Posted by 
The Scottish National Party, which has long dominated Scottish politics with its push for independence from the United Kingdom, could be in for a rough night on July 4.
Just how rough and how many seats they stand to lose is still up for debate.
But the separatist outfit — which once rode so high it forced a referendum on Scotland’s continued part in the U.K. — has had an unenviable 18 months.
Sudden resignations, an ongoing police investigation into party finances and now a general election just weeks after leader John Swinney stepped up to the plate could all contribute to some serious suffering for the party at the ballot box.
This tumultuous recent history comes after years of dominance in Scotland. The SNP has been the largest party in the Scottish Parliament since 2007 and has won the most seats in Scotland in every general election since its 2015 wipeout, when all but three Scottish MPs elected hailed from the party.
On July 4 that could all change. YouGov’s recent MRP model suggests that if the election were held now, the SNP could lose 64.6 percent of the total seats it had in 2019, an even higher share than the dire 61.6 percent possible loss faced by the Conservatives.
The model — seen as the gold standard in Westminster — estimates the relationship between voters’ characteristics and their vote intention. It then uses constituency-level data to forecast seat outcomes based on the types of voters who live there.
Meanwhile, Labour has the possibility of once again becoming Scotland’s largest party — a massive upgrade from the single seat won by the party in the last general election.
The MRP model suggests that 35 of Scotland’s 57 seats could change hands. This level of potential turnover is higher than that projected south of the border.
Almost all of these seats are projected to go from the SNP to Labour and the vast majority are situated in Scotland’s urban central belt.
Mark Diffley, pollster and founder and director of the research consultancy Diffley Partnership, says Labour has gained from “the mistakes and the misfortunes of the other two big parties in Scotland.”
With the exception of Na h-Eileanan an Iar, an island constituency which has been an SNP hold since 2005, the constituencies that Labour is projected to take were all red prior to 2015.
In fact, Diffley points out, prior to the last couple of decades, Labour’s dominance as the main party in Scotland had been considered “kind of unassailable” since the 1980s and 90s. Negative reactions to Thatcherism, economic turmoil and industrial action, and the prominence of big name Scottish politicians like Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown, worked in Labour’s favor.
“Like the rest of the U.K., I suppose, the Tories ran out of steam,” says Diffley of this time in Scotland’s history. “Labour was seen as the kind of coming force across the U.K. and in particular in Scotland.” Sound familiar?
Although things are looking good for Labour and conversely bad for the SNP, it really is still all to play for in Scotland. MRP models from other pollsters do not necessarily project the same massive reversal of fortune in Scotland’s central belt.
In YouGov’s model, although every seat is given a projected winner, if the margin is less than five percent of vote share it is considered a “tossup” seat. Scotland has 22 such seats, almost 40 percent of the total seats up for grabs in the country.
In every single one of these tossup seats, the SNP is one of the top parties fighting it out. In the North East the SNP is battling the Conservatives to win over more rural, right-leaning voters and in the central belt it must combat Labour’s attempts to lure a broadly urban and left-leaning population.
“There are kind of two different elections really going on within Scotland. The SNP is having to fight both of them against different opponents whereas their opponents are just kind of fighting one of them and that makes it very, very difficult,” says Diffley.
Depending on the way it goes in the tossup seats on election night, this could spell results even more dire than the projections suggest, or a far smaller loss for the SNP than the party may fear.
As Diffley puts it: “It is almost inevitable that they will lose a significant number of seats. Now, whether that’s 20, whether that’s 30, you know, we don’t know. […] But what we do know, I think, and even people with inside the SNP will tell you, it’s going to be quite a difficult night for them in a few weeks.”
The charts in this piece are all based on YouGov’s MRP model using data from May 24 – June 1 2024. Estimated seat projections are based on modeled responses from 53,334 adults in England and Wales and 5,541 in Scotland to the question “Now thinking specifically about your own constituency, and imagining that these were the political parties standing, which party do you intend to vote for in the July 4th 2024 UK general election?“
Giovanna Coi contributed to reporting.
