The full results of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election: and how the biggest pro-independence majority in history was won

For those of you who were asking, here is the final result of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, both in terms of vote shares and seats.

Seats:

SNP 58

Reform UK 17

Labour 17

Greens 15

Conservatives 12

Liberal Democrats 10

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 73 seats

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 56 seats

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 17 SEATS

Constituency ballot:

SNP 38.2%

Labour 19.2%

Reform UK 15.8%
Conservatives 11.8%

Liberal Democrats 11.4%

Greens 2.3%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 27.4%

Reform UK 16.8%

Labour 16.7%

Greens 14.3%

Conservatives 12.1%

Liberal Democrats 8.5%

As we hoped would be the case, this is the biggest pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament's history, albeit only just.  The 73 seats for the SNP and Greens in combination exceeds the 72 for the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald in 2011, the 69 for the SNP and the Greens in 2016, and the 72 for the SNP and the Greens in 2021.  

I have to say I am completely and utterly baffled and bewildered by the people this morning who are continuing to moan about what they call "the SNP 1&2 strategy", because for the first time in history those people got what they claimed to want.  "Pro-indy tactical voting on the list" ceased to be simply a social media bubble obsession of activists, and was adopted wholesale by the general public in far bigger numbers than ever before.  The SNP vote slumped much more on the list ballot than it did on the constituency ballot, and the only plausible explanation is that tens of thousands of SNP-supporting voters tactically switched to the Greens on the list because they'd heard the argument that it would bolster the pro-independence majority.  That is precisely why we ended up slightly increasing the pro-independence majority compared to 2021 even though the combined vote share for pro-independence parties on the list ballot actually dropped by several percentage points.  As Ailsa Henderson pointed out on the BBC results programme, although the strategy worked a treat this time, the tactical voters were taking an enormous risk because they were making an assumption of how the constituency results would work out, and they could easily have been wrong.

Mark my words: this may come back to bite us in the future.  People have a nasty habit of learning the wrong lessons from history, and if there's a kind of 'folk memory' in five years' time that voting SNP constituency, Green list produces a good result for independence, many voters may try to replicate the strategy in an even more risky scenario where the SNP are being seriously challenged in the constituencies.  You could easily end up with a dreadful result for the SNP where they finish with ten or fifteen seats fewer than they should have received on a proportional basis, because one-third of their supporters have abandoned them on the list.

Incidentally, don't allow anyone to get away with offering the combined SNP-Green vote share on the list as the definitive vote for pro-indy parties.  Although the fringe pro-indy parties such as Atlas had dreadful results in isolation, they did in combination with each other manage to take around 2% of the list vote, and of course there were also pro-indy independent candidates on the list such as Sean Davis, Denise Somerville and Ash Regan.  The biggest vote for a pro-indy fringe party was the 0.8% for Atlas, in part due to Tommy Sheridan's name recognition in Glasgow, although Sheridan's own result on the Glasgow list was still relatively poor compared to his previous efforts with Solidarity.  The ISP and the SSP (the latter of which most people have probably forgotten even exists anymore) took 0.4% each.

The weirdest quirk of the result is that Labour, in spite of their disastrous reverses, still ended up moving from third place in 2021 to joint second this year.  However, they were pipped by a tiny margin in the popular vote on the list ballot by Reform UK.  The Greens are now a larger party than the Conservatives, which in historical terms is a mind-boggling thought.

Although the SNP had some wonderful constituency results (Shetland was the stuff that dreams are made of), the two results I found most painful were Na h-Eileanan an Iar and Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch.  That is why the SNP list seat on the Highlands & Islands is so soothing - it directly compensates for one of those two defeats and means that one of them doesn't actually matter (take your pick as to which one).

*  *  *

Please check out the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, particularly if you'd be interested in helping me commission another opinion poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact.

Free Money with the Reverend Stuart Campbell: an update on how to collect your winnings

Seriously, folks, I've never steered you wrong on a bet recommendation about Scottish politics, and 5/4 on Angus Robertson is absolutely free money. pic.twitter.com/cGvR1ZzIBD

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) April 15, 2026

Now, for full disclosure, I did actually agree with Stew that Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, but unlike Stew I made clear that there was a plausible path to victory for both Labour and the Greens, and I certainly wasn't so idiotic as to go around telling people to bet the house on Mr Robertson winning.  Although the numbers are dwindling, Stew does still have a few sheep-like followers who adhere to his every utterance as if it's the Word of God, so it's actually highly likely that people took his advice and put money on Mr Robertson.  We can only hope that nobody is waking up this morning to the loss of their life savings.

