Scottish election 2021: What was
Barring a significant and unforeseeable collapse in SNP at the ballot box, Nicola Sturgeon will emerge tomorrow evening re-elected as the First Minister of Scotland.
Pollstershavebeenpredicting this for months with the dominant party of contemporary Scotland and the result of the Holyrood elections are, in this respect, almost guaranteed.
But the story of the Holyrood election is one of a clear downward trend for the SNP amid controversy, renewed pressure around independence, and the potential resurgence of the former dominant party in Scotland.
In the latter stages of 2020, the SNP were riding high in the polls, averaging just below 55 percentoftheconstituencyvote withagapofaround10pointsto 45 per cent on the regional list.
Since that point, there has been a steady decline in SNP support, with the Scotsman’s final poll conducted by Savanta Comres pre-election putting the SNP on 42 per cent on theconstituencyandjust34per cent on the regional list.
In 2016 polls registered SNP support as high as 60 per cent two months prior to the election before a result of 46.5 per cent on polling day.
Throughout the campaign and prior to it, Nicola Sturgeon’s success as a politician has been clearly tied to her personal favourability ratings and simultaneously the Scottish Government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
She is therefore unlucky, in a way, to have approached this electionatatimewhencovid-19 remained the most pressing day-to-dayissuebutisnolonger dominatingpoliticalnewstothe same extent as pre-christmas.
The second national lockdown – for Scotland at least – came as the heat on the
First Minister cranked up around the Salmond Inquiry. Adamagingthreemonthsfrom the start of the year saw the SNP’S dirty laundry aired in the fullglareofthepublicandinthe space of three months, the SNP wentfrompollinganaverageof 54 per cent on the constituency to 49 per cent.
Simultaneously, the SNP was forced into a debate about the speed of independence it did not want to have following the emergence of Alex Salmond’s new venture, Alba.
Opposition parties smelled blood and began to press the SNP on how independence would be delivered, answers
Ms Sturgeon roundly failed to answer.
Her leadership on c ovid -19 put the SNP into a clear lead, but as the election came ever nearer, support for independence ebbed away as did the SNP’S support.
Despite a resurgence early on during the April campaign when the SNP’S average polling nudged back over the 50 per cent mark, the downward trend continued to a low of 46.6 per cent in mid-april.
The final average, of 48.8 per cent, would remain an astonishing result for a party of 14 years in government, but there will be some within the SNP that may
be disappointed should the result not reach 50 per cent.
Should the party return an overall majority after all the votes are counted on Saturday, it will only have been possible due to its performance on the constituencies and will require an effective cleansweep of all the first-past-thepost seats available to them. The snp’ s list performance–on which so much rides in places such as South Scotland – consistently sat at around 10 per cent lower than the constituency vote share.
This is mostly due to an exceptional few months for the Scottish Greens. Overall, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater’s party has averaged around nine per cent solidly since August.
It is an understatement to say that the party would be overjoyed to get into double figures in terms of MSPS even if there was premature talk of beating Labour into third place.
Despite suggestions their vote could collapse with the emergence of Alba, the Green vote instead became more resilient and rose to a high of 10.4 per cent before polling day.
The newest pro-independenceparty on the block has seen pollsters essentially guessing at their true level of support, but with six percent the benchmark for success on the list, average polling puts alba no higher than 3.6 per cent during the campaign.
Alex Salmond and one or two of his colleagues may well get elected – their support is likely to be strongest in the northeast, the Highlands and parts of the West of scotland in areas where four to six per cent of the vote may be enough – but the electorate’s view of the former first minister was always an issue.
Savanta Comres polled Scots four times on whether the formers np leader was fit for office. At the start of April the figure viewing him as unfit was 63 per cent, by may 5 it was 72 percent. The battle for second place is too close to call and while the Scottish
Conservatives are looking the most likely to retain their place as the official opposition, the polls indicate it may be closer than Douglas Ross would hope.
The election of Anas Sarwar – now the country’s second most popular politician on a net favourability rating of +11, just three points below Nicola Sturgeonon+14–hasstoppedtherot for Scottish Labour.
From average lows of 16 per cent on both ballots, the party is set to return 20 per cent of the constituency vote and 18 per cent of the regional list which would be a successful result for the party.