SCOT goes POP!

In a democracy, there has to be a route by which the most fundamental changes can be achieved if there is majority support for them, no matter how annoying or upsetting the process may be for the people who don't want those changes to happen

2026-04-29T09:20:00.001+01:00

It's a reminder of just how comprehensively Somerset Stew has moved over to the other side that right in the middle of a Holyrood election campaign, he has approvingly tweeted an article from the poet and former Yes supporter Jenny Lindsay saying she is now agnostic about independence and would strongly oppose another referendum, because it would be "divisive". I may be totally misremembering this, but I think I recall very briefly meeting Jenny Lindsay during the 2014 referendum campaign - I think she may have been manning the doors for John "The Gardener" McTernan's bizarre talk during "Yestival". I knew that she had become disillusioned with the Scottish Government due to her gender critical views, but this is the first time I've become aware that she has actually ceased to be a Yesser as a result. It seems that the trans issue has acted as a 'gateway drug' for her towards unionism (or soft unionism), which a cynic might say is what Stew was hoping would happen to people all along and is exactly why he started banging on about the issue in the first place.

To answer a question that sometimes comes up when I make the 'gateway drug' point - no, that categorically does not mean I regret commissioning a poll about gender self-ID several years ago. I did that at a point when the Scottish Government were full-bloodedly trying to push self-ID through, and when we had no idea that the UK Government were even considering using their imperial veto to get us all off the hook. My view was and remains that the Scottish Government desperately needed, in their own best interests, to be confronted with evidence of just how far they had drifted apart from public opinion, because pushing ahead recklessly could have caused untold damage to the independence cause. But once the course correction was achieved, as it eventually was (albeit by unexpected means) what the critical friend to the Scottish Government should do at that point is take yes for an answer. If you instead do what Stew has done and ramp up your fixation with the issue to the point that you're actually trying to use it to destroy the SNP and the independence cause, then you were never a friend in the first place.

With Jenny Lindsay, it's a different story, she's clearly sincere in what she says, even though I totally disagree with her. Where I think she really doesn't have a leg to stand on is her notion that holding another referendum would be some sort of crime against humanity because it would terribly upset people who don't want independence to happen. In a democracy, there has to be a path by which even the most fundamental changes can be achieved if there is a majority in favour of them, even if some people would be annoyed or upset by them. The assisted dying vote in the Scottish Parliament last month was genuinely frightening and traumatic for many disabled people because it looked with a few hours to go as if the legislation might well pass. I was personally relieved that it didn't pass, but I do respect the fact that it was absolutely right and proper that the vote was held, and that it will be similarly right and proper that other such votes will undoubtedly be held in the future, in spite of the stress and anguish it caused. Exactly the same democratic principle applies to independence. Even "once in a generation" has ceased to be an alibi, because by 2028 - when John Swinney wants to hold the referendum - a generation will have passed since 2014. Alex Salmond was always explicit about what he meant by a political generation, and the example he usually gave was the period of time between the 1979 and 1997 devolution referendums.

If unionists feel there is something uniquely traumatic about fundamental change occurring via a referendum process, the onus is on them to accept that it can instead happen by a non-referendum democratic process. But usually the idea of achieving independence in some other way makes them even more homicidal. The only other option I can see for them if they want the issue to go away would be to engage in good faith with independence supporters in seeking a 'Grand Compromise' that both sides could live with, and would be enough for the bulk of the independence movement to agree to stop pressing for a referendum for a prolonged period of time, say for fifteen years. But that compromise would probably look very much like genuine Devo Max - and we all know the fury with which unionists tend to react to that idea. The reality is they don't want a coming together, they don't want an end to division. That path is open to them, but they don't intend to take it. All they want to do is totally thwart and destroy the legitimate political aspirations of their adversaries - who now represent more than 50% of the Scottish population.

So if you want to piously preach about "divisiveness", get back to us when you've had a change of heart and are willing to start listening, engaging, and compromising. We're not exactly holding our breath on that one.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Renfrewshire North & Cardonald.

The Diffley difference: new poll tilts this election in the SNP's favour - and is the ELEVENTH poll in the last four months to show that Scotland would vote Yes to independence in a new referendum

2026-04-28T23:19:00.019+01:00

Unlike our occasional commenter Declan, I'm not particularly given to punching the air upon seeing an opinion poll, but if I was ever going to do that, yesterday would have been the day. There were only two polls last week and they effectively produced a split decision - the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop was pretty favourable for the SNP and exceptionally favourable for the Greens, while the Survation poll was significantly less good for both parties, although at least it did still point to a pro-indy majority in the Scottish Parliament and a fifth successive term in office for the SNP. As the Tories discovered in the 2017 general election, and as Labour discovered in 1970, there's always just a chance that the least favourable pollster will also turn out to be the most accurate. So the only way we could really get any reassurance on that front was if there was another Survation poll showing a rosier picture - and amazingly that's exactly what happened yesterday.

The Diffley Partnership commissioned a Survation poll that began its fieldwork before the previous one even ended, and it's significantly better for the SNP on the constituency ballot. The seats projection doesn't quite show them on course for an overall majority, but it does show them knocking on the door with 62 seats.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Survation / Diffley Partnership, 17th-23rd April 2026):

SNP 38% (+3)

Reform UK 20% (-)

Labour 18% (-2)

Conservatives 12% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 10% (-)

Greens 2% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 29% (-)

Reform UK 19% (-)

Labour 17% (-)

Greens 12% (+1)

Conservatives 12% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)

One sense in which last week's Survation poll was actually very good was that it showed there would be a Yes majority in a new independence referendum - something that most Survation polls in recent years have not showed. The Diffley poll demonstrates that was not a fluke by showing the Yes vote rising higher still. Having checked the small print, it looks like a possible explanation could be that Survation have finally dropped the dubious practice of weighting by recalled vote from a referendum that took place over a decade ago - but I don't want to be too definite in saying that, because last week's poll apparently was still weighted by 2014 vote. I'm guessing there may be an error in the methodological note on one of the two polls.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 52% (+1)

No 48% (-1)

There have now been seventeen independence polls in this calendar year so far, ie. in the last four months, and *eleven* of them have shown a clear Yes majority. The settled will klaxon is screeching tonight, and there are reports of it being heard as far away as Finland.

I was asked a specific question in the comments section of this blog the other night, so I just thought I'd take a moment to answer it -

"James! You're an SNP member who isn't a slavish follower of the party line, so I'd be interested in your thoughts. We know that you oppose Swinney's approach of proclaiming an SNP majority the only way to get a referendum, but your objection has mostly been based on the unlikelihood of that being achieved."

To be clear, that wasn't the only reason for my objection, or even the main reason. I was more worried about the precedent it would set - ie. if we weren't successful in this election, we'd then have lumbered ourselves in all future elections with the precedent of saying ourselves that we need to hit a target that, regardless of anyone's views of whether it's impossible or not, is certainly exceptionally difficult to reach. I also didn't think the strategy was consistent with the principle of democratic self-determination. As much as I'm an SNP member and want everyone to vote Both Votes SNP, I also don't think it's the business of any pro-independence party to try to place limits on how the Scottish people can exercise their right to self-determination, or to declare that there may be illegitimate or 'non-valid' ways of doing so. If the Greens put independence in their manifesto, and if people vote Green, those votes still count.

Ever since the decision at conference was made, though, I've been repeatedly saying that all that really needs to happen is for John Swinney to soften his language before the election, and to make clear that although we're chasing a single-party overall majority as an ideal, a multi-party pro-indy majority would still constitute a mandate and would still be acted upon. That does now seem to be happening to some extent, so I'm a lot more comfortable with where we are now than where we were last October. Paul Hutcheon was fuming yesterday about Swinney 'shifting the goalposts', so it can only be a good thing.

