Another day, another new poll from YouGov / The Sun (16th-17th April)…

The supposedly big story of this poll (and the previous one) is that UKIP are polling third not the Lib Dems.

However neither are the “third party”.

This is very broadbrush (it can’t really be anything else) but I believe it is correct (please tweet @JohnNor if you believe you can explain why this isn’t correct)!

YouGov / The Sun 15th-16th April 2012, whole of GB:

LAB 43%
CON 32%
UKIP 9%
LIBDEM 8%
SNP 5%

YouGov / The Sun 16th-17th April 2012, whole of GB:

LAB 41%
CON 32%
UKIP 9%
LIBDEM 8%
SNP 4%

At the moment the Lib Dems have 57 MPs - what effect would losing two-thirds of their voters have on the number of MPs? Difficult to say but it seems likely they would have less than 20 MPs. It seems likely UKIP would have a broadly similar number of MPs to the Lib Dems, if they had a similar percentage of the vote.

YouGov release the figures (dividing GB into five) for “London”, “Rest of South”, “Midlands/Wales”, “North”, “Scotland”.

For the past two weeks for the YouGov region of Scotland for these YouGov polls: Labour have been polling about 35% and the SNP have been been polling about 35% too. In an actual election with these percentages we could expect something like 25 MPs for the SNP (out of 59 seats, or 50-something seats if the Tories succeed in shrinking the 650 MPs to 600 MPs).

Is this significant as it’s unlikely that SNP MPs are “coalitionable”? I would say yes even so. It’s 25 MPs that could be Labour instead, a not-inconsiderable number in this supposed new era of “coalition politics”.

Hopefully Labour will be able to convince Scotland to vote for more Labour MPs.

The SNP are - at the moment - the third party.