Poll suggests SNP South of Scotland surge

The South of Scotland may have voted resoundingly 'No' in the independence referendum.

But that has not made it immune from the Scottish National Party post plebiscite surge.

Polling released tonight suggests the SNP is pushing the Unionist parties hard in our region.

Commissioned by Lord Ashcroft, one constituency poll suggests Labour's Russell Brown could lose Dumfries and Galloway to the Nationalists.

Another of a series of constituency polls for the Tory Peer suggested there could be a re-count in the Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale seat held by the Conservative's David Mundell.

Lord Ashcroft did not poll the Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk constituency held by the Liberal Democrat's Michael Moore.

Now, before we get carried away, these are only snapshots of opinion in these seats, though it is a reasonable sample size of about 1,000 voters in each case.

This does not tell us what the final result will be in these seats, and constituency polling is always difficult.

But it does follow a pattern. Across Scotland Labour - on the winning side in the referendum - is well behind the SNP.

According to the polls out tonight, the seats Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are vacating will fall to the Nationalists. Jim Murphy, the Scottish leader, would be one of the few Labour MPs to hang on.

Labour will say they will be fighting for every vote and that they are sure they will do better than the polls suggest on election day, May 7th.

The Tories too will say that these figures will galvanise their vote. They will want to hold on to Mr Mundell in particular, their only MP in Scotland.

The Liberals, well they'd like to know what is happening in the south but across Scotland they are doing very badly. Former leader Charles Kennedy is set to lose his seat.

But what Lord Ashcroft's latest survey has confirmed is this: the Unionist parties, the victors in the referendum, have one heck of a fight on their hands against the SNP independence vote 'losers'.