IF the worst comes to the worst in Glasgow and the SNP have a poor election night in Scotland’s largest city, it’s possible they may still be able to look just a stone’s throw to the west for some consolation, because the two Paisley and Renfrewshire seats look a little safer – albeit far from secure.
That’s somewhat paradoxical given that Renfrewshire, unlike Glasgow, actually voted against independence in the 2014 referendum. However, views on the independence issue and party political voting trends have never been fully aligned, and they are likely to become much more decoupled on Thursday.
Particularly in Gavin Newlands’ Paisley and Renfrewshire North seat, the SNP’s stronger position is caused by a substantial vote for the Conservatives, who came very close to overtaking Labour for second place in the 2019 general election.
That meant support for the two largest Unionist parties was essentially split down the middle in the constituency, an ideal scenario for the SNP who were left twenty-four percentage points ahead of Labour. Radical boundary changes have now removed areas of strength for the Tories such as Bridge of Weir, and the seat has even expanded into Glasgow to a limited extent.
In the notional results from 2019, that increases the gap between the second-placed Labour and the third-placed Tories to five percentage points, but nevertheless the SNP would still have been left benefitting handsomely from a split Unionist vote if the last election had been held on the new boundaries, and will be defending an estimated lead over Labour of twenty-three points this time.
The difficulty is that Labour appear to be doing well enough in the national polls to overcome even that sort of huge lead. If, for example, they are around five points ahead of the SNP in the national popular vote, which is approximately what a number of polls have suggested, a uniform swing would see them take Paisley and Renfrewshire North by as much as around eight points.
Some of the recent constituency-level projections from polling companies illustrate the problem. JL Partners has Labour ahead of the SNP in the constituency by 39% to 35%, while Find Out Now gives Labour a bigger lead of 42% to 33%.
So while Labour’s relatively weak starting position does keep Newlands in contention to retain his seat, it looks like he’ll have to defy the odds to at least some degree by outperforming national trends.
And as in all SNP-Labour battleground seats with a substantial Tory vote, he’ll be looking over his shoulder and wondering whether a large shift of votes direct from Tory to Labour could mean that the local pro-Labour swing will actually be higher than the national average, not lower.
The SNP ground campaign will have to battle for every wavering voter they speak to between now and 10pm on polling day if Newlands is to make it back to Westminster for a fourth term.
