A TOP pollster has said that the furore surrounding the Alex Salmond inquiry won't cause major change in voting behaviour.
Mark Diffley, founder and director of the Diffley Partnership, said the "little movement" seen in opinion polls is "probably not a result of the inquiry and the associated coverage."
Nicola Sturgeon faced a vote of no confidence on Tuesday, brought by the Scottish Tories, who claim she misled parliament and ignored legal advice.
The vote fell by 65 votes to 31 with 27 abstentions.
James Hamilton, the independent advisor on the ministerial code, cleared the First Minister on Monday of a breach of the code, but a cross-party committee set up to look into the botched handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond voted by majority to conclude she misled parliament.
Asked about potential ripple effects of the Alex Salmond inquiry and the committee's findings on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme on Wednesday morning, he said:
"You can’t move for coverage of this story, it really has electrified politics in Scotland over the last few weeks.
"The truth is the movement we have seen in the opinion polls - and we have seen a little bit - is probably not a result of the inquiry and the associated coverage."
However, he said he had observed "a bit of the edge coming off the support for the SNP", which he called "very important" in the lead-up to the election, but stressed "it is just the edge - The SNP will almost certainly win the election in six weeks time."
He added that while people are certainly very interested in the story as it has unfolded over the past weeks and months, he does not believe it is "really shifting opinion in any significant way.”
Mr Diffley also stressed the importance of looking at a breadth of polls rather than focusing on just one.
Asked about recent opinion polls, he said: "The state of play as we enter the campaign is that the SNP is sitting at about 48% of the vote, which is a few percentage points down from where they were at the end of last year.
"The conservatives are still in second place at about 22%, and Labour in third at about 20%.
Mr Diffley said he thought two things were "at stake" in the upcoming election.
"One is whether the SNP wins an overall majority or whether there is what is called a pro-Independence majority", he explained. "And the other is who gets second place."
He said that was “absolutey up for grabs”
He added: "Labour has pulled up a little bit in the polls - If we look at the average Labour vote over the back end of last year … it was about 17%, it’s now 20%, and the vote for the Conservatives is still at around 22%, so it’s where it was.
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"As far as we can make predictions at this stage, the conservatives would still be in second place and will be the main opposition party, but it’s closer than it was.
Regarding a potential overall majority for the SNP, Mr Diffley said he thought it was “still a real possibility.”
“The most recent polling would suggest that they are kind of on the cusp of an overall majority, remembering that that is A) very difficult to do in a Scottish parliament context and B) 65 seats is the magic number, so if you plug in the most recent polling data into seat projections then they come out at about 65 or 66 seats.
"It’s that close."
Mark Diffley is a pollster who is the founder and director of the Diffley Partnership.
He was previously Director of Ipsos MORI Scotland and worked as a Portfolio Manager for Audit Scotland providing studies on Scottish government and public sector performance.
Mr Diffley was also the lead pollster in Scotland for the UK government during the Scottish independence referendum campaign in 2014 and is commissioned by Progress Scotland to provide research and polling support and advice.
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