Scottish National Party’s support rising: Poll

Edinburgh, Dec 22 (IANS) Support for the Scottish National Party (SNP) reached the highest level at 48 percent voters for the Westminster British parliamentary elections next year, poll results published by the media Monday showed.

The Scottish nationalists party’s support is followed by Labour’s 24 percent, the Conservatives’ 16 percent, the Liberal Democratics’ 5 percent, the UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) 4 percent and 1 percent for the Greens, Xinhua reported citing the latest poll by Survation for the Daily Record newspaper.
The poll of 1,001 people across Scotland was the first since Jim Murphy was elected as Scottish Labour’s leader Dec 13.
For a Holyrood Scottish parliament elections, the SNP continues to dominate the voting intentions, with the party’s Scottish Parliament constituency vote rising to 51 percent, against Labour’s 25 percent.
New Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who succeeded Alex Salmond in November as the latter quit after the majority opted to stay in Britain in a Scottish independence referendum in September, hailed the poll results.
However, she pledged hard work in the new year to ensure a strong group of SNP parliament members to give Scotland the strongest possible voice at Westminster.
Among Scotland’s total 59 seats in the British parliament, the Labour holds 41, against the SNP’s six and the Conservative’s one.
At the 2010 Westminster general elections, Labour won 42 percent of the Scottish vote, compared with the SNP’s share of 19.9 percent.
Among the Scottish parliament’s total 129 seats, the SNP currently holds 64 seats, against the Labour’s 38 and the Conservatives’ 15.
The British parliamentary general elections are scheduled to be held in May 2015, while the Scottish parliamentary elections follows in 2016.