"But recent polls suggest it's just about possible. So let's assume it is achieved. Do you think that would actually create any significant pressure on Westminster to concede? Or would they be able to dismiss it just as easily as they've always done?"

I think to break the logjam there's going to have to be some sort of 'wow' factor to the result, just as there was in 2011 - something that makes London commentators say "yeah, we didn't see that coming". It could happen in several different ways - if the SNP win a higher vote share than expected, or if there is some sort of pro-indy 'supermajority', or if the SNP and Greens take first and second place respectively. The Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll suggested both of the last two scenarios might be on the cards. Remember also that the London commentariat are far more obsessed with the Starmer soap opera than they are with the constitutional fate of Scotland, so if Labour do poorly enough in the Holyrood election to play a role in Starmer resigning - for example if they finish fifth in terms of seats, as the Scot Goes Pop poll suggested they might - that could also make people sit up and take notice.

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If you're finding the new Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please check out our new polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

Alex Cole-Hamilton really didn't want to answer the question about Prestwick Airport.

Anas Sarwar really didn't want to answer the question about whether he would refuse a peerage.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

What does anyone actually need six boats for? Does he have one in each continent, or something like that?
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

If the SNP had no new policies, the cry would be "You're knackered! You've run out of ideas!"

But because they do have new policies, it's "Why didn't you do these things nineteen years ago?"

You can't have it both ways, chaps.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: By a more than 2-1 majority, the Scottish public reject Wes Streeting's arrogance, and insist that Scottish voters - rather than the UK Government - should decide on whether an independence referendum is held. Even Labour voters decisively agree that Streeting is wrong.

2026-04-27T12:56:00.001+01:00

Labour's UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting was recently asked in an LBC interview whether there would be an independence referendum if the Scottish people vote in favour of holding one at the Scottish Parliament election next week. There were numerous ways he could have answered: he could have waffled and said "well, let's wait and see the result before taking a view" or "I'm confident that the Scottish people will make the right decision" or the old favourite "I'm not going to sit here and deal in hypotheticals". But instead he came right out and baldly said "they're not having" a referendum irrespective of the result of the referendum - and the contemptuous "they" in the context of the question could only have referred to the Scottish people themselves, rather than to the Scottish Government or the SNP. When pressed on how the Scottish people could get a referendum if they want one (presumably the interviewer was naive enough to assume there must be some sort of mechanism in a democracy), Streeting doubled down and said "they're not having one" and that they have no way of getting one, because the British government has decided and what the voters want doesn't matter.

I mean, "muscular unionism" is one thing, but there comes a point where you're just completely jumping the shark and openly taunting Scottish voters that they do not live in a democracy, and that they do not live in a voluntary union, and that the UK is their prison, and that Streeting, Starmer and the others are their jailers. Well, Streeting may think it's possible for him to stop the Scottish people from voting on certain subjects, but at least as of this moment he does not yet have the power to prevent them being asked for their views in opinion polls. So I thought it was not unreasonable to use the new Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll to ask for their immediate verdict on Streeting's outburst. Do they agree with him that it's for the UK Government to decide whether Scotland can vote on independence in a referendum, or do they instead believe that Scottish voters should decide in next week's election?

As you may have seen, I've already released the result in a video on my YouTube channel, but here it is in text format:

Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll (15th-20th April 2026, sample size: 1002)

John Swinney has said if the SNP wins a majority in the upcoming Scottish Parliament election this would act as a mandate for an independence referendum. Meanwhile Wes Streeting (UK Government minister) has said "they're not having one" and "we are not going to introduce chaos into the UK by having an independence referendum. Absolutely not".

Who should decide whether or not a Scottish independence referendum takes place in the future?

The UK Government should decide: 24%

Scottish voters should decide (such as at the Scottish Parliament election taking place on 7th May): 53%

Don't Know: 23%

The result is not remotely surprising, but its emphatic nature does send an incredibly powerful message to Streeting, to the rest of the Labour UK Government, and indeed to the wider London establishment. The margin is more than 2-1, and if Don't Knows are removed it works out at roughly 69% for 'Scottish voters should decide' and 31% for 'the UK Goverment should decide'.

Particularly important is the fact that people who actually voted Labour in the 2024 general election take exactly the same view as the wider sample: 49% think the Scottish people should decide and only 35% agree with Streeting that the British government should decide. If Labour do as badly in this election as we think they might (the seats projection from this poll has them in just FIFTH place), there's going to be a lot of soul-searching about how they can reassemble the 35% coalition of support that proved just about enough to win them a majority of Scottish seats in 2024, and questions will surely be asked about whether that will ever be possible if people like Streeting continue to stick two fingers up at his own voters' belief in the principle of self-determination. A substantial minority of the Labour voters in 2024 were independence supporters, but support for the idea that Scotland itself should make the decision clearly goes much further than that.

There is no real gender gap in the poll, except for the fact that women are much more likely to say "Don't Know". 56% of men and 50% of women say the decision should be for Scottish voters. Unsurprisingly, younger voters are much more decisively in favour of self-determination than older voters, although even among 55-64 year olds (an age group that returned a No majority on the standard independence question), there is a 50% to 29% margin in favour of Scottish voters being able to decide. Only among over-65s is there a plurality in favour of the UK government deciding, and that plurality is very narrow indeed.

Every single one of the eight electoral regions is in favour of Scottish voters making the choice, with the biggest majority in Lothian (59% to 16%). And remarkably there is near-*unanimity* among people who voted SNP and Green at the 2024 general election - 94% of Green voters and 95% of SNP voters say that it's a matter for the Scottish people rather than for Streeting and UK ministers. Also intriguing is that quite a substantial minority of Reform UK voters (34%) are in favour of self-determination.

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If you're finding this poll useful, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

Now that the taboo has been broken of interviewees pointing out the elephant in the room live on air, I think Ed Balls is going to have to do a little bit better than "yeah, I was a Labour Cabinet minister but that was YEARS AGO" and "the Foreign Secretary is ONLY MY WIFE". https://t.co/PXvYP3DnpT
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 27, 2026

Join me on YouTube at NOON as Wes "they're not having one!" Streeting faces his HIGH NOON in the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll: do the Scottish public agree with Streeting that the UK Government gets to decide whether an independence referendum is held, or do they think voters should decide in the Scottish Parliament election next week?

2026-04-27T10:06:00.002+01:00

If you join the waiting zone, the video should automatically start playing when the clock strikes 12 for Streeting's HIGH NOON. While you're waiting for the results, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

It will soon be HIGH NOON for Wes Streeting in the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll

2026-04-27T08:30:00.002+01:00

My latest constituency profile for The National is John Swinney's seat of Perthshire North.

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If you've finding Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please consider donating to our new polling fundraiser, which you can find HERE.

Hammerblow for Brit Nat propaganda outfit "Scotland In Union" as their regular pollsters Survation show a clear pro-independence majority, right in the middle of the Holyrood election campaign

2026-04-26T21:38:00.004+01:00

As I said the other day, there's still more to come from the new Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll - I had been planning to release another result on Friday, and then that slipped to yesterday, and somehow it didn't happen today either. I think I probably just needed some downtime, because the mid-part of the week was a bit manic, but tomorrow may well be the day. In the meantime, I had been expecting to be able to bring you the weekend polls that would usually come along at this stage of an election campaign, but amazingly there don't seem to be any. It's probably just as well that I and a certain Green Belt "Project" went ahead and commissioned our own polls last week, otherwise there'd be no up-to-date information at all about the state of play in the Holyrood race, although unfortunately those two polls muddied the waters a bit, because despite having almost identical fieldwork dates, they contradicted each other in several respects.

