Looking forward to Holyrood '11

A poll in the Herald this week gives the first indication since the General Election of voting intentions for next year's Scottish elections and the news is very good for Labour. These figures on a uniform swing would give Labour around 60 seats to the SNP's 37 with the Lib-Dems on 16 and the Conservatives on 14 with 2 Greens.

For Labour there should be a reality check that they are probably receiving a boost from having no leader to attract negative coverage and from a negative reaction to a Tory government in Westminster. In fact, they are doing so well on these figures, that in most regions (except Highlands) their supporters would do more damage to the SNP by switching their regional vote to either the Lib-Dems or Greens, depending who they fancied as coalition partners. This would be the dilemma for Labour - do they try and form a new coalition with the party they probably feel snubbed their offer of a "progressive coalition" or go the minority government route pioneered by the SNP with issue by issue support from the Greens (who prefer to operate that way rather than forming a coalition).

For the SNP it shows that they face a real challenge to hold onto government against a Labour party who are now in opposition UK-wide. Unhappiness with the UK-government will no longer play in their favour, nor will "Time for a change" slogans. They might be able to make some political capital out of opposition to Coalition cuts, but even there, the delay in application of those cuts might play against them and this is a card that Labour can now play as well.

For the Tories a drop in their regional vote from where they get most of their seats could spell bad news and see them drop into 4th place behind the Lib-Dems again. For the Greens they seem to be treading water, but a rise of 1 or 2 percent could see them regain 3 or 4 regional seats that they lost last time. Crucially for them, if Labour do perform this strongly this could be enough to see them holding the balance of power and able to exert some considerable influence.

For the Lib-Dems their constituency vote is down, but the regional vote is slightly up which means they will lose seats to Labour, but win them back from the list. The interesting thing for them would be if labour did approach them for a coalition and we were faced with a Tory-Lib-Dem coalition in Westminster battling at Labour-Lib-Dem coalition at Holyrood. Interesting times indeed.