Munificent MRP poll shows the SNP on course to win almost THREE-QUARTERS of Scottish seats at Westminster

I thought I'd take a belated look at the new MRP seats projection from More In Common, which I believe was published yesterday or possibly the day before.

Seats projection (More In Common MRP poll, 13th-30th June 2025):

Reform UK 290

Labour 126

Conservatives 81

Liberal Democrats 73

SNP 42

Greens 7

Plaid Cymru 4

Unlike the recent YouGov MRP poll, the fieldwork for this one took place entirely after (and indeed well after) the Hamilton by-election on 5th June.  So the evidence is becoming ever stronger that the Hamilton setback did the SNP no lasting harm at all, except for the obvious point that it reduced their number of seats in the current Scottish Parliament by one.

This is another MRP poll pointing to a hung parliament, but not one in which the SNP would hold the balance of power, because Reform and the Tories between them would have a very comfortable blocking majority preventing any centre-left government from being formed.  (Although doubtless Stew would say that all the SNP have to do is offer Reform a deal on withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights and Farage will instantly cave in and give them an independence referendum.)

There are some strikingly sharp differences in the details of the More In Common and YouGov MRPs.  YouGov had Reform winning three Scottish seats, all in the south and south-west of the country, but More In Common still have Reform on a big fat zero in Scotland.  They're not even close in the southern seats - in Dumfries & Galloway, for example, they're on just 8% of the vote, and in Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock they're on just 14%.  There's also the odd phenomenon of Labour being projected to gain a couple of seats even as they suffer crushing losses to the SNP elsewhere in Scotland.  One of them is Dumfries & Galloway, and yes, that's not totally impossible - the southernmost seats have not been particularly fertile territory for the SNP in recent decades (with the obvious exception of 2015), so if the Tories collapse it might be Labour that's left to pick up the pieces.  But the other projected Labour gain is Dundee Central, and that makes no sense whatsoever - something freakish must have happened in the sampling.  I rarely make hard predictions, but I can say with confidence that if the SNP win 40+ seats at the next election, Dundee Central will be one of them.

On the other hand, More In Common show Na h-Eileanan an Iar as an SNP gain, even though many other MRP polls have had it as a Labour hold.  In fact, Labour aren't even projected to be in second place in the seat - they're a distant third behind the SNP and Reform.  

The Lib Dems are projected to hold all five of their Scottish seats, but the SNP are breathing down their necks in three of them - Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross (Lib Dem 30%, SNP 30%), Mid-Dunbartonshire (Lib Dem 35%, SNP 28%) and North-East Fife (Lib Dem 36%, SNP 29%).  

The Tories would be reduced to just two Scottish seats, both in the Borders/south.  The SNP are the main challengers in both, and are around 8 or 9 points behind.  

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The allegedly fake cleric in Somerset, who claims not to be stalking me, tweeted about me for the 7489th time this year earlier today, and it was a weird delayed reaction to something I said last week.  All I had done was point out the indisputable fact that the SNP's relatively low Holyrood list vote in the polls is not a major problem for them if their lead in the constituencies holds up, but that if the SNP's lead on the constituency ballot is reduced to low single figures, the voting system will then start working in Labour's favour and the SNP may be reliant on list votes to remain the largest single party in the Scottish Parliament.  I'm sorry, Stew, but that's just a statement of the bleedin' obvious, and facts are chiels that winna ding and all that.  Look at the 2007 election result as a good example - the SNP were one point ahead on the constituency ballot, but took a hammering in constituency seats.  In fact Labour took 37 of the 73 constituency seats, meaning they would have had a slim overall majority if the election had been conducted solely by first-past-the-post.  But once the list seats were added, the SNP just barely came out on top, with 47 seats to Labour's 46.  That was only possible because the SNP took 31% of the list vote.  If they had fallen short of that, perhaps because a small percentage of voters had abandoned them on the list for so-called "tactical" reasons or for any other reasons, they would have ended up as only the second-largest party despite winning the popular vote on the constituency ballot, and it's entirely possible that Jack McConnell would have remained First Minister.

That's correct, isn't it, Stew?  So what's your point?

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