The Survation poll was much less favourable for the Greens (somewhat ironically, given who commissioned it), and by implication it was also less good for the SNP, who didn't receive a boost on the constituency ballot in spite of the Greens being excluded as an option in the constituencies where they aren't standing. But one sense in which the two polls are in complete accord is in showing a rosy picture for independence - and that's highly significant, because Survation, in total contrast to Find Out Now, do not have a long track record of showing Yes majorities. Their previous poll at the start of the year was a dead heat, and prior to that they had produced several polls in a row showing a No lead. They have now become the SEVENTH different pollster to show a Yes lead at some point in this calendar year so far, and it's only April. So there's no point in our old friend KC droning on about how it's only ever Ipsos and Find Out Now who show a Yes lead - those days are over. Of the sixteen independence polls in 2026, this is the TENTH to show a pro-indy majority.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation, 14th-21st April 2026)

Yes 51% (+1)

No 49% (-1)

It also shouldn't go unnoticed, incidentally, that Survation are the pollsters who conduct the regular series of propaganda polls for Scotland In Union, which replace the standard independence question with a leading question, and which always give the impression that opposition to independence is stronger than it actually is. It's something of a blow for Scotland In Union, I'd have thought, that this of all moments is when Survation have suddenly shown a Yes majority in a credible poll with a credible question.

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My latest two constituency profiles for the national are the Orkney Islands and Paisley.

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If you've found the latest Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please consider donating to our new polling fundraiser, which you can find HERE.

More thoughts on the prospects for an SNP overall majority in the light of the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll

2026-04-24T10:07:00.001+01:00

Just to allow you to make up your own minds, I thought I'd draw your attention to the fact that the Stats for Lefties account picked up on the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll yesterday, and produced their own seats projection from it that is radically different from the one I published on Wednesday night:

SNP 68

Greens 18

Reform UK 15

Liberal Democrats 10

Labour 10

Conservatives 8

That would be a single-party SNP overall majority, whereas my projection has the SNP six seats short of a majority on 59. I've been saying for months (and I really have been saying this for months) that the Stats for Lefties projection model always seems to be overly optimistic for the SNP, and often produces an overall majority when other models do not. During the debate in the autumn about whether the SNP should adopt the target of an overall majority, I was very concerned that some of the proponents of the idea were using the Stats for Lefties projections to give the impression that a majority was a lot more likely than was really the case.

However, there are two caveats this time around. As I said myself the other night, in the real world the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll would probably produce about 63 SNP seats (almost a majority but not quite), because most of the 12% of people who said they would vote Green on the constituency ballot will not be able to do so, and a lot of them will actually vote SNP. So if the Stats for Lefties projection is making some sort of common sense adjustment to the constituency numbers to take account of that, it might not be quite so far out.

And secondly, even without any adjustment, the constituency vote shares from the poll are actually better for the SNP than the Find Out Now MRP poll from last month. The MRP poll had the SNP on 34% of the vote and gave them a 16-point lead over the second placed party (Labour). The Scot Goes Pop poll has the SNP on 35% and gives them a 19-point lead over the second-placed party (Reform UK). The MRP poll, once the individual constituency-level projections were totted up, gave the SNP an overall majority - it was surprising that it showed that, but it did. So if you think the projection method that was used in that MRP poll was sound, then yes, the Scot Goes Pop poll probably would point to an SNP overall majority, even before you take into account the issue of the Greens on the constituency ballot.

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If you've been finding the new Scot Goes Pop poll interesting or useful, please check out the new polling fundraiser I've set up.

Atlas-branded leaflets are being distributed in the Cumbernauld & Kilsyth constituency pushing blatantly far-right policies and conspiracy theories: will Tommy Sheridan and the others finally disown this?

2026-04-23T21:19:00.004+01:00

I was astounded at the leaflet I received through the door of my Cumbernauld home yesterday from the notorious Dr Alan McManus, who has regularly spoken at far-right rallies organised by the holocaust denier and Brit Nat Ultra Alistair McConnachie (of "Independent Green Voice" fame), and who is standing in the Cumbernauld & Kilsyth constituency on a joint ticket of his own "Sovereignty" party and Barrhead Boy's "Alliance to Liberate Scotland" party (aka "the Atlas"). The leaflet is prominently branded with the logos of both parties, and also with the Atlas slogan: "Independence. Nothing Else. Nothing Less." With no apparent sense of irony, one side of the leaflet then goes on to set out a variety of extremely controversial - and in some cases downright offensive - policies that have got absolutely nothing whatever to do with independence, and which on the basis of the branding it's reasonable to conclude the entirety of Atlas must endorse. Tommy Sheridan, Eva Comrie, Craig Murray, Marjorie Thompson, et al: this guy claims to be speaking on behalf of you. Do you disown him? Do you disown these policies he's putting out under the branding of your party?

Alliance to Liberate Scotland policies, as revealed by Dr Alan McManus in his election leaflets:

* That there should NEVER be another lockdown. That's right, even if a deadly and highly infectious pathogen (potentially one with a far higher mortality rate than Covid) is wiping out the population, we shouldn't take even temporary steps to check its progress and to save lives.

* The existence of vaccines against Covid is a problem that must be "tackled" (in some unspecified way, but we can probably guess).

* Immigration is implied to be a leading cause of "predatory" behaviour by men, and *deportation* is proposed as a solution.

* Climate change is a "scam" and all action to tackle it should be discontinued.

* Cities and towns in which it is possible to walk to useful places within fifteen minutes are EVIL.

* Non-white people (the euphemism used is people who are not "indigenous") should be discriminated against in the provision of housing.

Great company you're keeping there, Tommy and the gang. When you get round to telling us whether you disown McManus and his policies, could you also maybe talk us through the meaning, as you see it, of the phrase "Independence, nothing else"? Because I'm beginning to think this is some kind of sister language to English in which the words mean the exact polar opposite of what we think they mean.

As so many people have pointed out, the most logical explanation for what is happening would appear to be that the far-right nutters in Sovereignty agreed to bankroll the Atlas campaign, and that the Atlas crew knowingly did a deal with the devil simply so they could contest this election. One might almost say that Atlas has lost its moral compass.

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SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: There's still more to come from our new exclusive poll, although it won't be tonight. In the meantime, though, if you've been finding the poll useful and would like another one at some point in the future, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser.

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: SNP and Greens on course to win nearly TWO-THIRDS of Holyrood seats and a pro-independence SUPERMAJORITY - SNP overall majority still a possibility - Labour slump to dismal FIFTH place in the seats projection

2026-04-23T00:58:00.011+01:00

A little earlier tonight, I revealed the Scottish Parliament voting intention results from the new Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll in a video on my YouTube channel, but as promised, here are the results in text form...

Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll, 15th-20th April 2026

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 35% (+1)

Reform UK 16% (+1)

Labour 14% (-4)

Greens 12% (+3)

Liberal Democrats 10% (-)

Conservatives 9% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 27% (-2)

Greens 20% (+6)

Reform UK 17% (+1)

Labour 12% (-5)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Conservatives 10% (-)

Seats projection:

SNP 59

Greens 23

Reform UK 17

Liberal Democrats 11

Labour 10

Conservatives 9

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 82 SEATS

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 47 SEATS

Just a reminder that the sample size was 1002, and the percentage changes are measured from Find Out Now's recent MRP poll commissioned by The National.

As stated in the video, I can't find a higher Green list vote share in any poll from any polling firm over the last few years, so it's certainly a high watermark in recent times and may be an all-time high, but I'm not sure on the latter point. To address a question that I know will be raised, Professor John Curtice cast doubt on Find Out Now's list results a few months ago, because he felt the wording of their list question might be artificially boosting support for smaller pro-independence parties. They took that feedback on board and replaced the question with a new wording that immediately reduced support for the smaller parties.

