THE election of Kezia Dugdale and Jeremy Corbyn as leaders of Scottish and UK Labour has failed to dent the SNP’s commanding poll lead.

A new survey from TNS has shown Nicola Sturgeon’s party retain a huge 35 percentage point lead over Labour with the Holyrood election seven months away.

Support for both parties slipped back two percentage points compared with TNS’s poll last month.

In the latest survey support for the SNP stood
at 56% with Labour on 21%.

The Conservatives were unchanged on 12% and the Liberal Democrats roise one point at 6%. 

The poll among 1037 adults over 16 in Scotland was carried out after the election of Kezia Dugdale as leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and almost all the interviewing took place after Jeremy Corbyn became UK Labour leader.

Tom Costley, Head of TNS Scotland said, “People are still getting to know the new Labour leaders and what they stand for, so it’s not surprising there has been little immediate impact on voting intentions.

“One crumb of comfort for Labour may be that the overwhelmingly negative media commentary on Corbyn’s election appears not to have affected the party’s Scottish support, though the poll was carried out before his recent statement that he would never authorise the use of the UK’s nuclear deterrent if he became prime minister.”