Skip to main content

Sturgeon May Have Jumped Before She Was Pushed


Sturgeon May Have Jumped Before She Was Pushed

 

For almost a decade Nicola Sturgeon had led her party, the SNP, and the Scottish Parliament, but today she has announced her resignation. It has come to a shock to most, considering the SNP’s dominance in Scotland, but tougher times were ahead for her and her party. It is admirable of her to stand down for the sake of her party, as she told the media, but why exactly did she feel the need to have the SNP select a new leader?

For the last few months the Labour surge has arrived north of the border, and it has been at the expense of the SNP, though they should comfortably retain their political prominence in the next Westminster election next year, and the Scottish election in 2026. However, their dominance will be dented if polling is anything to go by.

Go back a year or so, and both Labour and the Conservatives were hovering around the 20% mark, often in the high teens; while the SNP saw many polls where they exceeded 50% support. Now in recent polls, the trends place them in the mid to low 40s, and impressive number. Their concern is Labour, who are trending in the high 20s, hitting the 30% mark in some polls. All it takes is a few nervous MPs and consistent polls not quite in the SNP’s favour close to election time, and hushed whispers of new leadership can turn into more public ridicule.

If over the next year and a half that trend of a significant Labour increase and a slow SNP decline, along with a Tory Party that are stationary in the high teens, could lead to the SNP losing a significant number of seats. Focusing on the closest election, the Westminster election that must be held by January of 2025, though most likely to be held in the latter half of 2024, we see that the outcome doesn’t look promising for the SNP.

They currently have 48 of 59 seats, with the Tories on 6, Liberal Democrats on 6, and Labour on just 1. That was with overall polling of SNP – 45%, Con – 25%, LD – 10%, Lab – 19%, back in 2019.

If trends were to hold, then we could see a rough breakdown of seats after the next election looking something like the 2017 election, which resulted in the following: SNP – 35 (37%), Con – 13 (29%), LD – 4 (7%), Lab – 7 (27%).

But with a weakened Conservative Party compared to the past two elections, and going by current polling, we could see something along the lines of these figures : SNP (30-35), Con (5-10), LD (0-5), Lab (15-20). That’s the joys of having a ‘First Past the Post’ (FPP) system of electing the candidate with the highest votes in the first and only count.

A broad 30% may not be enough for Labour to take a large number of seats, but by targeting ‘traditional Labour’ constituencies in places like Glasgow and Edinburgh, they could reclaim seats and take an amount in the high teens.

It’s far from the end of the SNP, who will still hold a majority of the 59 Westminster seats allocated to Scotland after the next election, but for Nicola Sturgeon, it may be better for her to offer the SNP a chance to alter the face and course of the party, even if only slightly, in the hopes of beating the current polling slide. It remains to be seen if she has offered her party a renewed hope of dominance, or has condemned them to a further fall in the polls without her leadership.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sinn Féin Pre-Election Analysis

  Operating off the recent in-depth RedC poll, while taking other recent polls into account, one thing is certain, Sinn Féin will have a time-machine on the top of their list to Santa if the election isn’t called before Christmas. It seems like it was only yesterday when the party was polling in the mid-30s, reaching a high of 36%, and seemed like a government in waiting if they managed to get some smaller parties and independents on board. What must have been a scramble for candidates to even get within a whiff of a majority, now some tough decisions will have to be made as to whether they will even run a second candidate in some constituencies. Keep in mind that in some constituencies where the polled well in 2020, and were polling very well in polls, such as Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, and Louth, there were rumours of a third candidate being added in the 5-seater constituencies where they were polling close to 50% of the vote. When once there were talks of 60+ seats, now they...

Putin Brings Term Limits Into Question

Love him, hate him, or simply don't care about him, Vladimir Putin will be allowed to serve as President of Russia for the foreseeable future. But one thing that many sensationalist headlines are ignoring, is that he actually has to be elected to continue in his role as the Russian head of state. Whether you think Russia has fair elections or not, it brings a broader question into the fore; should political term limits even exist? Let’s move west of the Kremlin, and think about this political situation with some leaders who are more favourable to westerners than the beast from the east. Barack Obama was not allowed to run for a third term in office in 2016, ultimately leading to the election of Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was simply not as likeable as Obama, something that wasn’t helped by the email scandal or her attack on republican supporters that had an affect on the middle ground. Obama, a much more liked public figure, would have surely retained the White House for a thir...

A 2023 Election Not To Be Ruled Out

  With the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Green Party coalition now entering its third year of a maximum five-year term, many are of the opinion that the trio will ride out the rather undesirable polling figures and wait until the last possible moment to call another general election. Another common opinion is that an election will be called in the second half of 2024, how late in that half dependent on the results of the European and Local elections in May of that year. Both valid points, particularly the latter; a bumper budget in October, semi-decent canvassing weather, and pre-empting the inevitable winter healthcare crisis, all make for a workable scenario for the government parties. However, strategically speaking, taking those points and applying them to October 2023 may make more sense for Martin, Varadkar, and Ryan, should they be willing to gamble their final year of the term for the prospects of another five-year stint running Leinster House. Despite current polling having ...