Should socialists vote for the SNP at 2015 general election?

[brogdale]

John Curtice's take on those ICM numbers...

YG's Anthony has had a look at the ICM poll and makes this observation about the 17% SNP lead being a little lower than some other recent polling...

UPDATE: Full tabs are here, and reallocation of don’t knows did happen and did help Labour – it would have been a nineteen point lead otherwise.

 

[Lo Siento.]

YG's Anthony has had a look at the ICM poll and makes this observation about the 17% SNP lead being a little lower than some other recent polling...

I think it was in the detail that this poll envisaged this "bloodbath" though. If the SNP surge is unevenly spread and results in small swings in marginal seats and huge swings in Labour heartlands then ...

 

[brogdale]

I think it was in the detail that this poll envisaged this "bloodbath" though. If the SNP surge is unevenly spread and results in small swings in marginal seats and huge swings in Labour heartlands then ...

Yeah, Anthony has been keen to point out the limitations of applying uniform swing when the figures are so great....

Of course, were these figures to be maintained and were the next election to be a complete sea-change in how people vote in Scotland, I wouldn’t expect uniform national swing to be a useful predictor anyway. That doesn’t necessarily mean it willover-state SNP performance: Labour are down 18 percent since the last election, the Lib Dems down 14 percent. There were eight seats where Labour got less than 18 percent at the last election, thirty-two seats where the Liberal Democrats got less than 14 percent – it is mathematically impossible for Labour and the Lib Dems to lose enough votes uniformly across the country.

 

[brogdale]

More from John Curtice...

“..What, however, this poll brings anew to the evidence is an estimate of how well the parties are doing in different types of seats in Scotland. Inevitably, these estimates are based on relatively small sample sizes and thus have to be treated with caution. But what they do suggest is that there is no reason to believe that the swing to the SNP does not extend to what are supposedly the safest Labour seats in Scotland. If anything, the swing appears to be even greater in such seats. In seats where Labour is defending a majority of more than 25 points the swing in the poll from Labour to the SNP since 2010 is 24 points, rather higher than the 19.5 point swing for Scotland as a whole.

That means that, if anything, estimates of how many seats the SNP might win that are derived by assuming that the Scotland-wide movement uncovered by a poll would be replicated in each and every constituency in Scotland could actually underestimate the scale of SNP gains. In the case of this poll, projecting the Scotland-wide movement across the country as a whole produces an estimated seats outcome of SNP 45, Labour 26, Liberal Democrats (on 6% of the vote), 3 and the Conservatives (on 13%), 1. But if we take into account the difference in the movement in different types of seats then the estimate becomes SNP 53, Labour 3, and Liberal Democrat 3 (while the Conservatives emerge empty handed). In short, pretty much every Labour seat in Scotland has to be regarded as currently at risk of being lost to the SNP.“

Tectonic.

 

[danny la rouge]

So, in response to the OP, regardless of what socialists are doing, everyone else is voting SNP.

 

[brogdale]

So, in response to the OP, regardless of what socialists are doing, everyone else is voting SNP.

Ahem...Danny. Are you overlooking the 6% of your compatriots who say they intend to vote for Clegg's scum?

 

[danny la rouge]

Ahem...Danny. Are you overlooking the 6% of your compatriots who say they intend to vote for Clegg's scum?

It's any decent person's duty to overlook the filth.

 

[brogdale]

It's any decent person's duty to overlook the filth.

Good riposte!
Even given those ICM numbers, the filth still retain 3 Scottish seats, with Carmichael secure on a 15% majority, but even Kennedy would be in 'squeaky-bum' territory on just 2%. Michael Moore scrapes home with a tiny 0.2% majority!

 

[Pickman's model]

Ahem...Danny. Are you overlooking the 6% of your compatriots who say they intend to vote for Clegg's scum?

i don't suppose they thought anyone would believe them

 

[brogdale]

i don't suppose they thought anyone would believe them

Those islandy places with LD voters must be very remote; do they not have radio or TV out there?

 

[Pickman's model]

Those islandy places with LD voters must be very remote; do they not have radio or TV out there?

their mp, mr c kennedy, tells them what's going on on his daily round of the pubs.

 

[brogdale]

their mp, mr c kennedy, tells them what's going on on his daily round of the pubs.

 

[DotCommunist]

Those islandy places with LD voters must be very remote; do they not have radio or TV out there?

its possible that the entrenched libdemmery of those islands is based on a desire to empower those least likely to have the power or reach to interfere with their web handed ways. Vote for King Useless! too far away to fuck up our day to day life!

possibly

 

[Quartz]

So, in response to the OP, regardless of what socialists are doing, everyone else is voting SNP.

Apart from those voting Tory, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP, and the couple of jokers who said they were voting BNP. At least, I hope they were jokers.

 

[butchersapron]

Apart from those voting Tory, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP, and the couple of jokers who said they were voting BNP. At least, I hope they were jokers.

So no one that counts in the count.

 

[danny la rouge]

Apart from those voting Tory, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP, and the couple of jokers who said they were voting BNP. At least, I hope they were jokers.

Let's count up their MPs next May.

 

[weepiper]

Sas isn't the only one to use the 'National Socialist' line

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...and-save-the-Scots-from-self-destruction.html

 

[Quartz]

Let's count up their MPs next May.

I don't think that task will take very long.

 

[danny la rouge]

Sas isn't the only one to use the 'National Socialist' line

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...and-save-the-Scots-from-self-destruction.html

Stuff like this pushes me towards wanting to vote SNP. If it does that to me, it'll have the effect of actually making some people do it.

 

[rekil]

Sas isn't the only one to use the 'National Socialist' line

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...and-save-the-Scots-from-self-destruction.html

Is that the same Bruce Anderson that fantasises about torturing women and children?

Before 9/11, in front of some serious lawyers, I once argued that if there were a ticking bomb, the Government would not only have a right to use torture. It would have a duty to use torture. Up sprang Sydney Kentridge, one of the great liberals of our age and a fearless defender of unpopular causes, from Nelson Mandela in the old South Africa to fox-hunting in modern Britain. I prepared to receive incoming fire. It came, in the form of a devilish intellectual challenge. "Let's take your hypothesis a bit further. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character. We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children".

After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children.

 

[danny la rouge]

Charming.

 

[weepiper]

Is that the same Bruce Anderson that fantasises about torturing women and children?

The very same. He likes the finer things in life, too.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/author/bruce-anderson/