New Scotland poll shows tight battle in Labour-held seats – but a divided nation

A new poll by ComRes for ITV News shows Labour far closer to the SNP than recent Scotland-wide polls – with a gap of only six points between the two parties – SNP 43% to Labour’s 37%. However, to put this into perspective, in 2010 Labour recorded 51% of the vote in these seats, compared to a vote of just 19% for the SNP. On a uniform swing – which we’re unlikely to see – that would mean the SNP taking 28 of Labour’s Scottish seats. That’s a better performance than recent polls have suggested – but still fairly grim for Scottish Labour.

Speaking this evening – and breaking the usual politicians convention of not commenting on opinion polls – Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy said that the poll shows “we are back in the fight” but added “we are still the underdogs”. Murphy says the task for the party between now and election day is to “set out our positive alternative to failed Tory austerity”.

Meanwhile, the poll also shows that Scottish voters prefer Miliband to Cameron as PM by 49% to 29%. Amongst SNP voters, that figure is 48% to 19%. Whilst Miliband still has some way to go with Scottish voters (the poll suggests 17% of Labour voters would prefer Cameron as PM), that suggests some SNP voters may be open to a “squeeze” message in the coming weeks.

Yet the poll also shows the divided nature of Scottish politics. More than half (56%) of SNP voters are primarily voting for the party because they want independence. Meanwhile 56% of those voting for all of the other parties are primarily voting for those parties because they want to keep Scotland in the UK.