AROUND one in four SNP members responded to First Minister John Swinney’s call for feedback on the party’s General Election campaign.
The Westminster election, held on July 4, saw the SNP lose the majority of their seats in the London parliament, returning just nine MPs.
In the wake of the defeat, the First Minister said the SNP had “failed to convince people of the urgency of independence” and sent out a questionnaire to party members asking for their views on why that may have been.
The National understands that, ahead of the party’s national conference which will begin on Friday, more than 15,000 SNP members have responded to that questionnaire.
According to party accounts published earlier in August, the SNP had 64,525 members, meaning around one-quarter of them submitted a response.
It is understood that SNP General Election candidates and their teams also reviewed their local campaigns and fed back further information.
At first, the SNP faced criticism from members for failing to include a review of the General Election result on the conference plan.
However, when the finalised agenda was published it included a session led by Swinney at which the result can be discussed at length.
There will also be a number of policy discussions chaired by Cabinet Secretaries, including one on the economy and net zero with Kate Forbes, and another on public services led by Shona Robison.
Around 1500 SNP delegates are expected to gather at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre for the annual conference, which will run from Friday to Sunday.
Stewart Kirkpatrick, the former head of digital for Yes Scotland, has run a separate survey canvassing not only SNP members but the wider independence movement on the General Election result.
His Yes We Didnae project received more than 1300 responses and – although the results are not a weighted opinion poll – some four in five (81%) of people agreed that "the SNP has not effectively developed the case for an independent Scotland”.
Further, 57% rated the SNP's stewardship of the independence cause since 2014 as either "ineffective" or "very ineffective". The proportion who thought the SNP had been "effective" or "very effective" on this was 17%.
On the question of whether the SNP would deliver independence by 2030, 57% said that was either "unlikely" or "very unlikely", while 21% said it was "likely" or "very likely".
Asked about the idea of using Westminster or Holyrood elections as de facto referendums, just 29% thought it could deliver independence.
