive for the Conservatives as they defeat Labour 43% to 28% in the 18-34 year olds, 39%-34% in the 35 to 54 years category whilst comfortably defeating Labour, 50% to 22%, in the over 55 category.

The region section is broken down into five areas; London, Rest of South, Midlands/Wales, North and Scotland. Of these five areas Labour only wins two – Scotland and the North but only just edge the North by 1%. As expected the Conservatives win comfortably in the South – 52% to 23%. The Party also do very well in London winning 48% to 31% whilst also crushing Labour in the Midlands/Wales area 50% to 21%. Although Labour wins the result for the sample in Scotland is quite positive for the Conservatives. This is quite consistent to recent polls which have the Conservatives between 17% and 21% in Scotland.

A rough breakdown of seats in Scotland would have Labour on around 30, the Lib Dems on ten or thereabouts, the Nats on around 15 whilst the Tories would be on 4 or so.

The poll is also quite positive regarding the performance thus far of David Cameron. Across the whole of the UK 44% of people think he is doing fairly well as Conservative leader as opposed to 26% of people who think Gordon Brown is doing fairly well as Prime Minister. Also, only 11% of people think Cameron is doing very badly compared to 28% who think Gordon Brown is doing very badly. In Scotland 43% of people think Gordon Brown is doing fairly well and 29% think he is doing fairly badly. When it comes to David Cameron 44% of Scots think he is doing fairly well with 27% thinking he is doing fairly badly with more people thinking Gordon Brown is doing very badly – 19% - than think David Cameron is doing very badly – 12%.

Cyber Nats

I see the Times have begun having some Scottish content on its website aside from its football coverage. The first piece it has is this poll on the future of the Union.

I fear, however, that it has been hijacked by the Nats already – Cyber Nats if you will – with a whopping 84% of voters believing Scotland should be an independent country, 4.2% voting for parliament to have further powers (how I voted), 6.5% calling for things to stay as they are, 0.3% calling for the Holyrood to have fewer powers – the Gordon ‘devolution is a two way road’ Brown position and 5% calling for Holyrood to be scrapped.

Where to begin… To start with I’m fairly pleased to see some Scottish content from the Times online as I believe their news, particularly their political coverage, is top notch. However, I’d love to see a breakdown from where all the votes come from as I suspect a great number of the independence votes came from the SNP floors at the Scottish Parliament. These polls being hijacked just look ridiculous.

In the election 37% of Scotland voted for the SNP in May – I refuse to say that 37% of Scotland voted for independence in May as not every Nat voter then would have favoured independence as some merely favoured a change from the Lib Lab pact – added to that the Green vote of 1.6% - they also then fully supported independence – it falls way below the 84% the poll has for support.

I’m sure if I had a similar poll on my blog the result would be ridiculously skewered in favour of independence and not in the slightest a representation of actual public opinion on the issue of independence. Perhaps the Cyber Nats should find other things to occupy their time.

Latest YouGov poll

Not great news in Scotland for the Liberal Democrats who are down a whopping 11% points in the latest YouGov poll, info of which can be found here, has the Nats on 31%, up 13 points, Labour on 35%, down five, the Tories on 17%, up 1%, with the Lib Dems on 12% and other on 4%. It’s fairly tricky to work out seat numbers, due to no overall swings etc, but roughly that would give the SNP 15 seats, Labour 32 seats, the Tories 3 and the Liberal Democrats 9, down 3 from 2005. That's my math, I'm sure others will be able to do it better so feel free to correct any mistakes in the numbers.

Lib Dem bloggery

It seems my earlier post was strewn with errors – the Scottish Lib Dems are actually represented in the blogosphere and represented rather well.

First of all there is Stephen Glenn’s blog which is one I’d never come across before. There’s also Iain Dale’s blog, no, not that one, Iain Rubie Dale who I believe stood for election for the Lib Dems in the last election, somewhere in the South of Scotland unless I’m very much mistaken - which I probably am. There is also Bernard Salmon’s blog – he’s a former Lib Dem councillor based in Inverness and the fourth one is Fraser MacPherson a Lib Dem councillor in Dundee.

So, ruling out politicians, that, by my counting, that makes two Tory blogs (mine and The Tired Tory (who seems to have fallen asleep completely)), one Labour (Miss Dugdale), 3 Lib Dem (Stephen Glenn, Bernard Salmon and Iain Rubie Dale) compared to a whole host of Nat blogs.

Back

The nagging seems to have continued over my quietness recently on the whole blogging front recently.

As I stated in an earlier post a lot of that has to do with my internet packing in and now my laptop has died a horrible and painful death on me. Time to get rebooted me thinks. I’ve also become quite addicted to the West Wing, the watching of which has occupied quite a considerable amount of my personal time recently.

However, it really is about time that Scottish Tory Boy digs out his blogging keyboard and logs into blogger.com, right? Right indeed.

I am refusing to comment on the following issues:

1) Mundell’s divorce – frankly I don’t see any need to as it’s a private matter and
2) Murray Tosh apparently being linked to the role of deputy chairman of the party as it’s only at the rumour stage.

In order to get myself reacquainted with the blogging world it’s probably best I have a wee look around the other prominent Scottish Bloggers and maybe do a wee list of blogs I read regularly, heck, why not.

In no particular order blogs I quite like:

SNP Tactical Voter: I particularly enjoyed this blog during election time due to Jeff’s number crunching ability but it seems his blog has turned into quite an impressive political and social commentary.

Calum Cashley: Now I do enjoy this blog. It certainly makes me laugh and his constant putting the boot into, well, pretty much anything.

Kezia Dugdale: She may have to spell her name to people, a phenomenon that has spawned a countless facebook groups, but I do enjoy her, quite partisan, commentary on things at times although I often disagree with her on a late of things. Probably due to her uber right wing tendancies!!!

Malc in the Burgh: Not only a chum of mine but also a blogger I read quite often mainly for his take on foreign issues – an area of politics I tend not to comment on often, if I have at all that is.

Tartan Hero: unfortunately currently on a hiatus of sorts but a cracking blogger.

AdamSmithWasASocialist: Bit of a number cruncher – I admire that talent but currently can’t be arsed having a bash at it!

Brian Taylor: Probably the best political commentator going so certainly a blog I read often quite a good pool player also.

It’s fairly clear from reading blogs that it’s an area that the SNP tend to dominate quite comfortably. The number of Tory and Labour bloggers, politicians aside, can be counted on one hand and with there being zero Lib Dem bloggers in Scotland it seems to be a market dominated by the SNP.

Now I’m not naïve enough to believe that blogs or bloggers set the political agenda in Scotland but I feel we play a role as there have been times I myself have had my stories appear in the press from time to time. It’s quite concerning that the blogesphere is quite so concentrated by Nats, cyber-Nats to quote Lord Foulkes. I am also puzzled why the Greens haven’t really ventured into the blogging world to a great extent in Scotland.

Generally speaking the blogs are quite quiet, much focus seems to be on American Elections – an area I don’t feel I know enough about to comfortably comment aside from the fact that apparently John McCain has done a lot for boxing – the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act – I’m not a boxing fan but one of my closest mates is and often tells me about this bill.

As I’m struggling for material, I’ll accept suggestions for content in the comments section.

Cheers,

STB

Dear all

Feareth not, I have not given up blogging I am merely on a bit of a break mostly due to my internet having packing in at home. I will be back soon as the ol’ net is in the process of being fixed.