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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