When I saw such a surprisingly high Green vote in this poll, I did doublecheck to make sure Find Out Now were still using the new version of the question, and indeed they were, so to the best of my knowledge there's no particular reason to be sceptical about the results - apart of course from the fact that any poll can potentially be an outlier, and some might argue that the Green list result in this poll has 'outlier' written all over it because it isn't in line with trends shown by most other polling firms recently. But keep an open mind until we see the next batch of polls: there's always just a chance that this is the early evidence of a new trend.

All polling firms have house effects, but trends are often more consistent across the polling industry, and I must say it's very hard to square these results with the propaganda message we've been hearing from Labour about their vote firming up on the doorsteps. Similarly the Tories claim to be faring surprisingly well - but if so, shouldn't there at least be some sign of that in this poll?!

In case you're wondering about the quirk of Labour only being in fifth place in the seats projection when they're in third place on the constituency ballot and fourth place on the list, the main explanation for that is the likelihood that the Lib Dems will win more constituency seats than Labour.

It's really important to remember that the seats projection is taking the constituency vote shares seriously, and is thus likely to be underestimating the SNP, who I reckon would be on 63 seats - and thus only just short of an overall majority - if you make a common sense adjustment to reassign a slim majority of Green constituency voters to the SNP in the seats where the Greens are not standing. But it's fair to say the main story of this poll is about the prospect of a two-party pro-independence supermajority of the type that Alex Salmond suggested in 2021 might break the logjam (albeit of course that supermajority, if it happens, will not consist of the parties he had in mind). It's also about the prospect of pro-independence parties filling the roles of both the government and the main opposition party - which is similarly an outcome that it has been suggested in the past might be a staging-post towards independence.

There's still more to come from this poll in the days to come, but in the meantime please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - if you have a few pounds to spare it would be very much appreciated, and might inch us closer to being able to run another poll at some point in the future.

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: Join me at 11.50pm on YouTube to hear the release of the Scottish Parliament voting intention numbers

2026-04-22T23:22:00.005+01:00

If you join the waiting zone, the video above should automatically start playing at 11.50pm. Just like last night, I'll be posting the poll results on this blog in text form later on for the video-phobic.

In the meantime, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you feel able to chip in a few pounds, that would be very much appreciated.

It's GO! The Scottish Parliament voting intention numbers from the new Scot Goes Pop poll will be released TONIGHT

2026-04-22T19:35:00.000+01:00

While you're waiting for the thrills and spills of later tonight, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser HERE.

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: A significant majority of voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence in a new referendum held now

2026-04-21T23:00:00.002+01:00

As promised for the video-phobic amongst you (although do watch the video version if you're not video-phobic!), here are the independence results in text form from the new Scot Goes Pop poll I commissioned last week. The polling firm that conducted the poll was Find Out Now, who are a member of the British Polling Council and abide by that organisation's rules. They're also a member of the Market Research Society. The sample consists of 1002 respondents who were interviewed between 15th and 20th April, in other words between Wednesday of last week and yesterday.

Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll

If another Scottish independence referendum was held tomorrow, with the question 'Should Scotland be an independent country?', how would you vote?

Yes 53% (-)

No 47% (-)

Those numbers, which exclude Don't Knows, are unchanged from the most recent comparable Find Out Now poll, which was commissioned by The National in February. However, on the figures which leave Don't Knows in, there is a small increase in the Yes lead:

Yes 50% (-)

No 44% (-1)

Undecided 6% (+1)

The results have been weighted by age, gender, region and recalled 2024 general election vote - but not, crucially, by 2014 referendum recalled vote, which after this length of time carries with it the risk of false recall. (Find Out Now's methodology is absolutely consistent regardless of client, let me stress - these results would have been exactly the same if the poll had been commissioned by the Daily Express.)

In my view, what is most significant about these results is that they are bang up to date and are taken from fieldwork right in the middle of an election campaign, because we know from past experience that independence support sometimes dips during elections, even when the SNP's own vote holds up. That's probably because unionist parties devote so much of their campaigning to attacks on the subject without the SNP necessarily responding in kind. But on the evidence of this poll, it's not a problem on this occasion.

Across the whole polling industry, there have now been fifteen independence polls in 2026 so far. Nine of them have shown a Yes lead, only four have shown a No lead, and the remaining two were dead heats. No fewer than *six* different polling firms have shown a pro-independence majority at some point this year: Find Out Now, Ipsos, Savanta, Stonehaven, Norstat and More In Common (although I must admit I hadn't previously been aware of the Savanta poll until I checked the list just now - I'll have to look into it).

There is no gender gap in the Find Out Now poll other than the fact that women are slightly more likely to be undecided: they break 49% to 43% for Yes, while among men the Yes lead is 51% to 45%. As ever, there is an enormous gulf between the youngest and oldest respondents, although in this case the best age bracket for Yes is thirtysomethings. 30-39 year olds break 68% to 27% for Yes. The best age group for No is 65-74 year olds, who break 69% to 26% for No. The youngest age group to be pro-No is 55-64 year olds.

Among people who voted for unionist parties in the 2024 UK general election, there is considerable minority support for independence (except among Tory voters who are almost monolithically No). 26% of Labour voters, 21% of Liberal Democrat voters, and 20% of Reform UK voters would back Yes in a new referendum. In a way that's a bad thing, though, because we want all independence supporters to be voting for pro-independence parties - we don't want then cross-voting for unionist parties.

The settled will klaxon is sounding tonight, and I can tell you that KC has already heard it loud and clear. There's plenty more to come from this poll, including the Holyrood numbers, which as I said in the video contain a really quite stunning result in one particular respect - and the more I've checked it and compared it to previous polls, the more extraordinary it looks.

So keep an eye out for more results over the coming days, and in the meantime please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - if you have a few pounds to spare it would be very much appreciated.

Be the first to discover the INDEPENDENCE RESULTS from the exclusive new Scot Goes Pop opinion poll: join me at 9pm on YouTube for the release

2026-04-21T19:58:00.002+01:00

As far as I know, if you join the waiting zone, the video above should automatically start playing at 9pm, although you may have to endure a two-minute countdown clock. If nothing appears after a minute or two, try refreshing.

For those of you who are totally video-phobic, don't worry: I'll also post the results in text form on the blog, but later in the evening.

In the meantime, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you feel able to chip in a few pounds, that would be very much appreciated.

This is not a drill: the independence results from the new Scot Goes Pop poll will be released TONIGHT

2026-04-21T15:19:00.002+01:00

I'll post the link to the video revealing the results once I've scheduled it. (I'm trying to build up some suspense and anticipation here, but doubtless that's a forlorn hope.)

Don't forget the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser I've set up, if you'd like to chip in with a few pounds - it can be found HERE.

My latest constituency profile for The National is Midlothian North.

A heads-up: a new Scot Goes Pop-commissioned opinion poll will be published before election day

2026-04-19T22:44:00.004+01:00

So a small announcement - I have commissioned Scot Goes Pop's first opinion poll since the two that were done back-to-back during the SNP leadership election in early 2023. For cost reasons, it's not going to be the sort of all-singing, all-dancing poll I used to commission back in the day with eight, nine or ten questions - it'll be a bit smaller-scale than that, but I've chosen the questions for maximum impact and I don't think you'll be disappointed by them.

The reason I stopped commissioning polls was because the fundraising efforts ran out of steam, and I had to start concentrating more on general fundraising for the blog if I was going to stay afloat at all. However, it's been three years since the last poll, and it'll potentially be another three years until the next major election takes place in Scotland, so I don't think there's much doubt that if I'm going to do another one at any point, now is the moment to do it. It'll be a few days at least before the results are ready, but I thought I'd make an advance announcement to help with the publicising of my new polling fundraiser, which I hope will not only assist with the costs of the current poll, but if we're really lucky potentially also build up a small war-chest for a future poll at a moment of maximum impact.

