Every day until the election we will profile all 59 of Scotland’s contests. Can the SNP hold what they have or win any new seats? James Kelly of ScotGoesPop has the answers
EDINBURGH WEST
Winner in 2017: Christine Jardine (LibDems)
The one Edinburgh constituency the SNP did fail to retain in 2017 is renowned as an enchanted kingdom where it’s possible for Alex Cole-Hamilton to knock on doors and magically find that LibDem voters outnumber SNP voters by seven to one, or some such equally fantastical ratio.
In the real world, it’s unlikely that the situation is anything as grim for the SNP in this marginal seat that they only lost to the LibDems by six percentage points. The problem, however, is that the LibDems’ Scotland-wide vote share was only around 7% two years ago and recent opinion polls have suggested their support now stands at something approaching double that. There’s no particular reason why such a significant change won’t be reflected in the party’s existing pockets of strength, in which case a marginal LibDem seat like Edinburgh West may finish this campaign as a much safer LibDem seat.
An additional concern for the SNP is that last time around the third-placed Tories took 22% of the vote which the LibDems will presumably seek to squeeze with a hardline Unionist pitch. In other parts of Scotland where Labour are the main rivals of the SNP, there are well-founded doubts over whether Tory supporters will feel able to lend Labour their vote on an anti-SNP basis due to their concerns about Corbynism. But there seems to be no equivalent psychological barrier that prevents Tory supporters considering a vote for the LibDems where they are best placed to take the SNP on.
READ MORE: General Election analysis: SNP hoping to reclaim East Renfrewshire
READ MORE: General Election analysis: Edinburgh South West could easily be held
Probably the most realistic hope for the SNP to take Edinburgh West back with candidate Sarah Masson would be a 2015-style tsunami effect where their own vote is so high across Scotland that they simply overwhelm the Unionist parties almost everywhere.
But even in that scenario, it’s conceivable that Edinburgh West might be a rare island of Unionist resistance – it was, after all, one of the very few constituencies where the SNP’s margin of victory in 2015 was less than commanding.
Indeed, the race was close enough that at one point during the count, the LibDems briefed journalists that they had won.
It’s not a lost cause for the SNP by any means, but the odds must be heavily in the LibDems’ favour on this occasion.
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