SNP become clear favourites to win a fifth term in 2026 as stunning new Opinium survey gives them a significant lead over Labour

It's rather fitting that the day that marks the passing of a generation since the independence referendum has brought word of what could turn out to be a landmark polling moment that puts the SNP firmly back on track to win a fifth term in power at the Holyrood election of 2026.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Opinium, 5th-11th September 2024):

SNP 32%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 14%

Reform UK 11%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 7%

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 32%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 12%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 30%

Greens 25%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 12%

Liberal Democrats 8%

I know the Green figure on the list looks wildly implausible, and it probably is wrong, but at the moment the only place I can find the Holyrood numbers is on John Curtice's What Scotland Thinks site, and 25% for the Greens is what it says.  I can't see any sign of the numbers in the Opinium datasets or on social media, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, please do.  It may in reality be a combined figure of 25% for the Greens and the assorted 'others'.  But even if that is the case, there doesn't appear to be any reason to doubt that the SNP are several points ahead of Labour across the board, which is an extraordinary achievement at a stage of the electoral cycle when Labour should be still enjoying their honeymoon with the electorate.  I've said this before, but if this is as good as it gets for Labour, they've got a major problem on their hands.

So when, you might wonder, was there last a poll as good as this one for the SNP?  On paper the answer is as recently as January, when the Ipsos / STV poll gave the SNP a Westminster lead over Labour of 39% to 32%.  However, that's not really comparable, because Ipsos telephone polls have tended to be more favourable for both Yes and the SNP than most polls from online firms.  For the most recent online poll as good as today's, you'd have to go all the way back to September of last year when another Opinium poll had the SNP nine points clear.  And in case you're wondering, it's doubtful that there's an Opinium house effect at play here, because the Opinium poll during the general election campaign had Labour ahead, albeit admittedly not by quite as much as in the election result itself.

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UPDATE: If Wikipedia is to be believed, the What Scotland Thinks version of the numbers is indeed wrong, and the real figures on the list are: SNP 30%, Labour 25%, Reform UK 12%, Conservatives 12%, Greens 8%, Liberal Democrats 8%.  It appears that Reform UK also have a remarkable 12% of the constituency vote.  That means the seats projection works out as SNP 47, Labour 33, Reform UK 16, Conservatives 16, Greens 9, Liberal Democrats 8.  The pro-independence parties would be well short of a majority between them, but it's a struggle to imagine Labour forming a government from such a distant second place.  You'd imagine they'd want to limit any full coalition to just themselves and the Liberal Democrats, with the two right-wing unionist parties providing deniable support from outside.  But the problem is that a Labour - Lib Dem coalition would still have fewer MSPs than the SNP, so it would just look all wrong and I doubt it would happen in the real world.

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Ten years on, some personal recollections of the referendum

It's exactly a generation ago today that the independence referendum took place, and as everyone and their auntie seems to be publishing mini-memoirs of their own experiences during the campaign, I thought I might as well briefly join in the fun.

There were three main aspects to my own involvement.  One was Scot Goes Pop itself, which exploded in popularity as people searched for polling news and analysis.  I always thought it was really interesting that there was no big increase in Scot Goes Pop's traffic levels during the 2011 Holyrood election campaign, even though that was one of the most important and dramatic elections in Scottish history and I was constantly blogging about polls throughout it.  And yet even in autumn 2013, a whole year before the referendum, I was already seeing an exponential increase in reader numbers.  People were really hungry to know whether there was a chance Scotland might become an independent country.

Secondly, there was the syndication on Yahoo of some of my columns for the International Business Times, which as I always point out, probably means I was the most-read pro-independence blogger during the indyref campaign, albeit just through the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time.  I have a friend who is rarely impressed by anything I do, but she actually did look momentarily impressed when she glanced at the Yahoo homepage and saw one of my articles staring back at her!

And thirdly, there were my two appearances on BBC Breakfast during referendum week, one before the referendum, and one after.  For obvious reasons the one beforehand was much more nerve-wracking, because there was the slight danger that if I had said or done something really stupid, it might have had a detrimental effect.  But it went OK in the end.  When I was asked by Naga Munchetty why I thought Scotland should be independent, I made a point of starting by saying "well, Scotland is a country", which was something I thought hadn't been said enough on TV and radio during the campaign.

I did feel very slightly stitched up, though, because the item was supposed to be two bloggers, one Yes and one No, giving their own personal views about independence.  In practice, Dunc "don't call me Dunc" Hothersall was always inevitably going to be my opponent because he was the only unionist blogger in the known universe, and he was there as a de facto Better Together spokesman.  He had obviously been thoroughly briefed on exactly what to say, and indeed he was deep in conversation with Kezia Dugdale when I arrived.  Whereas I genuinely was there independently and hadn't been briefed by the Yes campaign at all. But I did my best. The irony is that I had made up my mind in advance that the one thing I definitely wasn't going to do was criticise the BBC live on air, but Duncan effectively forced me into it, because Better Together had clearly instructed him to make a song and dance about the "mob" protesting outside the BBC Scotland building in Glasgow.  I replied that it was a peaceful protest from people who had a legitimate complaint because "the BBC, not BBC Scotland but the BBC in London, haven't exactly covered themselves in glory over the last week". When I said the words "in London", Duncan started beaming and pointing at Naga Munchetty, as if to say "yeah, he's talking about you, hun".

