ALBA - Unofficial Forum

The setback for Reform UK in this poll may look surprising, but the previous Survation poll did stick out like a sort thumb as unusually favourable for Reform, so the new figures may just be a case of margin of error noise rectifying itself.

From memory, I think the previous Survation poll was the one for which the Diffley Partnership did a seats projection that raised a lot of eyebrows, because it had Alba somehow winning a seat despite being on only 3% of the list vote.  As far as I can see there's no seats projection attached to today's poll, but as Alba are only on 2% this time I can't believe that any projection model would have them winning any seats at all.  This is what the most popular online predictor suggests the poll would translate into - 

That would put the SNP and Greens in combination on 67 seats, slightly higher than the 65 seat target for an overall majority.  Admittedly that's still a bit close for comfort as far as retaining the pro-indy majority is concerned, but it wasn't that long ago that this kind of projection would have looked like dreamland territory.

For my money, that's a pretty decent result on independence, because at least in recent times Survation haven't been particularly known as a Yes-friendly pollster.  And the data tables are really interesting, because (and this is not the norm) the turnout filter is flattering the No side.  Before likelihood to vote is taken into account, 418 respondents say they would vote Yes to independence and 419 say they would vote No - an almost perfect tie.

More details and analysis will follow soon, but in the meantime you can read my preview of the English local elections at The National.