SCOT goes POP!: 2026-05-03

Saturday, May 9, 2026

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 27.2%

Reform UK 16.6%

Labour 16.0%

Greens 14.0%

Conservatives 11.8%

Liberal Democrats 9.4%

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 small 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).

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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

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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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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.

SNP and Greens both improve their standing in the final More In Common MRP poll

I took a little bank holiday jaunt to the seaside earlier, and it suddenly struck me that I didn't see a single election poster anywhere on the journey. You literally wouldn't know there was an election on at all. That would have been completely unthinkable at this stage of proceedings a few years ago, and I'm wondering if that lack of visibility might in itself play a role in depressing the turnout.

The latest poll to be published is an MRP from More In Common. The journalist who first revealed the numbers was laying on the anti-SNP spin fairly thick, suggesting that the poll showed John Swinney just barely limping over the line. In truth it's actually rather a good poll for the SNP, because their constituency vote share has risen, which contradicts the trend shown by Norstat and thus increases the chances that Norstat was giving us a misleading impression due to margin of error noise. On the other hand, the SNP list vote has dropped and they are getting dangerously close to being overtaken on the list by Reform, but as long as they can avoid the psychological blow of that crossover occurring, a poor list vote share may not actually make all that much difference in terms of seats.

Scottish parliament constituency ballot (More In Common MRP poll):

SNP 35% (+2)

Reform UK 19% (-2)

Labour 17% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Conservatives 13% (+1)

Greens 2% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 26% (-3)

Reform UK 22% (+3)

Labour 15% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-)

Greens 11% (+1)

Conservatives 11% (+1)

Seats projection:

SNP 60

Reform UK 22

Labour 13

Liberal Democrats 12

Conservatives 12

Greens 10

The seats projection is also a marked improvement on the previous More In Common MRP, both for the SNP on their own, and for the SNP and Greens in combination. Pro-independence parties would have 70 seats, and anti-independence parties would have 59.

In terms of the individual seats, it's heartening to see the SNP on course to win Edinburgh Central, although Labour are only seven points behind in second place, and as in 2016 there remains a significant danger that the Green intervention could split the vote and hand the seat to a unionist party. As for the Lib Dems, apart from the seats that are nailed on, they are also projected to win Edinburgh Northern and Strathkelvin & Bearsden, which is a bit ominous, although I do wonder if the MRP projections for Strathkelvin & Bearsden are going astray by using the UK general election result in Mid Dunbartonshire as a baseline.

The Tories are projected to cling on to Dumfriesshire, Aberdeenshire West and Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire, although all three are on a knife-edge between themselves and the SNP. Reform UK are projected to take Banffshire & Buchan Coast and Ayr, but the SNP are still firmly in contention in both, with Ayr practically looking like a three-way dead heat between Reform, the SNP and the Tories. Bathgate is weirdly competitive, with the SNP only one point ahead of Reform - is that because the controversial "Stew" blogger used to live there?!

Labour are projected to be completely wiped out in the constituency seats due to the SNP gaining Edinburgh Southern and Dumbarton, although I continue to wonder if sufficient account is being taken of tactical voting in those seats.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch.

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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.

Sunday, May 3, 2026

Alex Massie looks in the mirror and thinks he sees the true Scotland staring back at him

Alex Massie's basic problem is that he doesn't just disapprove of the Scottish Government and want it changed. He also disapproves of the Scottish voters and wants them changed. "The problem with Scotland is that it's full of Scots."
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 3, 2026

The context of this was a tweet from Massie in which he predicted that Scottish voters would choose the SNP on Thursday, and added that this would mean they had got it wrong - as if he was an exasperated teacher marking some very bad homework. I actually have a pet theory about why he's so perpetually disappointed in his fellow Scots. Something he said in one of his columns a few years ago has always stuck in my mind, and I think it was highly revealing - he said that most people in Scotland would agree that the country closest to us culturally is England, and that the next closest is Wales, and that the third closest is Ireland.

