Can SNP claw back voters they have lost to Labour? What polls tell us

On one hand, things could get worse for the SNP. While Labour have had an average poll lead of 6.5 points this May, the latest poll conducted by YouGov has them ten points ahead of the SNP. That would mean 41 Scottish Labour MPs and just eight SNP MPs – a scenario in which Labour would be projected to narrowly defeat the SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.

Will Scots swing behind Sir Keir Starmer's party? (Image: free)

On the other, there are paths through which the SNP might claw back votes. 15% of their 2019 voters are undecided, accounting for 6% of voters. If those SNP undecideds stick with the SNP, that would close the gap to four points, assuming Labour undecideds also stick with Labour.

That would still result in a Labour majority in Scotland, winning 30 seats to the SNP’s 18. However, there are other ways the SNP could regain votes. The polls have consistently found high levels of support for parties outwith Labour, the SNP, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats, beyond historic levels of support for smaller parties. In the devolution era, the highest collective level of support the smaller parties garnered was 4.4% in 2005, two years into the ‘rainbow Parliament’ in Edinburgh. The most recent YouGov poll suggests the smaller parties would collectively win 13%.

There are reasons to think that this is unlikely. The Scottish Greens, on 7% in that poll, will not stand in every seat in Scotland. Nor will Reform UK, on 4%, or the Alba Party, which has polled as high as 3% in the past month. Moreover, these parties will find their vote squeezed by our first past the post voting system – the larger parties in contention to win each seat will characterise votes for the smaller parties as wasted. As the campaign progresses, these vote shares will likely decline as voters move towards voting tactically or for their second preference rather than ‘waste’ their vote.

If the SNP can win back just half of the 8% of their 2019 voters who now say they’d vote Green, in addition to retaining their undecided supporters, they would close the gap with Labour to under two points. They would still lose the election, with Labour on 28 seats to their 21, but would avoid catastrophe.

READ MORE

Could this be the thing that spells the end of the union?

How will Scots react to choice between Tories, Labour and SNP?

The BBC has killed Newsnight. So what went wrong?

Ultimately, if they want to defeat Labour in Scotland in this election, the SNP must win back past SNP voters who now intend to vote for Labour. Each of these voters won back is worth two from any other source, and the fifth of 2019 SNP voters who now plan to vote Labour will form the critical battleground audience in this election.

Arguments, informed by the polling and available data, can be made for any outcome from a near-wipeout for the SNP to a narrow SNP victory and even a majority of Scottish seats. The Scottish electorate has not yet made up its collective mind, and as it does over the next six weeks, we should be prepared for the possibility of a rapid shift in the polls.

But as everything I’ve written above might indicate, there are a lot of ifs and buts in the potential path to anything but defeat for the SNP. This is Labour’s election to lose, and there are three broad reasons to believe that they will not stumble at this late stage.

Firstly, as the Scottish Election Study found last year, many independence-supporting SNP voters now prioritise removing the Conservatives from office as prioritise electing as many pro-independence MPs as possible. That plays well into Labour’s campaign strategy and is a dynamic the SNP need to put substantial effort into benefitting from, explaining why SNP votes contribute to removing the Conservatives from power and replacing them with Labour. And as the maxim goes, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Secondly, growing evidence shows that many Scots now see Westminster as a second-order election. With many of the key policy areas at issue in this election devolved to Holyrood, there is significant scope for voters to use it to give the SNP a kicking in the knowledge that that doesn’t mean handing Labour control of the Scottish NHS or schools.

Many voters still back independence but have slipped away from the SNP (Image: free)

Lastly, in tandem with seeing Westminster elections as opportunities to punish Holyrood governments, it looks like we may be returning to a pattern of voting that sees more nationalist Scottish voters voting Labour at Westminster to keep the Conservatives out and ensure Scottish representation in government, but SNP at Holyrood.

While Labour lead by ten points at Westminster in that latest YouGov poll, they only lead by one point at Holyrood. And while 93% of those who would vote SNP at this general election would also do so at Holyrood, just 81% of those who would vote SNP at Holyrood said they would do so in this general election.

So, while we should expect the Scottish polls to move in the next six weeks, they currently favour Labour. The electoral battleground favours Labour. The dynamics shaping voting behaviour favour Labour. Nothing is settled until the votes are counted, and six weeks is a very long time in politics, but in Scotland, as in the UK, this is Labour’s election to lose.