So the Edinburgh Central prediction now joins the vast collection of Stew Predictions That Were Wrong, and given the way he made it, it's perhaps the crown jewel of the lot.  (My previous all-time favourite was "we're calling it now, Humza has lost" during the 2023 SNP leadership election.) But it doesn't end there, because he made other predictions about the Holyrood election that also proved to be hopelessly wrong.  I can maybe let him off the hook with his claim the other day that Iris Duane had no chance of being elected, because it was ambiguously worded and possibly referred to the constituency contest only.  But for the following he has no alibi:

* In an effort to convince people not to vote SNP on the list, he claimed a year ago that the SNP were nailed-on to win at least 65 constituency seats, he provided a map of the 65 he was referring to, and he challenged anyone to demonstrate which of those 65 the SNP might not win.

In the actual result, the SNP took 57 constituency seats.

* He said a year ago that the SNP were guaranteed to win zero list seats, and that anyone who voted SNP on the list could therefore know with absolute certainty that their vote would be wasted.

In the actual result, the SNP took one list seat - meaning the SNP have taken at least one list seat in all seven Holyrood elections since the start of devolution in 1999.

* He later modified that prediction to say there was a chance of the SNP winning one list seat, but only if they lost to Fergus Ewing in Inverness & Nairn.

In the actual result, the SNP defeated Fergus Ewing in Inverness & Nairn, but still took one seat on the Highlands & Islands list.

So what was Stew's sheepish reaction to his latest bonanza of hapless wrongness?  Yup, you've guessed it, folks, the opening words of his blogpost this morning were (and what else could they be): "Well, we told you so."

It's an art form in its own way.  Dear old Stewie.

Scottish Parliament election results 2026: How we've moved closer to a decision on independence

 

If you'd be interested in having another Scot Goes Pop poll at some point in the future, please check out our polling fundraiser HERE.

The SNP must go ahead with the Section 30 vote on day one of the parliamentary session - and then when Westminster say no, we move forward to using the 2029 UK general election as the final act of this drama, and to win independence outright

I suppose when election results come in, we all tend to look back at the predictions we made during the campaign and compare it to reality.  I used to pride myself in avoiding hard predictions, but writing the 73 constituency profiles for The National effectively forced me into it, and I think I did pretty well on the whole.  Although I said Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, I did say I thought both the Greens and Labour had a chance there, which pretty much leaves Glasgow Southside as the only one of the 73 that I got completely wrong, which is not a bad record.  Can I just take this opportunity to thank the person who wrote to me before I did the Shetland profile and pointed out that Hannah Mary Goodlad's chances were being underestimated, because I took that tip seriously and looked into it as thoroughly as I could.

However, I think the point on which I've been vindicated the most is what I said last October about the unlikelihood of John Swinney's target of an overall majority being met.  I said at the time that I thought it was a 1 in 200 chance, and even if you think that was an underestimate, I hope you'll agree that the result vividly demonstrates just how murderously difficult the target was to meet, and also demonstrates why that target must never be set again.  We're now going to have to work hard to undo some of the damage caused by setting a precedent that simply cannot be allowed to stand.  The argument was that the stars were aligned for a majority on this particular occasion due to Reform splitting the unionist vote - well, we've fallen a few seats short, and there's no particular reason to think the stars will ever be aligned in that way again, so the hardheaded reality is that if we're going to win independence or an independence referendum, regardless of whether it's with this mandate or a future mandate, it will have to be done with a multi-party Holyrood majority and not a single-party majority.  So the single-party majority target will have to be binned and never allowed to rear its head again.

The way forward is simple enough: we have to act as if we were always looking for the multi-party majority, and go ahead with the vote on the Section 30.  When Westminster say no, we take the Believe in Scotland advice, and use the 2029 Westminster election as the final act in this unnecessarily long drama.  If Reform appear to be on course for victory in England, we ask for an outright mandate for independence as Scotland's last chance to escape Farage rule.  That may well work, but even if it doesn't the strategy will be an each-way bet, because there's always the outside chance of a Green-led government being formed at Westminster that would grant us a referendum anyway.

