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Scottish Torie set to hang on to most of their seats


The Conservatives are on course to defy pre-campaign expectations and might retain most of their 13 Scottish seats in Thursday’s general election, analysts have said, a result that would boost Boris Johnson’s hopes of securing a UK majority. 

Recent opinion surveys suggest support for the Conservatives is near the 29 per cent share of the vote the party took in 2017, its best general election result for more than three decades. 

“We’ve gone from thinking the Tories are going to do really badly to thinking well, actually, they may have a fighting chance of holding on to most of what they won in 2017,” Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based polling consultant, said on Monday. 

“The Tories, if they do hold on to say 10 of their 13 seats, will be absolutely delirious, because it didn’t look like that at all pre-campaign,” Mr Diffley said. 

A Panelbase poll for The Sunday Times completed on December 6 put the Scottish Conservatives on 29 per cent, up eight points since October. A YouGov poll completed on December 3 gave them 28 per cent, up six points from October. 

John Curtice, polling expert at Strathclyde university, said that “exactly” as in England, Scottish Conservatives were successfully securing the support of voters who back Brexit. In 2016, 32 per cent of voters in Scotland voted to leave the EU, well below the 52 per cent across the UK as a whole, but still a substantial pool to draw from. 

Analysts warned that it was hard to forecast how many Scottish seats the Conservatives might take, given the close margins between the winner and second-placed candidates in most of Scotland’s 59 constituencies in 2017. 

“Because everything in Scotland is marginal, it is very, very difficult to tell whether the Tories are going to end up with eight or with 12. It’s in the lap of the gods, but that seems to be the range of possible outcomes we are looking at,” Sir John said. 

In a poll last month, Ipsos Mori put Scottish Conservative support at 26 per cent. But Emily Gray, managing director of Ipsos Mori Scotland, said very small differences in headline vote share could swing the overall seat result sharply, while local factors might have a major impact in individual constituencies. 

“When seats are so marginal, a well-run local campaign can make a big difference,” Ms Gray said. 

Polls support expectations that the Scottish National party will once again win a large majority of seats in Scotland, a result the SNP says will show Brexit should be stopped and that Westminster should approve a second independence referendum to be held next year. 

“If there are two issues that will get your average Tory voters riled up and to the polls it will be those two,” Mr Diffley said. “I suspect what the SNP strategy has served to do is to energise not just their own base, which would obviously be the intention, but has energised their main opposition as well.” 

A relatively good showing for the Tories, which before 2017 held only one seat in Scotland, would upset assumptions their performance that year relied on the personal appeal of former Scottish party leader Ruth Davidson. Some Tories also worried that the widespread unpopularity of prime minister Boris Johnson in Scotland would damage their prospects north of the border. 

Interim Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw has put aside past qualms to strongly back Mr Johnson and Brexit while focusing his campaign on opposition to a second independence referendum. 

Rather than any senior Tory, a final-week advert launched by Mr Carlaw on Monday features Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, with the message: “She’s had her say, now you have yours.”



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