ICM poll: Labour faces losing control of Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are on course to wipe out Labour in Scotland. Picture: Greg Macvean

The Guardian/ICM poll has the SNP on 43 per cent; an unchanged level of support from ICM’s last Scottish poll for the newspaper in December last year.

Scottish Labour, meanwhile, are 16 points behind on 27 per cent - up one point since the December poll - with suggestions the arrival of Jim Murphy as leader has failed to galvanise the party.

The Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on six per cent while the Scottish Tories are up one point to 14 per cent.

According to the ICM data, the SNP would increase its number of seats at Westminster from six to 43 of the 59 seats available in Scotland.

Labour would lose their grip on 29 of the 41 Scottish seats Gordon Brown secured in 2010, effectively ending Ed Miliband’s chances of entering 10 Downing Street without some sort of deal with the SNP.

Former SNP leader Alex Salmond said at the weekend that he would only support Labour on a ‘vote by vote’ basis.

The Tories would retain their current seat - held by David Mundell - but the Scottish Lib Dems would surrender eight of their 11 seats, including the one currently held by Treasury secretary Danny Alexander.

The poll also reveals that Ed Miliband is more unpopular than David Cameron in Scotland, with the Labour leader scoring a personal rating of -39 to the Prime Minister’s -33.

ICM polled 1,002 individuals and placed all respondents into individual seats based on postcodes, before lumping the seats into four sections including ‘Labour heartland’ - where the lead over the SNP in 2010 was greater than 25 points - and ‘more marginal Labour.’