The rumour mill and the art of the possible

As we await the initial results and as the first strong rumours start to come through, could I just make a gentle suggestion to all SNP supporters.  Just completely stop talking about an SNP overall majority for the rest of the day, and start talking excitedly about an unprecedented pro-independence supermajority that will take this country closer to self-determination.  If it's true that the Greens are taking two or three constituency seats, the path to 65 for the SNP is now so narrow as to be almost closed off, notwithstanding the very interesting rumours about Shetland.  But the combination of a strong Green performance with Labour saying they've had a disaster in Glasgow (which is likely to be replicated elsewhere) could still mean by the end of the day there will be a really, really sizeable SNP-Green majority after list seats are taken into account.  Let's start talking the significance of that up.

Final Holyrood opinion poll round-up, plus the seven constituencies YouGov say will decide whether the SNP win an overall majority

So I voted a couple of hours ago, and I Made Mine A Double, Stoo. No real clues about the turnout because I always choose a quiet time of day, but there was a steady trickle of people going in and out.  The fabled 'peach' ballot paper is so enormous that it's almost farcical.  

I ran out of time last night to cover all of the remaining opinion polls, so just for the sake of completeness, here are the ones I didn't get round to...

MORE IN COMMON

Constituency ballot:

SNP 32%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 13%

Conservatives 13%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 23%

Reform UK 22%

Labour 19%

Liberal Democrats 12%

Greens 10%

Conservatives 10%

IPSOS

Constituency ballot:

SNP 35%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 26%

Reform UK 18%

Greens 17%

Labour 15%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

YOUGOV MRP

Constituency ballot:

SNP 39%

Reform UK 18%

Labour 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 28%

Reform UK 19%

Labour 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 11%

Liberal Democrats 9%

I can't really discern any consistent trend across the polling industry, except maybe that the SNP do seem to have slipped back a little on the list over the course of the campaign.  But their constituency vote seems to have held up fine, at least according to the majority of firms.  Perhaps the oddest finding is Ipsos showing Labour making a five-point recovery on the constituency ballot, which if the poll is exactly right will do them no good whatsoever in terms of seats because they remain stuck on a dismal fourth place on the list.

Although the central finding of the YouGov MRP is that the SNP will be three seats short of an outright majority, it does suggest there is still an 11% chance of a majority because a handful of constituency seats are so tight.  If the poll is exactly right (a big if), the SNP would need to win *six* of the following seven coin-toss seats in order to win a majority of one.

Aberdeenshire West (YouGov projection: SNP 32%, Conservatives 31%)

Dumbarton (YouGov projection: Labour 37%, SNP 36%)

Dumfriesshire (YouGov projection: SNP 31%, Reform UK 27%, Conservatives 25%)

Eastwood (YouGov projection: Conservatives 30%, SNP 29%)

Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill (YouGov projection: Greens 32%, SNP 29%)

Strathkelvin & Bearsden (YouGov projection: Liberal Democrats 36%, SNP 32%)

Edinburgh Southern (YouGov projection: SNP 34%, Labour 32%)

I would also give special mentions to Edinburgh Central, which YouGov have as a likely Green gain, Edinburgh Northern, which YouGov say is a likely Lib Dem gain, Galloway & West Dumfries, which YouGov say is a likely SNP gain, Banffshire & Buchan Coast, which YouGov have as a likely SNP hold, and East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, which YouGov say is a likely SNP hold.  We have good reason to believe all of those could be very competitive.

Make Mine A Double: as the polling stations open, be a 'peach' and listen to the strong case for Both Votes SNP

The polling stations are now open and the Scottish Parliament election of 2026 is well underway, so let's be 'peachy' and have a final word about the voting system.  I've been writing this blog since 2008, and I feel as if at least 10% of the posts over that time have consisted of me explaining that you should vote for your first choice party on the list ballot, because the system simply does not lend itself to tactical voting on the list - there's too big a risk of it backfiring.  

The voting system hasn't changed over the years, so the logic I was setting out in 2011 and 2016 for the most part has remained sound.  That logic was:

* The overall composition of parliament is determined by the list ballot, not by the constituency ballot.  If Party X gets 15% of the vote on the list ballot, the system will aim to give Party X roughly 15% of the overall seats in parliament, regardless of whether it receives 5% or 40% of the vote on the constituency ballot.  The list ballot is therefore the more important of the two, and should be used for your first-choice party.