It wasn't even remotely premeditated, but looking back I'm glad I said what I did, because it at least flagged up for viewers that the concerns were there. And arguably there's not much point complaining retrospectively about the BBC's bias during the campaign if you didn't raise the issue at the time when you had the golden chance.

When I made the return appearance two days after the referendum, Duncan was supposed to be there again, but for some reason he was replaced by the Tories' Mark Brown, who actually struck me as a decent bloke. I chatted to him before the filming started, and he seemed as genuinely keen as any Yes supporter that the promise made in The Vow of a more powerful Scottish Parliament was kept.  And after the interview, he gave me a bearhug and bellowed "WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER JAMES".

Incidentally, when I was first contacted by the BBC producer about the second appearance, probably at about 3pm on Friday 19th September, he asked me if I could help to put him in touch with anyone senior from the Yes campaign, because he had been baffled to discover that the entire Yes Scotland organisation seemed to have already disappeared in a puff of smoke.  The significance of what he said didn't really register with me at the time, but it's arguably something we've been suffering from ever since.

It was a "festival of democracy", not a trauma: ten years on, YouGov poll shows the Scottish public resoundingly believe holding the independence referendum was the right thing to do, and that they want another referendum to be held within the next ten years

Unsurprisingly, this week's tenth anniversary of the indyref has brought about a flurry of polls on independence, which is quite helpful because for the last two months we've had relatively limited information on the impact of the general election on Yes support.  Of the three new polls I'm aware of, two are positive for Yes and suggest that there is a higher level of support for independence now than there was on referendum day a generation ago.  The exception is YouGov, which is quite like old times, really, because during the long indyref campaign YouGov were consistently the least favourable online polling firm for Yes due to the notorious 'Kellner Correction' that was artificially imposed on the headline numbers because Peter Kellner refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes and insisted there had to be some sort of bug that meant No was further ahead than the raw results suggested.

I'm not aware of any similar 'correction' that YouGov are making now that would suppress the Yes vote in their polls, although it can't be completely ruled out that something is going on that we don't know about.  Their new poll has No ahead by 56% to 44%, which would be the first sign of what I feared at the time of the general election, ie. that there would be a temporary drop in Yes support due to a Labour honeymoon effect.  Frankly, though, I don't take that notion too seriously anymore, because the other two polls suggest that Yes support has held up admirably.  More in Common appear to have No ahead by around 52% to 48%, although that's my own rough recalculation from the figures with Don't Knows left in - I can't find the definitive numbers in the data tables.  With Opinium the No lead appears to be a wafer-thin 51% to 49%.

Although the YouGov poll is on the whole disappointing, there are a couple of really encouraging results within it.  You might remember that during the indyref campaign, most people were finding it such an exhilarating experience (it led, after all, to the highest voter turnout since the introduction of universal suffrage!) that unionist politicians and commentators felt compelled to embrace the holding of a referendum as an overwhelmingly positive thing, and the campaign itself as a "festival of democracy" (Tom Holland's words on the eve of polling day) that the rest of the UK needed to learn from.  But within a year or two, the exact same people were shamelessly gaslighting us by trying to implant false memories that the campaign had instead been a national trauma on the scale of a small war and that families and friendships had been torn apart by it.  The YouGov poll suggests the gaslighting has deservedly failed, and that by a resounding margin of 52% to 33%, respondents feel that holding the referendum was the right thing to do.  They also, by a narrower margin of 43% to 40%, want a second referendum to be held within the next ten years, although there's more hostility than in some previous polls to the idea of holding it within the next year or the next five years.

The poll also shows that voters would overwhelmingly back independence (the Yes advantage would be 56% to 32%, or roughly 64% to 36% without Don't Knows) if it meant Scotland would rejoin the EU - which, let's be honest, it probably would.  This suggests that, contrary to John Swinney's dismal claims in the Salmond/Sturgeon documentary, the SNP missed a trick by not bringing the independence question to a head after the EU referendum.  The mistake was not, as Swinney believes, to push too hard but to not push anything like hard enough, and to back off at the first sign of any resistance from 'Tyrannical Theresa'.  Even now, it appears the window of opportunity to use voters' horror at Brexit to win independence has not yet closed, but clearly there is no prospect whatever of taking advantage of that opportunity for as long as Swinney remains SNP leader.

Also of interest is that a greater proportion of people who support independence say they feel strongly about their views (90%) than those who oppose independence (78%).  That leaves open the possibility of a significant future net swing to Yes.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  The fundraiser page can be found HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk