I appreciate I have a Very Specific Interest in polling and election results but the lying would offend me less if the lies were less egregious. E.g. if they said like 25%, sure, and that still transforms field. See also Angus Robertson: if he said Labour were his opponents, sure, truer to 2021

Sorry, to be clear, what the Labour Party are telling the country's most obvious Labour Party Client Journalist is that polling is underestimating their support to the tune of about half.

That is a claim that is such obvious bollocks it should be laughed at not printed in a national paper.

I thought that was yesterday - reports I heard back from it were that the guy thought Labour were currently Holyrood's second party and that he basically admitted to their model treating Scotland the same as England, so exactly the level of contempt and ignorance of Scottish politics I expected

The UK has several respected, well-established polling firms. Now of course free market etc not saying there should be a ban on new entrants, but when you follow GB-level polling it feels like there's a new made up name every other month, some of whom (e.g. FindOutNow) have really muddied the waters

There needs to be an industry inquiry after these elections into MRPs and then, to be frank, there needs to be a strengthening of BPC rules and potentially even actual regulation to control the recent proliferation of lobbyists dressing up as pollsters and undermining the entire sphere

Maximally on my brand posting: this article has absolutely done Dumbarton dirty with this photo. The area just to the north of the Leven was redeveloped a few years ago, not least with the new council HQ slotting in to where that green-tinged shell of a building is! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Anas Sarwar, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, undone by his ancient foe, the Scottish and UK Labour Parties.

I've been sceptical of the prospects of an SNP majority all campaign, but part of my scepticism hinges on Labour holding Dumbarton and Edinburgh Southern: another round of Mandelson drama as postal votes are arriving could genuinely be the thing that helps tip those away from Labour!

Shame we're no longer getting reputable Scottish polls and instead just getting MRP chicanery, so they'll just hallucinate bizarre outcomes rather than tell us whether Scottish Labour are actually going to take any more damage

(actually I have a poll I commissioned out later this week but shhh)

If you're going to give something a name that sounds like a centralised national public service, then you don't get to be outraged when people expect you to put forward a centralised national public service, nor when someone else takes up the idea as a centralised national public service!

When the NCS that was put forward was going to take the form of a centralised, national structure, Scottish Labour were outraged: "we've been calling for an NCS for years, but we didn't mean it to be a STRUCTURAL reform like this!"

Okay, then why did you deliberately echo the NHS, a structure?

This is a slight tangent but actually this may be something of a Labour pattern. One of the big failures of this term of the Scottish Parliament was the "National Care Service", a term coined by Scottish Labour but used in the 2021 Independent Review of Adult Social Care and taken forward by the SNP

Not been able to find out what their own imagined apportionment of those was unfortunately, beyond the obvious subtraction between their claimed total and the constituency seats!

Oh the MRP girlies are going to have a ROTTEN time of it on the 8th of May, yer boy has been collecting all the receipts for reference so you won't be able to hide xoxo

Absolutely fantastic statement for the Telegraph to make in their article where not only did the provider of their MRP forget to remove Greens from constituencies and suggest Reform's strongest seat in Scotland would be Strathkelvin and Bearsden, *they didn't even do D'Hondt correctly*

Average Prime Minister steps on 3 rakes a day factoid is actually just statistical error. Average Prime Minister steps on 0 rakes per day. Rakes Keir, who lives in garden centre and steps on over 10,000 rakes each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

Emerging from a work meeting to check on Events. Has it been a good afternoon for the Prime Minister? No? Ah. Well. Nevertheless, I'm sure one more relaunch and briefing about seeing "Angry Starmer on display" will get the show back on the road.

Made a handy summary: oranges are "too low", purples are "too high", pale is "slightly", dark is "much"

Blue is "are you out of your minds what the hell have you been smoking take the whole web page down, issue an apology, and start from scratch"

Regional votes overall are complete bollocks. How are the Tories doing better in W than S, NE or M&F? How the hell are Labour doing better in ELE, M&F and S than CSLW, G and W? How is Reform higher in ELE & G than H&I and M&F?

In normal poll tables such variances don't matter. For an MRP? Absurd.

Ranking 2021 constituencies by Green share, Mid & Fife contains: 10, 12, 15, 24, 25, 28, 36, 43 & 59. South contains 34, 35, 58, 60, 64, 65, 66, 70, 72 & 73. I remind you, there are 73 constituencies.

How does your model or polling translate that past performance to this, you total, utter, diddies?

Doing more screaming now I am on lunch and can look; so, yes, models which say "up nationally means up everywhere, same for down" are overly simplistic, however, for Greens that was true in 2016 and 2021! So again, alarm bells at -2.1% in Mid and Fife vs +1.9% nationally. Also, +5.6% in SOUTH?!

If we're still doing "new revelations show Keir Starmer didn't know or care to know that This Obvious Bastard was indeed An Obvious Bastard; time is running out to save his Premiership" in June I'll fuckin do it, I'll be PM, I am psychologically unfit for it too but at least I'd be a new incompetent

I appreciate the PLP is stressed about lack of viable alternative but I am begging all 400 of you that if Starmer doesn't resign on the 8th of May you have to coup him. You simply must coup him. I don't have the energy for the constant "here's another aspect of why he is unfit to be PM" news!

Pulled up the spreadsheet: 19% Lib Dem in the North East. On 10% average for constituency vote in the region. When they are on 12% nationally on both ballots.

This alone is such a glaring flaw it should have sunk the whole exercise. These people have no idea what they are doing.

I am not going to be kind if (when) things like this are proven total bollocks and standard swing models perform much better, I tell you that fuckin much

Obsessed with NE: Lib Dems, a party who have never had their list vote exceed their constituency vote, average 10% in North East constituencies but somehow get 3 list MSPs which means at least ~17% and 3x as many list votes as Greens, who were on 6.3% in 2021 but must therefore be lower in 2026.

And 33% of the Constituency vote for the SNP *whilst accounting for lack of Greens*? When your most recent non MRP had 32% and 7% for them?

You people are playing silly buggers

There is no such thing as an Official Opposition at Holyrood; if you've got the Greens on 7% in Southside you haven't the faintest idea about the area; no way Tories hold Galloway but lose Ettrick Roxburgh and Selkirk.

Pish, pish, pish!

No Greens in Mid and Fife - their third best region - or North East - despite *two* non-SNP constituencies.

Three Lib Dem list MSPs in the North East? Three?! Are you people high?

If your MRP has the Scottish Greens on 10% and two constituency seats but still only on 8 seats overall your model is bad and you are idiots. This has been my initial review of the headline figures from More in Common's MRP.