The survey found that although Alex Salmond has a high personal rating among voters, support for Scottish independence has slumped to a ten-year low of 23 per cent
Good news and bad for SNP: He's popular - but independence isn't
THE SNP won the Scottish Parliament election in May because people trusted Alex Salmond to be a good first minister, not because they wanted an independent Scotland, according to a major new piece of research published last night.
Researchers found that support for independence is now at a ten-year low of 23 per cent, despite the SNP's victory in May.
They also found Mr Salmond's personal rating was extremely high before the election. Asked to mark him out of ten to show how good a first minister they expected him to be, 44 per cent of respondents gave him seven or more.
This compares to the 9 per cent who gave then SNP leader John Swinney such a high rating in 2003 and the 23 per cent who gave Jack McConnell a high rating.
The Scottish Centre for Social Research, which compiled the data, said the results showed that the SNP did not secure victory on the back of a rising tide of support for independence.
Rather, it won because it was more successful than ever at getting its vote out and due to the popularity of its leader.
Professor John Curtice, a research consultant for the centre, said: "The SNP's victory in May was a success for the party rather than the cause of independence.
"It had a popular leader and tapped a feeling that Holyrood should put Scotland, rather than partnership with London, first. This enabled the party to win the votes of those who already backed independence rather than win new converts to the independence cause."
The results represent a mixed blessing for Mr Salmond. They confirm other poll findings which show he is popular among Scots and is seen to be standing up for Scotland - which many voters approve of.
But it also shows the SNP is as far from achieving majority support as it has been for the last ten years.
Mr Salmond knows his challenge is to convert support for the SNP and him into support for independence. This is why he spent much of his speech to the SNP conference on Sunday arguing that credibility in government will push forward the case for independence.
The First Minister knows he will have to build up support for independence gradually by persuading sceptical Scots that, although the SNP government might be achieving things at Holyrood, it could do more with independence.
Peter Lynch, a senior lecturer in politics at Stirling University, said: "This will come as a disappointment but not a surprise to Alex Salmond.
"For years, the SNP has been less popular than independence and now they have managed to reverse that. Mr Salmond's speech to conference showed what he is going to try to do - build up the SNP's credibility.
"They know they are not going to deliver independence in four years, but they have to show something - and if they fail to get more powers for the parliament that would be a big disappointment."
Almost 1,300 interviews were carried out between May and August this year and the full results will be presented to a conference in Edinburgh today. Researchers repeated questions asked in 2003, before and after that year's Scottish election, to find out how attitudes to parties and their leaders had changed.