New Scottish poll shows SNP lead not budging

New polling of Scottish voters released today shows how stubborn the SNP lead is. Since Jim Murphy’s election as leader of Scottish Labour two months ago, the party’s popularity has improved, yet the Scottish Nationalists maintain a healthy double-digits lead.

Today’s polling, carried out by Survation for the Daily Record, shows Westminster voting intention standing at:

SNP 45% (-1); LAB 28% (+1); CON 15% (+1); LD 5% (-2); OTHER 7% (0)

This shows a slight improvement in Labour’s fortunes, but the SNP’s lead is so large that even if the trend were replicated fortnightly between now and May 7th, the Nationalists would still go into the election with a seven point lead.

If these results were replicated in May’s general election, it would see Labour polling 14 points lower than their result in Scotland in 2010.

For Holyrood constituency voting intention, the SNP’s lead is even higher, at 20 points – although the Labour vote stays constant at 28%, around four points down on 2011. For the list system, the SNP poll 39% and Scottish Labour 22%, again around four points lower than the 2011 showing that led Iain Gray to resign as leader.

Damien Lyons Lowe, the Chief Executive of Survation, said that the stability of polling in Scotland now suggested that a parliamentary majority may now not be a possibility for Ed Miliband:

“Despite showing some improvement for Scottish Labour since the appointment of Jim Murphy as leader today’s results would still result in major gains for the SNP in Westminster, turning what would be a small workable majority for UK Labour into a range of uncertain scenarios, some of which increase the chances of a Conservative / Lib Dem coalition. 

Based on today’s figures, our internal modelling indicates that Labour would lose 21 of their Scottish seats to the SNP and the Liberal Democrats 9 of their current 11 seats. Removing MPs who do not take up their seats (speakers & Sinn Fein) any single party or coalition requires 321 seats to have a “working majority” in the House of Commons.”

Spirits in Scottish Labour’s camp certainly seem to be improving though, with Head of Policy and Strategy Blair McDougall partaking in some fairly top level trolling of SNP online activists today.

Last night Jim Murphy made his first major speech on the economy, in which he described inequality as “the single biggest issue in world politics”.