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Analysis: How the Conservatives can take nine seats off the SNP at the 2017 General Election

How the Conservatives can take nine seats off the SNP at the 2017 General Election
How the Conservatives can take nine seats off the SNP at the 2017 General Election

With the 2017 General Election less than two months away, it's not just Labour MPs who will be nervously looking over their shoulders anticipating a Conservative land grab.

The latest polling in Scotland suggests that Theresa May's party are likely to make huge gains as Scots voice their displeasure at the prospect of a second independence referendum.

The Conservatives, powered by the momentum of improved vote share in 2015 and the charisma of Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, are set to get around a third of the vote north of the border on June 8 if the latest polls are to be believed.

Chart - the Conservatives are polling at nearly double their 2015 vote share in Scotland

A Panelbase and Sunday Times poll from last Friday puts the Conservatives on 33 per cent in Scotland - more than double the vote share they achieved in 2015.

The SNP, meanwhile, are on 44 per cent while Labour languishes on 13 per cent in third place.

Which SNP seats are at risk?

Martin Baxter, of political statistics website Electoral Calculus, has used an average of the most recent polls on voting intention in Scotland to forecast the likelihood of the Conservatives winning each seat.

Were his results to replicate themselves on June 8 the swing to the Conservatives would be enough for them to capture nine SNP seats as well as Labour's one remaining Scottish constituency.

Scottish Tory targets map

This would leave the Tories on 11 seats in total - unprecedented in modern times.

The seat with the greatest chance of switching to the Tories is Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk where the SNP hold a majority of just 0.6 percentage points over the Conservatives. Based on the expected swing away from the SNP Calum Kerr is expected to lose this seat.

Other constituencies which are also very likely to turn blue are Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine where Stuart Donaldson's majority of 7,000 could be overturned and Dumfries and Galloway where the SNP majority is even smaller at 6,500.

The Conservatives' Scottish targets in the General Election

This leaves a further seven seats in which the race will be tighter but that could still swing to Theresa May's party. They include Labour's only Scottish seat - Edinburgh South - and Moray, which is currently held by the SNP Commons leader Angus Robertson.

While the chance of these seats changing hands is slimmer, the direction of travel in the polls is such that the prospect of the Conservatives causing severe damage to the SNP in this way is increasingly likely.

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