Here is the pitch I've written for the fundraiser on the GoFundMe page -

Hi there, my name is James Kelly, and I write the pro-independence Scot Goes Pop blog, which spends much of its time covering opinion polls.

Polls can shape much of the narrative of any election campaign, and that leaves us with a problem in Scotland because most polls are commissioned by unionist media clients. The media don't, of course, decide the results of those polls, but they do decide which issues are and aren't worth asking about, and also what emphasis each result should be given at the time of publication. It's become increasingly frequent over the last couple of years, for example, for the results on the standard Yes/No question about Scottish independence to be totally buried in the reporting - and doubtless it's just an astounding coincidence that this has happened at precisely the moment that Yes has moved into a clear lead in the polling average.

Between 2020 and 2023, I was fortunate enough to be able to offer a corrective to this problem on my website Scot Goes Pop. Roughly every four months during that period, I was able to commission a poll from a variety of reputable polling firms affiliated to the British Polling Council, and to ask the questions that we in the independence movement wanted asked, not the ones that unionist journalists and politicians wanted asked. It wasn't easy, because polls are very expensive, but I was able to do it with your help.

Some of those polls were genuine landmarks. Remember that extraordinary period between mid-2020 and early 2021 when every single independence poll showed a Yes majority? The very first poll in that unbroken sequence was a Panelbase poll commissioned by Scot Goes Pop in June 2020. A few months later, another Scot Goes Pop-commissioned poll showed the largest Yes lead in any Panelbase poll ever. Supplementary results from the polls showed, among other things, that voters want Scotland to join the international treaty banning nuclear weapons, and think it would be appropriate to use a scheduled election to seek a mandate for independence if the option of a referendum is closed off.

I haven't commissioned a poll for three years because the fundraising efforts ran out of steam. However, if there was ever going to be a moment to have a new poll, that moment is right now - we're in the middle of a crucial election campaign, and there potentially won't be another major election for three years. I've therefore taken the bull by the horns and commissioned a new poll.

I'd like to ask for your help, not only in funding this new poll, but potentially raising enough to run another poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact. So if you have £10 or £20 to spare, this could be a really good-value-for-money, high-impact way of positively influencing the political narrative in Scotland. Many thanks in advance to anyone who chooses to contribute.

Click here if you'd like to donate.

If you don't want to donate by card on the fundraiser page, there are two other options available. Direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email account, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you want to distinguish the donation from the general fundraising for Scot Goes Pop, just add a note saying "for the poll" or whatever.

Bank transfers are the other possibility. If you'd like to do that, contact me for the details at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

You now have less than 30 hours to ensure all the independence supporters in your life are registered to vote

2026-04-19T18:32:00.000+01:00

In a sense the title says it all, but it perhaps doesn't quite capture the scale of the problem, because data from 2023 suggests 20% of the adult population of Scotland are either not registered to vote at all or are not registered at their current address. Presumably people in the latter category might theoretically be able to vote in some cases but would be much less likely to. So if you can persuade the independence supporters in your life to get registered by the deadline of 11.59 tomorrow night (the 20th), that really is half the battle. Pay particular attention to 16 and 17 year olds, because the 2023 figures suggest *40%* of them were unregistered.

Remember that, as long as people are resident in Scotland, there are very few obstacles to be eligible to vote in a Scottish Parliament or local council election. It's no longer necessary to be a citizen of a Commonwealth country - that rule was changed a few years ago, so Americans, Chinese people, etc, etc can all register to vote by tomorrow night as long as they are resident here. The main group that is still partly excluded is prisoners, but several categories of prisoner can apparently vote - remand prisoners, civil prisoners, convicted but unsentenced criminals, prisoners sentenced for non-payment of a fine, prisoners sentenced for contempt of court, and convicted prisoners serving a term of less than 12 months.

The registration process is apparently fairly quick, although don't leave it until the absolute last minute. The online form can be found HERE.

List seat BONANZA forecast by MRP poll as JL Partners suggest the SNP are on course for an overall majority with the help of TEN LIST SEATS

2026-04-16T10:48:00.000+01:00

I feel like I should say something about the new JL Partners / Telegraph MRP poll for the Holyrood election, but I'm actually struggling to find much information about it. JL Partners' own website only seems to have data for the parallel polls on the English local elections and the Welsh Senedd, and even the Telegraph's write-up doesn't reveal the full seat tallies or vote shares. The National have once again published the full constituency-level results in an interactive feature, but I'm unable to use it at the moment.

However, what is clear is that this poll is an extreme oddity because it purports to show the one outcome that most of us have ruled out as a realistic possibility. It may cause the controversial Somerset-based blogger known as "Stew" to have something of an emotional moment, because it shows that the SNP would win an overall majority but only due to a substantial contribution of list seats. They would take only 57 constituency seats, but their TEN list seats - that's TEN - would drag them up to 67 in total. It's hard to see how that can be the case unless JL Partners have found one of two things: either a) a massive recovery on the SNP list vote share, or b) a very weird split on the list vote among the SNP's opponents.

One thing I am able to see on The National's website is the map of constituency results, and it's obvious JL Partners are showing a radically different pattern from the MRP polls of Find Out Now or YouGov. They have Labour winning eight constituencies in the central belt (but weirdly Dumbarton is not one of them). They have Reform UK winning three seats: Dumfriesshire, Aberdeenshire West and one in the central belt that is hard to discern from the map but to me looks suspiciously like Strathkelvin & Bearsden. If I'm right about that, it's a completely bonkers projection that should call into question the credibility of the whole poll. I see on Twitter that someone is also pointing out that the Green vote in Dumfriesshire exceeds Reform's lead over the SNP - and there is no Green candidate in Dumfriesshire!

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My latest constituency profiles for The National are Inverclyde and Inverness & Nairn.

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If you are enjoying Scot Goes Pop's election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome. There are three main options:
a) you can donate by card HERE
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

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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.

The question that Anas Sarwar now needs to answer

2026-04-15T12:44:00.002+01:00

The Scottish Labour party and its allies, including Paul Hutcheon of the Daily Record and Professor James Mitchell (who is increasingly dropping the pretence of being anything other than a Labour propagandist), have today been doubling down on the idea - which I don't think anyone in their heart of hearts truly believes - that Malcolm Offord's claim that Anas Sarwar approached him about a post-election deal is an outright lie. That is very hard to square with an article in the Scotsman from only two weeks ago in which a Labour source was saying that Sarwar wanted to form a government from second place with the help of Reform MSPs.

If Sarwar wants his denial to have any credibility, particularly his pious suggestion that it is somehow unimaginable that a decent man like himself would have anything to do with a monster like Offord, it will surely now be necessary for him to explicitly rule out forming a minority government with the votes of Reform MSPs. It's no longer good enough for him to say, as he and others have done in the past, that he cannot control how Reform MSPs vote in the election for First Minister, and that it is fine for him to simply accept the result of that vote. He must definitively rule out serving as First Minister on that basis, because irrespective of whether there is a Labour-Reform deal written down on paper, a Labour minority government arithmetically dependent on Reform votes to sustain itself will be a Labour government beholden to the politics of Reform.

The distinction between the Labour spin machine and the Daily Record seems to have broken down again. Funny how that always seems to happen at this stage of the electoral cycle. https://t.co/e6cS1IVOl1
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 15, 2026

Professor Mitchell is getting beyond parody. What matters is whether Offord's claim is *true*. It can be as "appalling" or "illogical" as you like, but if it's "true*, the issue here is Sarwar, not the SNP or anyone else. https://t.co/M7pV0nUneQ
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 15, 2026

Reading between the lines here, what Professor Mitchell is saying is that it was totally fine for Sarwar to informally approach a far-right party for a deal, and the only problem is that others broke the "rules" by letting the public in on his secret. Just not cricket, old boy! https://t.co/apjOS2hhQX
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 15, 2026

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse.

