[SCOT goes POP!] Humza Yousaf is less popular with his own party's voters than any of the opposition leaders at Holyrood are with their parties' voters

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Humza Yousaf is less popular with his own party's voters than any of the opposition leaders at Holyrood are with their parties' voters

Throughout the SNP leadership election, polls consistently showed that Kate Forbes was far more popular with the general public than Humza Yousaf.  Weirdly, though, Yousaf made several attempts to get those poor polling results to work in his favour by zeroing in on his showing among SNP voters, which he claimed was all that mattered.  The claim that he was ahead of Forbes among SNP voters was always based on smoke and mirrors, because only roughly half of polls actually showed that.  The other half showed Forbes ahead among SNP voters, which probably means the two leading candidates were roughly level-pegging with each other on that measure.  Combined with Forbes' far, far greater popularity among the wider public, that should have been more than enough to seal the deal for her in any party that cared about winning elections and was thinking rationally.

But if Yousaf's claims of popularity among the SNP's own supporters were questionable during the leadership campaign, they're even more questionable now, because the new YouGov poll shows his net approval rating dipping to just +4 among people who voted SNP at the last general election.  The best way of putting that into perspective is to compare it to the opposition leaders' net ratings among their own parties' voters from 2019.

Humza Yousaf's net rating among SNP voters: +4

Anas Sarwar's net rating among Labour voters: +28

Douglas Ross' net rating among Conservative voters: +28

Alex Cole-Hamilton's net rating among Liberal Democrat voters: +7

So Humza Yousaf is not well placed to keep the voters that the SNP already have, or did have before he became leader.  He's appallingly poorly placed (unlike Kate Forbes) to reach out to voters the SNP don't have but would need to build the "sustained supermajority" that he insists is so essential.  He's indefinitely ditched all plans to win independence and has divided the SNP by appointing a weak, factionally-based ministerial team.  Was there even one good argument for electing this guy?  Ah yes, the GRR legal challenge.  Well, I hope his supporters make the most of their futile day in court, because it's coming at a very, very high price.

Source: Humza Yousaf is less popular with his own party's voters than any of the opposition leaders at Holyrood are with their parties' voters