Survation poll finds 29% of Labour supporters say Murphy’s election as leader makes it more likely they will vote for party
Guardian News and Media
The new leader of Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy, faces a daunting challenge to lift his party’s fortunes before next May’s general election as a poll shows support for Labour in Scotland is now half that for the SNP.
A Survation poll for the Daily Record, the first to be released since Murphy’s election on December 13, found that 48% of Scottish voters plan to support the SNP in May, and 24% Labour. The swing implied by the figures suggests that as many 10 Labour seats could fall to the SNP.
Support for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats fell by one point each, to 16% and 5% respectively, while Ukip polled 4% and the Greens 1%.
Reflecting the transformation of the political landscape in Scotland since the referendum, voting intentions for Westminster are now almost exactly aligned with those for Holyrood, where Labour polled 25% compared with the SNP’s 51%.
John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said on his What Scotland Thinks blog that the poll had dispelled any hopes that Murphy’s election would prove to be a ‘magic bullet’ for the Scottish Labour party. Among those currently supporting Labour, only 29% said Murphy’s election had made it more likely they would vote for the party in May.
Seventy-five percent of SNP supporters said that they would vote for the party with the best Scotland-wide policies or leader for Scotland, or for the party with the best approach to devolution and independence, while 68% of Labour supporters, in addition to 84% of Conservative and 73% of Liberal Democrat voters, said they would be voting for the party with the best UK-wide policies or leader.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said the SNP was taking nothing for granted but added: “This is a great early Christmas present for the SNP - our best ever Survation poll rating for a UK general election, as well as being over 50% for the Scottish parliament constituency vote for the first time.”
In an interview last Friday , Jim Murphy told the Guardian that the scale of the challenge he faced was ‘vast’ but he still believed Labour could hold all its Westminster seats and win in Holyrood in 2016.
“The (SNP) have got to work out how they deal with the argument we are going to make, which is you can protest against Cameron by voting for the Greens or the Nats, but you can only replace him with one party,” he said.