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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.

In an analogue age Anas Sarwar might have got away with that - but this is a digital age, and he didn't

2026-04-15T00:26:00.003+01:00

I forgot all about the Channel 4 leaders' debate, so I didn't watch it live, but obviously I soon heard of Offord's revelation about Anas Sarwar approaching him about a post-election deal to keep out the SNP, so I've just watched it back online. What absolutely stunned me when I reached the crucial moment was that Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who in other ways was a reasonably good moderator, seemed completely oblivious to the significance of what had just happened. I would have expected him to laser straight in and ask for as much clarification and detail of the Sarwar-Offord conversation as possible, and then to demand that Sarwar either confirm or deny those details. Instead he allowed the debate to instantly move on.

You could see John Swinney patiently biding his time for several minutes and waiting for his turn to speak so he could bring the subject back up, but when Sarwar then did the Sarwar thing of dealing with a moment of maximum danger by drowning it out with a wall of noise, Guru-Murthy passively allowed him to do that and then hurriedly wrapped the segment up before Swinney had a chance to say anything more. It was absolutely bizarre. In other circumstances we might have put it down to a London-based presenter not understanding the nuances of Scottish political debate, but I wouldn't have thought any journalist anywhere in the UK should have any difficulty understanding why proposing a deal with Reform is taboo. I suspect he'll be kicking himself now.

I was reminded tonight of why I was so convinced that Scottish Labour had taken leave of its senses when it first chose Anas Sarwar as its leader, in spite of him being the media's darling. Prior to then I had always regarded him as an utterly atrocious politician, and the main reason for that was my recollection of his performance in the televised indyref debates, including in particular a head-to-head on STV with Nicola Sturgeon in which he simply refused to let her speak. Every time she opened her mouth, he shouted over her with a stream of utter drivel about anything and everything, including even the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo. I suppose in some ways that's quite an effective defensive tactic, because if you literally prevent the audience at home from hearing anything your opponent says, it stops any attack lines against you from hitting home. But the problem is that you can't do that without the audience concluding you're an ill-mannered buffoon. He was straight back to that problem tonight. I'm sure he thought it was a wizard idea to try to prevent Swinney taking advantage of Offord's revelation by screaming "HOW DARE YOU JOHN THIS MAN WANTS TO DEPORT MY CHILDREN THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE HOW DARE YOU JOHN DON'T YOU DARE JOHN", but most viewers will just have been thinking: well, if this is a moral issue, and if Offord wants to deport people's children, why on earth did you ask him to do a deal with you? Doesn't that, in fact, make you rather immoral and cynical and opportunistic and unprincipled?

In another age the Sarwar noise-fest and Guru-Murthy's lapse might have meant that Offord's comment would have got lost, but instead none of that mattered because the clip was soon all over social media and is now dominating the headlines. One thing is for sure: any slim chance of Sarwar becoming First Minister by a back door route has just become even slimmer, because if any chance emerges of him getting into Bute House with the votes of Reform MSPs, his antics tonight will be played back on a loop and he'll lose all credibility.

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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.

The Greens have now been crowned the undisputed Olympic champions of misleading bar charts on election leaflets - they're bizarrely claiming that SNP-held Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between themselves and Labour, and their source for this improbable claim is (drumroll, please) themselves. So brazen it deserves a reward biscuit!

2026-04-14T12:16:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago, the Green co-leader Ross Greer posted a Labour leaflet from Strathkelvin & Bearsden, mocking it for containing a particularly extreme example of a misleading Lib Dem-style bar chart. Ironically, its sole purpose was to try to convince local voters that the Lib Dems couldn't win the constituency. It showed the SNP on "three", Labour on "two", and others on "one". The explanation of these mysteriously small numbers was that they represented the amount of times each party had won Strathkelvin & Bearsden since devolution began in 1999. But as Greer pointed out, Labour's two victories were in 1999 and 2007, and so were pretty much irrelevant to the question of who the main challengers to the SNP are in the present-day.

It has to be said, though, that the Greens themselves have managed to top Labour's effort with an even more bonkers leaflet in Edinburgh Central. It not only claims that "Lorna Slater is winning Edinburgh Central" but provides a bar chart which purports to show that "it's between the Scottish Greens and Labour in Edinburgh Central". (As fluent speakers of Barchartese will instantly know, those words translate as "it's actually a three-cornered fight between the SNP, Labour and the Greens, but we'd rather you didn't know that because it's mainly the SNP we need to take votes from".) The bar chart specifically claims that the Greens are on 28%, Labour are on 22% and the SNP are in only third on 21%. These numbers are, to put it mildly, somewhat improbable because:

* The SNP won Edinburgh Central five years ago, with the Tories in second place, Labour third, and the Greens a distant fourth.

* Although the boundaries of the constituency have changed, the notional results suggest the SNP would still have won in 2021, with Labour moving into second, the Tories in third and the Greens remaining in a distant fourth.

* Even making a common sense adjustment for the fact that there was no Green candidate in the new part of the constituency in 2021, the Greens would still have been in fourth place.

* Although the Greens are undoubtedly in a stronger position now than they were in 2021, no MRP projection of the campaign so far supports their claim that Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between themselves and Labour. YouGov have the constituency as a virtual three-way dead heat, with the SNP and Greens both on 25% and Labour on 23%, while Find Out Now have the SNP clearly ahead on 28%, the Greens in second place on 23% and Labour not that far behind on 21%.

So what on earth could the source be for this wildly improbable notion that Edinburgh Central is a two-horse race between Labour and the Greens? If you check the small print on the Green leaflet, you'll find out. It states: "source: ballotbox.scot". That means the Ballot Box Scotland website. You know, the same Ballot Box Scotland website that is run solely by a young gentleman by the name of Allan Faulds, who is a former serial Scottish Green party candidate in local elections and European Parliament elections. He's since nominally "left" the party, although he's made little secret of the fact that he did that solely for appearance's sake, ie. in the hope that people would stop laughing quite so hard whenever he angrily protests that his "project" is "non-partisan". He's also (perhaps surprisingly) made no secret of the truly heroic lengths he's gone to in order to flatter the Greens in the constituency projections on his site - he states in black and white that he factors in the 2021 list vote for projecting the Green constituency vote in 2026, but that he does not do this for any other party. To put in some perspective just how absurd that is, if you did use the 2021 list vote as a baseline for other parties, you'd be pretty close to projecting the SNP as being ahead in the Lib Dem fortresses of Shetland and Edinburgh North Western, which would plainly be barmy.

It's even worse than that, though, because notional figures show the Greens were a long way behind the SNP even on the list in Edinburgh Central in 2021 - and although they were in second place, both Labour and the Tories were only fractionally behind them. Any reasonable person looking at the bar chart on the Green leaflet would assume it's based on some kind of real measure of public opinion - either a real election from the past, or a real constituency-level opinion poll from the present. But it's neither. It's no more than a piece of candy-floss from Allan Faulds' own imagination, which piles wild assumption upon wild assumption in order to justify using the wrong baseline figures and then 'reimagining' them as he sees fit.

In a nutshell, then, the Greens' source for the baseless claim that Edinburgh Central is a two-way fight between themselves and Labour is a baseless claim made by a Green party candidate - ie. their source is themselves. This election is increasingly moving into Alice Through The Looking Glass territory, because the only reason I even saw the leaflet was because it was posted by the Brit Nat propagandist Sam Taylor of These Islands fame. He's trying to boost the Green campaign in Edinburgh Central, even though he clearly has more in common with the more centrist politics of the SNP candidate Angus Robertson than he does with Lorna Slater. Why is he doing that? Because it's the SNP he sees as the threat to his beloved Union, and he thinks losing Robertson would leave the SNP weakened.

