The SNP are a refuge for the disaffected leftish former Labour voter if the SSP and Solidarity arn’t available. One of these parties leadership is on the wrong side of perjury charges, but we don’t know which.

Elsewhere they appear to have taken votes from SNP rather than Labour where they stand for the first time.

If you don’t want independence, you vote against it in a referendum, not an election. There is no great harm in electing an SNP MP for a parliament he wants to leave.

You are right about the organisational behaviour. That will do Labour more damage, especially if some are in denial, others panic and a few settle old scores irrespective of the damage it does to the party.

Morale will collapse as will funding and election help.

You don’t need anything more than that to lose an election.

Surely nobody here believes elections are won do they? Or that the electorate has been persuaded of the new-found wisdom of the Conservatives, or that there is a surge in demand for independence in Scotland not showing in the polls?

What do you think this result will do for “organisational behaviour” so far as the SNP are concerned?

This really is disasterous for Labour.

The only very small crumb of comfort for Labour is that they might have narrowly won a seat with a similar majority in England because splinter further left parties like the SSP would not have got as many votes.

I blogged yesterday in relation to the MORI July monitor about what Labour would need to do in terms of organisational behaviour to recover. The likelihood must be, particularly with the National Policy Forum coming up in the immediate future, that Labour faces recriminations and infighting, which will do it no good at all.

I have to say I was very surprised that anyone did a poll in the seat. It was brave of ICM and SPO to tackle it, but I’m not particularly surprised it didn’t work out. I think in their shoes I’d have told the client that it would probably be impossible to get a decent sample and passed!

Was it that they asked the wrong people – Glasgow East just too difficult to poll? Was it late swing? Or something else?

If it was undecided and soft labour support breaking to the Nats, then are there methods to find this out tghrough polls (or at the the possibility). For example, when asking for party preference, should pollsters also how strong the preference is (say on a scale of 1-10, similar to the question about likelyhood to vote at all)? And what about a forced choice between the front runners for undecided voters. Would that work?

Well done 42% to 39% was close to the final 43% to 41%.

I think the difference is that you predicted the Tories to rise and they were static and LibDems and SSP were well down.

Peter.

Great result for us but close, still great for all those who have worked themselves in to the ground down there.

Peter.

As ever, I agree with every word you say. If the Nats win the Labour MP’s who helped in the campaign should go home and prepare for independence.

Lab = 43.2% (-17.5)
SNP = 35.1% (+18.1)
Con = 8.7% (+1.8)
LD = 7.3% (-4.5)
SSP = 2.8% (-0.7)
Green = 1.5% (+1.5)
Sol = 0.7% (+0.7)
Ind = 0.4% (+0.7)
F4C = 0.3% (+0.3)

Please note that the Green, Sol, Ind and F4C didn’t stand at the last General election in 2005. I have used the BBC style of regarding a party’s performance who didn’t stand at the previous election, as progress.