* Although the greater importance of the list ballot can break down a bit if one party has a totally dominant lead on the constituency ballot, and although that leads people to feel they can 'hack' the system by tactically voting for a second-choice party on the list, you can only do that safely if you know what the constituency results are going to be at the moment you cast your vote, and by definition you don't.  If you think you do, the information you're basing that belief on is nowhere near as reliable as you think it is.

* In both 2011 and 2016, it was fair to say that past history suggested there was a significant risk that the Greens might not win list seats in most regions, so if an SNP supporter voted 'tactically' for a second-choice party on the list, regardless of which party that was, there was a danger they were voting for a party that wouldn't win any seats in their region and would thus help unionists to win seats - a classic example of an intended tactical vote completely backfiring.

If the logic has changed at all, it's only on that third and final point, because the Greens are now much more established and it's arguably extremely unlikely that they won't take a significant number of list seats.  So the risks attached to voting Green are now lower than they used to be - but it's important to stress that the point remains unchanged for all of the non-Green fringe pro-indy parties.  If you vote 'tactically' on the list for any of those tiny parties, you are throwing your list vote away on parties that cannot possibly win any seats, and you are helping unionists to win seats.  That is true beyond a shadow of doubt.

The choice on the list for sensible independence supporters therefore narrows to just two: SNP or Green.  I'm a member of the SNP, so I'll leave it to Green members and supporters to make the case for the Greens.  I'm going to make the case for Both Votes SNP, and it remains an extremely strong one.

The nub of it is this: as things stand this morning, you really don't have a clue what the constituency results are going to be.  There is a huge spread in the polls from a 12-point SNP lead in the constituency ballot with More In Common to a 24-point lead with Find Out Now.  Polling accuracy is not determined by majority vote, or by averaging - often an outlier poll proves to be the most accurate, as we saw in 2017.  I therefore would not be totally surprised if the SNP clean up in the constituencies to such an extent that they win an overall majority on constituency seats alone, and I also would not be surprised if the wheels come off and they lose a truckload of constituencies that most people are assuming are safe.  There's one overnight projection on Twitter based on the More In Common poll that has the SNP on just 43 seats.  That would be a catastrophe that could potentially even open the door for a unionist government.  It's a real possibility because with a 12 point SNP lead on the constituency ballot, unionist parties start to move into the fringes of contention in a large number of seats, and in some cases unionist tactical voting on the constituency ballot will get them over the line.  (To be clear, tactical voting does work on the constituency ballot.). If people have abandoned the SNP on the list ballot because they assume SNP list votes will be 'wasted', the SNP will not be compensated for their constituency losses with list seats, and the disaster will be compounded, wholly unnecessarily.

As we survey this scene of massive uncertainty on the morning of polling day, with both an SNP overall majority and a disastrous SNP result remaining realistic possibilities, we can really only look back in wonder at the unutterable folly of the people such as Somerset Stew who were absurdly trying to convince you a year ago that they already knew with absolute certainly how many constituency seats the SNP were going to win today and therefore that all SNP list votes would be wasted.  If you're an SNP supporter who is tempted to vote 'tactically' on the list, it's true that in the best case scenario where the SNP clean up in the constituencies, you could look back with the benefit of hindsight and think to yourself that there was a missed opportunity to get rid of one or two unionists on the list.  But in the worst case scenario that the More In Common poll is right, you could end up with the psychological catastrophe of Reform outpolling the SNP on the list ballot (it's within the poll's margin of error), and such a poor seats tally for the SNP that it would set the cause of independence back years.  You would then spend the next five years kicking yourself for being so daft as to not vote SNP on the list and to contribute to that result coming about.  The latter danger is far more scary than the former.

I don't know which way it's going to go - I don't even have a particularly strong gut feeling about whether the polling average is underestimating or overestimating the SNP.  There's a plausible case to be made for either, and I therefore can't promise you that you won't end up with regrets if you take my advice.  But it's the very fact that we don't have a crystal ball handy that means the logic points overwhelmingly, in my view, to being safe, being responsible, and voting Both Votes SNP.

MRP latest: Survation sizzler gives SNP huge 20-point lead over Labour on the constituency ballot

There may be blogposts coming at you all evening, because we've got polls coming out of our ears at the moment.  Hot off the press is the Survation MRP poll, which I find really interesting, because although the actual seats projection for the SNP isn't stellar, the SNP's constituency vote share is nudging 40% and they have a 20-point lead on the second-placed party.  So if there's something not quite right about the projection model, it's not hard to see how these numbers could translate into a superb result.

