Tag Archives: exit poll

Scottish exit poll comes with a large pinch of salt

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 4th July 2024 - 11:35 pm

The Scottish constituency breakdown of the exit poll should be taken with a fairly large pinch of salt. In 2019, it predicted we would lose all of our seats north of the border and we won 4. The MRP models don’t generally do Scotland that well.

This time, it predicts that we are on 5 our current 4 plus Mid Dumbartonshire. That would coincide with our own hopes and, I think, backs up what we have picked up on the ground during the campaign. So, fingers crossed that is accurate.

Labour are predicted to gain 29 seats, bringing them to 30, and the Tories are supposed to double their seats from 6 to 12. The SNP are predicted to do worse than even the most pessimistic predictions, with just 10 seats, down from 48.

However, it seems unlikely that the Tories will double their seats, least of all themselves who are doing a bit of expectation management on this. Nobody really believes that their current Westminster leader Stephen Flynn will lose his Aberdeen South seat to them, a key target for Labour. Pete Wishart would also lose his Perth seat to the Conservatives. However, there may be a return for Stephen Gethins, beaten by Wendy Chamberlain in North East Fife in 2019 and now standing in Arbroath.