SCOT goes POP!

Saturday, May 9, 2026

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

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Friday, May 8, 2026

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.

Thursday, May 7, 2026

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.

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Paradoxically, the Daily Record's endorsement is clear evidence of both Labour's weakness and the Record's weakness

The Daily Record's mindless support for the Labour party, regardless of circumstances, will survive the heat death of the universe. But it's no longer 2007, and very few people are going to be influenced by this. https://t.co/gEsWe1UgF1
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 5, 2026

Nope, nice try, Paul, but the status quo - which you favour - is "more of the same". Voting for change would mean voting for independence. And if you stick a saltire on a call for change which doesn't mention "Labour", on a casual glance people will assume you mean independence.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 6, 2026

The fact that Hutcheon needs that explained to him - and almost certainly will still resist it even now it has been explained - demonstrates the extent to which he's caught up in groupthink. He lives in a bubble in which the opponents of the British state, rather than the British state itself and its upholders, are "the establishment", and the existence of people who see things the other way around doesn't even enter his head when he puts together a front page like that.

Nevertheless, in all sorts of ways this "endorsement of Labour" is evidence that the Record are acutely aware of the weakness of both their own position and Labour's position. If they weren't worried about angering and alienating a large number of their readers by endorsing Labour, they wouldn't have taken the extraordinary and possibly unique step of not even mentioning the name of the party they're supporting, or even of referring to that party obliquely. In 2007 they felt able to be much more full-on, and the fact that they no longer do speaks volumes.

It's also clear that they know that saying "vote for change", even leaving aside the interpretation of that phrase as referring to independence, cannot be used as a less offensive proxy for "vote Labour", because it's not at all clear that Labour are the SNP's main challengers in this election. So in order not to be misunderstood, they've had to tie themselves up in knots by attacking both the SNP and Reform while still not actually mentioning the word "Labour". That's weakness because it's a tacit admission that Labour are in severe danger of finishing third or fourth (or even fifth, as the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll showed).

The parroting of Labour's own message "Reject Reform, Beat the SNP" strongly suggests that Labour have found on the doorstep that Sarwar's overture to Offord has harmed Labour and that some anti-Reform voters are turning to the SNP. The fact that they're needing to go to such lengths to address that problem is a sign of weakness - as is the fact that the polling evidence shows that there are a number of seats in which a tactical vote for the SNP can help stop Reform, but there are no seats in which a tactical vote for Labour can have the same effect. So if challenged on the claim that you can stop Reform by voting Labour, they wouldn't even be able to justify it coherently.

The Record also know that their only credible objective in making this endorsement is to stop the SNP winning an overall majority - it's extremely unlikely that the SNP can be prevented from forming a government. So they ought to have some concerns about the effect their decision will have on their relationship with the Scottish Government over the next five years. I can't remember the last time I looked inside the Record, but I'm vaguely aware that they occasionally run columns from SNP politicians and supporters. I remember Alison Thewliss had a regular column with them until Hutcheon treated her like dirt and dropped her because she wouldn't write what he wanted her to.

Now, of course there are benefits for the SNP to a relationship with the Record because it allows them to reach a particular audience. But I'm not sure it's an act of charity on behalf of the Record - running the occasional column from John Swinney or whoever is also a signal to SNP-supporting Record readers that the paper they read is not unremittingly hostile to the party they support. Will the SNP continue to allow the Record to have its cake and eat it now that it has run a front page explicitly calling the SNP "hopeless" and telling people to vote them out of office? I mean, would Nigel Lawson have written columns for the Mirror or the Morning Star in 1987? Just a thought to ponder on. If the Record are determined to be hostile, then perhaps they should be treated as hostile and forced to live with the full consequences of that in terms of sales figures and political relevance.

Meanwhile, 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.

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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.

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Final YouGov MRP projection of the campaign suggests pro-independence parties will have 60% of the seats in the new Scottish Parliament

Thanks to Marcia for alerting me to YouGov's update (the second and almost certainly final one) of their MRP projection for Holyrood. It leaves us none the wiser about the direction of travel because it shows the SNP slipping back a bit, whereas More In Common's MRP update showed the SNP gaining a little ground.

YouGov MRP seats projection:

SNP 62

Reform UK 19

Labour 17

Greens 16

Liberal Democrats 8

Conservatives 7

As far as I can see, the vote shares are not available yet, but it does sound very much from the Times write-up that any dip in the SNP's support has been minimal, and that the SNP seat count has only dropped back because YouGov are picking up an increase in unionist tactical voting as polling day approaches. The Times are claiming that this means the SNP's campaigning on independence has "backfired" because it's riled up unionists, but frankly that is a load of utter tripe - there have been any number of previous elections in which the SNP have tried to play it safe by mentioning independence as little as possible, but the unionist parties have still managed to whip their own voters up into a frenzy about the subject. It would have happened no matter what the SNP had done - and as we've seen, the great benefit of the SNP's own focus on independence is that it's kept the Yes vote high during the campaign.

For those of you who don't recall, the previous YouGov update had the SNP on 67 seats, which was an overall majority, whereas 62 is three short of a majority. However, the pro-independence parties in combination would have an extremely healthy 60% of all seats, ie. 78 in total. And the SNP are potentially within reach of a single-party majority, because it's obvious from the write-up that some of the seats that have flipped since the last update are still extremely close. Eastwood, for example, is said to be staying with the Tories by a "razor-thin margin". The Greens are supposedly on course to win two seats, one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh, so even if the SNP just manage to hold those two, that would get them to 64, just one short of a majority.

It's the Liberal Democrats that are apparently doing a lot of the damage - they are now projected to win both Edinburgh Northern and Strathkelvin & Bearsden. But remember that Edinburgh Northern is a completely new seat, which must increase the level of uncertainty, while in Strathkelvin & Bearsden the Lib Dems were actually in *fourth* place last time around, some thirty points or so behind the SNP.

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My latest constituency profiles for The National are Stirling and Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

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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.