British election: Labour could bleed support in Scotland, poll suggests

Britain's opposition Labour party will lose as many as 30 Scottish seats to nationalists in the May 7 election, a poll showed on Tuesday, reducing Labour leader Ed Miliband's chances of unseating Prime Minister David Cameron.

Scots voted to stay part of the United Kingdom in a Sept. 18 referendum, but support for the Scottish National Party has since soared on the perception that London will not deliver the extra powers it promised to swing the poll result.

The Times/YouGov poll shows the Scottish National Party has a 21-point lead in Scotland and would take 48 per cent of the vote to Labour's 27 per cent, the Times newspaper reported. The Liberal Democrats were on four per cent and Conservatives on 15 per cent in Scotland, the poll showed.

The Times said that when plugged into a model, the results would give the SNP 48 out of 59 seats in Scotland, up from the six it won in 2010, leaving Labour just 11 seats, down from the 41 it won in 2010.

The nationalists aim to usurp Labour in Scotland and win the balance of power in an election that will decide who rules the world's sixth-largest economy and whether voters will get a referendum by 2017 on membership of the European Union.