Model suggests the once-dominant Scottish National Party could lose 64.6 percent of the total seats it won in 2019 — an even higher share than the dire night projected for the Conservatives.
But the separatist outfit — which once rode so high it forced a referendum on Scotland’s continued part in the U.K. — has had an unenviable 18 months.
In fact, Diffley points out, prior to the last couple of decades, Labour’s dominance as the main party in Scotland had been considered “kind of unassailable” since the 1980s and 90s.
Negative reactions to Thatcherism, economic turmoil and industrial action, and the prominence of big name Scottish politicians like Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown, worked in Labour’s favor.
MRP models from other pollsters do not necessarily project the same massive reversal of fortune in Scotland’s central belt.
In the North East the SNP is battling the Conservatives to win over more rural, right-leaning voters and in the central belt it must combat Labour’s attempts to lure a broadly urban and left-leaning population.
Depending on the way it goes in the tossup seats on election night, this could spell results even more dire than the projections suggest, or a far smaller loss for the SNP than the party may fear.
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