I would be so bold as to say that he's almost certainly wrong about that. OK, being a Catholic, about two-thirds of my own pre-1850 ancestry is Irish, so that may be distorting my thinking, but I really have very little doubt that if a survey was conducted on the subject, most people in Scotland would say that Ireland is the country most similar to our own, with our more distant Celtic cousins Wales in second place, and England in third. I mean, even if you were a hardcore Rangers supporter, who would you say in the UK is most similar to you, if you were being totally honest? It would surely be loyalists in Northern Ireland. For everyone else, the case is even more straightforward:

* As a cultural and ethnic group, the Scots supposedly came from Ireland in the first place (specifically Antrim).

* That, in combination with population movements back and forwards over the centuries, means that people in central Scotland and the north of Ireland are almost indistinguishable genetically. I gather that some ancestry services don't even try to make the distinction, and just have a single "Central Scotland and Northern Ireland" group.

* For centuries, Scotland was a predominantly Gaelic-speaking nation, and at that time Gaelic was even closer to Irish than it is in the modern day - and indeed the written form of the language was actually identical to Irish.

* Scottish traditional music is so similar to Irish traditional music that I'm not sure a visitor from far-flung parts would be able to spot much difference between the two.

* Apparently part of the reason that a disproportionate number of Irish people settled in Scotland during and after the famine was because they felt it was culturally much more familiar than England.

And yet I can totally understand that things would look very different from the vantage point of someone with Massie's privileged background. He went to insanely expensive private schools, one of which was in the Borders, and to him it must seem totally obvious that the Scotland he knows is more similar to England than to any other country. And while the Scotland he knows is perfectly real, it's only a small and unrepresentative part of the whole. Basically he looks in the mirror and thinks he sees Scotland staring back at him, but instead all he sees is himself and the people from his own milieu. No wonder the way Scotland actually votes is so befuddling to him.

Although I'm not a regular follower of his and Bernard Ponsonby's podcast, I was intrigued to watch their ranking of the seven First Ministers to date. (Massie's ranking was mostly ridiculous, although he did make one technically valid point, which was that Ponsonby had Donald Dewar too high because the assessment was based mainly on things Dewar had done as Secretary of State for Scotland rather than as First Minister.) At the end of that show, Massie said that John Swinney was more typical of "average Scotland" (or some such jargon like that) than any other First Minister in the past. Now I mustn't be churlish, because that was intended as a compliment to the leader of my own party...and yet objectively I do think it was another very odd and revealing comment. All I really know about Mr Swinney's family background is that his uncle was awarded the Victoria Cross during World War II, but if his accent is anything to go by, he may have grown up in a reasonably 'good area', and he's certainly better educated than the average Scot - he has a degree from Edinburgh University. He's also active in the Church of Scotland, which in this day and age puts him in the minority. I think only really someone like Massie could look at all of that and think it represents some sort of centre of gravity for the nation as a whole. But then I would imagine Massie thought Nicola Sturgeon belonged to the servant classes.

His father Allan Massie, who sadly died very recently, was one of this country's finest journalists, but he had a very similar blind spot. I remember reading a column from him back in the day in which he celebrated the triumph of Thatcherite politics in New Zealand, which he bizarrely regarded as proof that Scots are actually Thatcherites because New Zealand is an ethnically "Scottish country" (a vast over-simplification, of course, although I believe there was a heavy concentration of Scottish immigrants in the south of New Zealand). But for some baffling reason, Scots in the mother country kept voting against their true Tory nature, and he was just so terribly disappointed in us and wanted us to do better. Alex continues to feel much the same way.

(To go back to the point about Ireland, the huge irony about Alex Massie is that he actually got his degree at Trinity College Dublin after he was rejected by Cambridge. Presumably he must have either hated it for some reason, or surrounded himself with upper-crust Brits for the whole time he was there.)

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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.