IT'S starting to look like a General Election could be called. According to BBC reports, there are currently "live discussions" going on in Number 10 to determine whether the Government should call one in response to news that more than 20 Tory rebels may vote for legislation to stop a No-Deal Brexit.
But what would the results of a General Election look in Scotland? James Kelly of pro-independence political analysis blog SCOT Goes POP! says looking into this can be quite "frustrating".
READ MORE: Election: Johnson could hold vote if rebels try to block No Deal
"For some reason," he explains, "We still haven't had a full-scale poll of Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (or indeed for Holyrood) since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. The change at the top has altered the trajectory of GB-wide polling, so it seems likely that the same will prove true in Scotland, but to what extent?"
Kelly says now it's possible to get more "meaningful results" because there have been eight published YouGov subsamples with fieldwork that took place since Johnson became PM.
The subsample average goes as follows:
SNP 44.4%
Conservatives 19.3%
Liberal Democrats 12.8%
Labour 11.4%
Brexit Party 7.0%
Greens 4.0%
Which would translate to a seat projection of:
Kelly said: "We shouldn't forget that, although the Tories have opened up a GB-wide lead, they haven't recovered to anything like the kind of levels of support that they had even a few months ago - they're still languishing in the low 30s, which normally wouldn't be enough to top the popular vote in a General Election.
"They're leading by default because their main opponents are polling at an unusually low level too. In Scotland, it looks like they're not being so fortunate - yes, they've recovered a bit due to the Boris effect, but that's not doing them much good because their main opponent actually appears to be polling higher than in 2017."
He added that the SNP are standing "firm" in the face of the "Boris bounce" and alleged "Swinson surge".
The seat change would be:
SNP 52 (+17)
Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c)
Conservatives 2 (-11)
Labour 1 (-6)
"I thought the result of the East Kilbride by-election was really interesting - Labour's vote slumped by eleven points, and it looked possible that a lot of those votes might have gone direct to the LibDems, who enjoyed a ten point boost. The SNP seemed unaffected by the LibDem surge, and saw their own vote increase by four points.
READ MORE: Brexit: No Scottish Tories willing to vote to stop No Deal
"OK, that's only one by-election and there may well have been local factors. But if the LibDems start taking significant numbers of Unionist/Remain votes away from Labour in seats that the LibDems can't possibly win in a million years, and if there is no substantial movement of votes from the SNP to the LibDems, the stars might just be aligning for a dramatic SNP landslide in terms of seats."
He also said Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson's resignation could have an impact, leading her moderate supporters to "start drifting off to the LibDems or somewhere else".
You can read Kelly's full analysis of the polling averages here.
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