Constituency vote share (Survation MRP):

SNP 39%
Labour 19%
Reform UK 17%
Conservatives 12%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Greens 2%

Regional list vote share: 

SNP 29%
Reform UK 17%
Labour 16%
Greens 15%

Conservatives 13%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Seats projection:

SNP 59

Reform UK 18 

Labour 17

Greens 16

Conservatives 13

Liberal Democrats 8

Survation's chief Damian Lyons-Lowe tried to cover himself in advance with reverse psychology by predicting "hot takes" about individual constituency projections that might render this a poor MRP poll.  Challenge accepted, Damian, and let me present to you Exhibit A: Paisley.  You've got Labour winning that by 32.2% to 31.6%, and it's hard to see why, because although it's not one of the SNP's safest seats, it's not at the most vulnerable end of the scale either.  You only have one other surprise Labour gain in the central belt (unless you count Edinburgh Central, which I wouldn't really regard as a shock due to the Green splitting the pro-indy vote), so what is it about Paisley in particular?

Then we come to Exhibit B: Airdrie.  You have that as Reform UK's only constituency gain.  That's perhaps not quite so absurd, because the local demographics do favour Reform, but if Reform win *only* one constituency seat, I'd be very surprised if that's the one.

The good news for the SNP is that Survation have them ahead in Banffshire & Buchan Coast, Edinburgh Northern, East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, Edinburgh Southern, Galloway & West Dumfries, Eastwood, Aberdeenshire West, Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill and Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

*  *  *

If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

*  *  *

Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

.

Dramatic Find Out Now poll gives the SNP a mammoth 24-point lead, puts pro-independence parties on course for 60% of the seats, and suggests Labour could finish SIXTH

As you'd expect on the eve of polling day, there's quite a bit of new opinion poll information, so I'm going to try to split it over several different blogposts this evening to make it more manageable.  First of all, let's take a look at the new Find Out Now poll, because the figures from that can be directly compared to the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop two weeks ago.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Find Out Now, 1st-6th May 2026):

SNP 41% (+6)

Reform UK 17% (+1)

Labour 15% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (+2)

Conservatives 10% (+1)

Greens 2% (-11)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 26% (-1)

Reform UK 18% (+1)

Greens 17% (-3)

Labour 12% (-)

Liberal Democrats 11% (-)

Conservatives 11% (+1)

Seats projection:

SNP 61

Reform UK 19

Greens 17

Liberal Democrats 11

Conservatives 11

Labour 10

The apparent surge for the SNP on the constituency ballot is misleading, because it's caused by Find Out Now changing their methodology since the last poll to exclude the Greens as an option in the constituencies where they aren't standing.  Nevertheless, it's still an extremely encouraging finding, because it shows that the SNP are picking up the lion's share of those Green votes, which has not always been the pattern seen in polls from other firms.

The eye-catching finding from the Scot Goes Pop poll was the Greens on an all-time high of 20% on the list ballot, so the big question was whether that would turn out to be an outlier.  The answer to that question appears to be yes, but only in part, because the 17% for the Greens in today's poll is still exceptionally high by normal standards.  They're still in the hunt for second place in terms of seats, and they're still contributing to a pro-independence supermajority of sorts, although this it's time it's 'only' 60% of the seats in parliament.

And Labour are down to sixth place in the seats projection - oh my goodness me.  In a way you could argue that's an artificial finding because Labour are in third place in terms of votes on the constituency ballot, and fourth place on the list.  But it's the sort of outcome that could actually happen in the real world, because the Liberal Democrats will probably take more constituency seats than Labour do, and that might give them slightly more seats overall than they would really be due on a strictly proportional allocation.

This poll muddies the waters somewhat, because it doesn't replicate the trends shown by other firms.  There's no telling recovery for Labour on the constituency ballot as Ipsos are showing today (hopefully more on that in a later blogpost), and there's no renaissance for the Tories as Norstat showed, notwithstanding a trivial one-point increase in the Conservative vote share on both ballots.

*  *  *

If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

*  *  *

Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Is tomorrow's Scottish Parliament election the end of the road for Labour in Scotland?

I've now completed my profiles of all 73 Holyrood constituencies for The National.  I reckon in terms of combined word count they must come to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words - which is almost the equivalent of writing a novel over the course of two months.  But at least I didn't have to devise the plot!  The final one is Uddingston & Bellshill, and you can read it HERE.

*  *  *

If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

*  *  *

Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.