By Faisal Islam, Political Editor
The Scottish National Party is on course to win over a quarter of a million ex-Labour General Election votes in Scotland, according to analysis carried out by the British Election Survey for Sky News.
The newly-published BES data shows the SNP at 42%, over double its 19.9% share at the 2010 General Election.
It also shows the full extent of the challenge facing the new Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy.
Just under half a million Scots voted for the SNP at Westminster in 2010.
The BES shows that they can hope to capture many more of the 1.6 million Yes voters from September's independence referendum.
Just 27% of those polled said they would vote Labour, versus 42% who voted for Gordon Brown in 2010.
The BES indicates 28% of Scots who say they will vote for the SNP voted for the Labour party in the 2010 General Election.
If repeated in May, that alone would leave the SNP close to the largest number of votes in Scotland.
Some experts have said that such a swing puts many "safe" Labour seats with massive majorities into play for the General Election.
James Dennison of Oxford University told Sky News: "Labour look set to lose a quarter of a million voters to the SNP in Scotland - out of just over a million voters last time.
"Bear in mind also that the SNP have never come anywhere near Labour in a general election - in fact they've struggled to outpoll the Tories in terms of votes in previous elections."
The data is from the most comprehensive poll of 30,000 voters in the UK, including nearly 5,000 Scots, and the questions were asked in September and October.
Subsequent smaller-scale polls have confirmed this picture.
SNP sources told Sky News they were confident that the past pattern of voters supporting the party at Holyrood elections but returning to Labour at General Elections was changing.
The SNP is yet to formulate a formal target list, but Sky News has seen early analyses from senior nationalists.
Seats were analysed on the basis of a structural collapse in the Lib Dem vote.
The BES data show just 3% of Scots polled saying they will vote Lib Dem, down from an 18.9% vote share, suggesting that party is at risk of going from third to sixth place in Scotland.
On that basis, nationalists calculate that many more Labour seats become a plausible target for the SNP, requiring only a single digit swing.
The SNP expect to do well next May at the expense of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Former First Minister Alex Salmond is a candidate for selection for the SNP in the Gordon seat, currently held by the retiring Lib Dem Sir Malcolm Bruce.
The former Labour First Minister Henry Mcleish told Sky News that "Labour is facing a crisis" and that it should "stop hating the SNP and instead learn from the SNP".
But there was some comfort for the new Scottish leader from the BES figures.
Many anti-independence and coalition-sceptical Lib Dems seem to be turning to Labour, limiting the collapse in their vote.
"Some of Labour's biggest majorities in the UK are in Scotland and this data would suggest that they'll keep those so there won't be a complete SNP whitewash. The data also suggests big movements of unionist Lib Dems to Labour," Mr Dennison told Sky News.
Sky News was granted exclusive access to an event in Aberdeen marking the surge in SNP membership.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told Sky News her party had "captured the mood" of a new "direct and participative form of democracy" and it could "win" the General Election in Scotland.
That would suggest at least a fourfold increase in the number of SNP MPs from the existing six.
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