Might just be worth bearing that in mind.

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My latest constituency profiles for The National are Glasgow Southside and Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill. I'm on a roll with these constituencies that I can claim a connection to, because I'm a graduate of Glasgow University, which is in the Kelvin & Maryhill seat.

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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.

REVEALED: The hard science that makes Both Votes SNP such an effective strategy - why the "Make Mine A Double" voting craze is mathematically sound as well as fashionable and trendy

2026-04-12T18:24:00.004+01:00

OK, the title of this blogpost is mainly there to wind up Stew, but there is actually a very serious point behind it, and it's one that may make you think about the importance of voting SNP on the list ballot in a wholly new way. Patrick English, who seems to have been the key figure behind YouGov's new MRP poll for the Holyrood election, posted a thread on Twitter about the poll with some observations that I found genuinely startling -

"Scotland is never an easy place in which to project elections, but we've given it a go.

Based on the data, our central expectation is that the SNP would win an outright majority if the election were happening right now

They do so in our model by hoovering up all but seven of Holyrood's 73 constituencies, plus a regional list seat in the Highland and Islands.

Such is the extent of the SNP constituency sweep, our central projection has Labour winning zero constituencies for the first time ever.

Each of Labour's 15 seats come from the lists.

Similarly, while we currently have Reform in second place, all their 20 projected wins are also list seats.

The Greens however we think have a good shot at winning their first ever Holyrood constituency (either Glasgow/Edinburgh).

Our model is, as it stands, pretty bullish on an SNP majority despite them only being two seats above the line (65).

The reason why is that even if the SNP start losing constituency seats, in many such scenarios they start winning extra regional list seats to compensate.

For example, let's imagine that Labour benefited from a big push of tactical Unionist support in Central and took three seats off the SNP there.

Unless the SNP also started dropping list votes, they'd win one regional seat to take them back up to 65!

Similarly, let's say the SNP lost Moray in the Highlands and Islands to Reform, who are currently second placed there.

The SNP would immediately then win a list seat in that region to compensate for that loss.

Another reason for model bullishness is the fragmentation of the pro-Union constituency vote behind the SNP, plus the boost they get from the Greens stepping aside in all but six seats.

Projected SNP majorities range from 7pts in Dumfriesshire to 27pts in Coatbridge and Chryston

These SNP cushions, plus the projected strong performance of the Greens, make it very difficult to see anything other than yet another SNP-led administration after May 7th *as things stand*.

As for securing official opposition status, it's a battle between Reform and Labour."

Remember that he's saying all of this about a state of play in which it's assumed that the SNP will be taking just 32% of the list vote nationally - way down on what they have received in all of the last three Holyrood elections. I wouldn't previously have thought that a 32% list vote could have much role to play in getting the SNP over the line for a majority in a situation where they fall a little short of 65 constituency seats, but this guy has run all of the simulations and he's clearly saying that it very well could. Even on the central projection from the poll, the SNP would take one list seat in the Highlands & Islands, but it sounds very much like a list vote for the SNP will play a crucial back-up role in other regions by compensating the SNP if they fail to take as many constituency seats as they hope.

As 32% of the national list vote is a perfectly achievable target, this should really be enough to convince SNP supporters to back the party on both ballots. Clearly much of the commentary so far (including from the former YouGov president Peter Kellner in the bizarre article that was picked up by Lesley Riddoch recently) has severely underestimated the SNP's chances of taking seats on the list. Perhaps for independence supporters who don't identify strongly with any particular political party, there may still be a difficult choice to make between the SNP and the Greens on the list, because clearly the Greens are capable of winning list seats too, and may win more than the SNP do. But for anyone weighing up whether to vote for the SNP on the list, or for one of the wide array of pro-indy fringe parties like Atlas or ISP, there's strictly no contest - the SNP have a chance of taking seats on the list, and the fringe parties have no chance whatsoever. That decision is an absolute no-brainer.

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You can read my constituency profile of Glasgow Easterhouse & Springburn for The National HERE. That's another Glasgow constituency that I can claim a tenuous connection to, in the sense that I was born there (at Stobhill Hospital in Springburn).

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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.

Even YouGov now say the Union Jack could soon be LOWERED as sensational MRP poll shows SNP on course for an overall majority

2026-04-10T22:55:00.019+01:00

MRP Seats projection (YouGov / Sky News / The Times, 23rd March-8th April 2026):

SNP 67

Reform UK 20

Labour 15

Greens 11

Liberal Democrats 9

Conservatives 7

Now, I've estimated the chances of the SNP winning a single-party overall majority as around 1 in 200, and I maintain that it's a long-shot because the voting system is specifically designed to produce hung parliaments. As we saw in 2021 it does that job very effectively indeed. The SNP had a record-breaking 48% of the constituency vote but still fell one seat short of a majority. However, I know there are many disciples of the YouGov MRP method out there, and I don't think it's realistic to pay no heed to YouGov of all firms saying, as they are tonight, that in 89% of simulations the SNP win a majority. Even the lower bound of the estimate has the SNP on 63 seats, which would be only two short of a majority.

Crucially this is not happening simply because of a freakish split in the unionist vote - the SNP's own constituency vote share has recovered to a very healthy 41%, which if true is a great tribute to the leadership of John Swinney.

Another thing I've said repeatedly is that there is no route to an overall majority that involves list seats, and technically this poll even casts doubt on that, because the SNP are projected to take a list seat - but it would be just the one, as Magnus Magnusson used to say. The majority would essentially be won with 66 constituency seats, meaning the SNP would miss out on only seven constituencies:

Shetland Islands

Orkney Islands

Caithness, Sutherland & Ross

Fife North East

Edinburgh North Western

Edinburgh Central

Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire

Even among those seven, there are some real possibilities for the SNP if the detailed YouGov numbers are to be believed. They're just three points behind the Tories in Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire, where a big Reform vote could split Tory support just enough to give the SNP an opening. Edinburgh Central is virtually a three-way dead heat, with the SNP and Greens both projected to be on 25%, and Labour just behind on 23%. So in a best-case scenario the SNP may well still hold the seat, and in a worst-case scenario this could be a repeat of 2016 when the Greens handed the seat on a silver platter to a unionist party by putting up a candidate against the SNP - although in this instance the beneficiary would be Labour rather than the Tories.

In spite of the perception that Caithness, Sutherland & Ross may be a lost cause, the SNP are projected to be only four points behind the Lib Dems there. So the only four seats where the SNP would be out of the running completely are the true Lib Dem fortresses of Fife North East, Edinburgh North Western, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.

On the other hand, among the 66 constituencies the SNP are projected to win, there are of course some close ones, and none more so than the increasingly weird seat of Dumbarton, which the SNP should have gained from Labour in both of the last two Holyrood elections, but didn't because Tory supporters in Helensburgh tactically switched en masse to Labour. The projection has the SNP winning by a mere two points this time, so to put it mildly that one can't be taken for granted.

In both Aberdeenshire West and Edinburgh Southern I'd have thought the SNP should be regarded as underdogs, but YouGov have them winning both by margins of seven points and six points respectively. That's narrow enough that the results in both seats remain highly unpredictable.

As far as the three Tory "blue wall" rural seats in the south are concerned, YouGov have the SNP taking two, but both are still in the balance: in Galloway & West Dumfries the gap is nine points and in Dumfriesshire it's seven. The Tories are in second place in both, but with Reform playing spoilers in a very close third place.

Banffshire & Buchan Coast has been touted as possibly Reform's most promising seat, but YouGov don't have them even close there: the SNP are on 41%, Reform are on 23%, and the Tories have been pushed into a dreadful third place in territory they held at Westminster level until two years ago.

A couple of other seats the SNP have to worry about are the ultra-marginal East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, where they're projected to be just six points ahead of Labour, and also Strathkelvin & Bearsden. The latter really ought to be a reasonably safe seat, but YouGov have the Lib Dems just six points behind. I'm slightly sceptical about that, though - that's an area that traditionally votes completely differently in Holyrood and Westminster elections, and YouGov may be making the mistake of factoring in the Westminster baseline numbers too much. But who knows, maybe this will be the year that the Lib Dems finally break the usual pattern. A leaflet that Ross Greer posted on Twitter certainly gave the impression that Labour were concerned about the Lib Dems in Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

On a more positive note, there's no sign of the close SNP-Lib Dem race in Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch that was suggested by Find Out Now's MRP poll. YouGov have the SNP way ahead of the Lib Dems there by a margin of 46% to 24%.

Last but not least, I should just remind you that MRP projections have a much patchier record in Scotland than they do elsewhere in the UK. For more details, read the piece I wrote for The National a few days ago HERE.

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My latest Holyrood constituency profile for The National is Glasgow Central.

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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.

The "Make Mine A Double" voting craze that is sweeping the nation: why all the most fashionable trendsetters - and Stew - agree it has to be BOTH votes SNP in May

2026-04-09T19:41:00.005+01:00

There's actually a serious point here, because Stew is far from the only right-wing commentator who has argued that a Green return to government would be an unmitigated catastrophe - we've heard the same message repeatedly from the Express and the Telegraph. But the problem they all have is that by far the most likely way of preventing an SNP-Green coalition is to vote SNP.

If the SNP win a majority or get very close to one, the likelihood is that they'll form a single-party government. The more inconclusive the result, the more likely it is that they'll have to cut a deal with the Greens. And this time the Green involvement in government will probably be much more extensive than it was under the Bute House Agreement - on the basis of current opinion polls, the Greens might have a claim to as many as one-quarter of the ministerial posts. Paradoxically, that's what people will be making more likely by voting Labour or Reform to try to harm the SNP.

By the looks of it, Angus Robertson and the other SNP constituency candidates who are in a battle with the Greens thought it was Christmas when the Green candidate Kate Nevens made her now-notorious comment about wanting to abolish prisons. Even I, who would like to see the justice system reoriented towards rehabilitation, think abolition is too extreme a policy because I don't see how it's viable not to lock up the most serious violent offenders. The big danger for the Greens, though, is not what people think about the policy in isolation - it's any sense that takes root that the Greens are a bit nuts, and that was pretty obviously what Angus Robertson was trying to cultivate.

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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.

The crazy, topsy-turvy logic (and in some cases hypocrisy) of the "tactical voting on the list" advocates

2026-04-09T11:05:00.001+01:00

I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to mute certain accounts on Twitter to get through the rest of the Holyrood campaign with my sanity intact. Every single time I log in, I see retweet after retweet from the Atlas brigade of Tommy Sheridan basically lying through his teeth (or being misleading, to put it charitably) by claiming there was recently a Find Out Now poll predicting that Atlas will take 8% of the national list vote. That poll showed no such thing, and he damn well knows it, because he and his colleagues commissioned it themselves and chose the question. Indeed, there were Glasgow-specific results from the poll which were startlingly poor for Tommy. They suggest that his popularity in the city has dipped and make it overwhelmingly unlikely he can win a seat there on the basis of his personal vote, no matter what party he chooses to stand for.

But the worst part of the dishonesty is his claim that "SNP 1 & 2" (there are no numbers in this voting system, chaps!) is a "unionist voting strategy" and that all independence supporters should vote for him and the Atlas gang instead to stop Reform winning seats. Now the case for SNP supporters to vote Both Votes SNP is clear enough and I've set it out many times. The list vote is the more important vote because it is the only vote that directly determines the composition of parliament. If you think you are voting tactically by voting for your first-choice party on the constituency ballot and your second-choice party on the list, there is a very high risk of you kicking yourself afterwards, because if your first-choice party doesn't win in your constituency, literally the only thing you will have done is cast a vote for your second-choice party in a proportional representation election. That's the only vote that will count, which is a perverse outcome. By contrast, if you act in the way that the system was intended by voting for your first-choice party on the list ballot, your two votes will effectively operate in tandem with each other and ensure that your preference is counted towards seats. If your first-choice party doesn't win your constituency, that's not a problem because your list vote will still count and will help your party win list seats. But if that party does win your constituency and other neighbouring constituencies, even if that means it doesn't win any compensatory list seats, that's still OK because your preference has still counted towards the party winning a seat.

Now, some people just viscerally hate the fact that the two votes work in tandem in this way, and that you often effectively end up using one vote as a back-up in case something goes awry with the other. They feel that it shouldn't work like that and that if both votes don't actively count towards getting pro-independence MSPs elected, something has gone fundamentally wrong and it must be corrected. That's not a realistic attitude, but after decades of listening to this stuff, I know it's never going to go away. But what I also know is that if you truly believe that both votes have to count in all circumstances, and that if you truly believe the SNP cannot win any list seats in this election (definitely not true by the way) what you would do is look for a non-SNP pro-independence party that actually has a chance of winning list seats. The only such party in existence is the Green party.

And yet Tommy and the others tell you NOT to vote Green on the list, but instead to throw your vote away on a no-hoper fringe party that cannot possibly win any seats. By doing that they are guilty of *exactly* what they accuse SNP list voters of doing, ie. of following a 'unionist voting strategy' that can only help Reform win list seats. Why do they not tell people to vote Green, as their own logic points inexorably towards? I'm trying to imagine what answer they would give to that question, and all I can think of is that they would say "because the Greens don't know what a woman is". Hmmm. That doesn't sound much like "independence nothing less, independence nothing else". Quite the reverse, it sounds like you're massively prioritising an unrelated issue over independence. It's just sheer hypocrisy.

My own message is simple: tactical voting on the list is a mug's game because it carries too high a risk of backfiring. You should always vote for your first-choice party on the list, and yes, if your first-choice party is the SNP, you should vote SNP on the list. However, if you are reckless enough to go down the tactical voting route, for the love of God at least make sure you're voting for a pro-indy party that can actually win seats on the list. If you vote for a party on the list that is not your first choice, and which cannot win any seats because it is too small, and if by doing so you are helping unionist parties to win seats instead, and if you imagine all of this constitutes some sort of ingenious "strategic" vote...well, there is only one word for what you are doing and that word is stupidity.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Glasgow Cathcart & Pollok (where Anas Sarwar is standing for Labour).

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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.

Pro-independence parties on course to win an astonishing 62% of seats in the next Scottish Parliament, says sumptuous Ipsos poll

2026-04-08T12:55:00.013+01:00

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Ipsos, 26th-31st March 2026):

SNP 39% (+3)

Reform UK 15% (-1)

Labour 15% (-5)

Conservatives 11% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 10% (-)

Greens 7% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 29% (+3)

Greens 16% (-)

Reform UK 16% (+2)

Labour 15% (-4)

Conservatives 13% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-1)

Seats projection:

SNP 63

Greens 17

Reform UK 15

Labour 14

Conservatives 12

Liberal Democrats 8

I'll update this post with full commentary when I have more time later this afternoon or this evening, but while I'm thinking of it, just one point - does anyone know whether STV are still commissioning these Ipsos polls? At some point a few months ago they stopped using the words "exclusive poll commissioned by STV", so I'm starting to wonder if Ipsos are now self-funding them, but are continuing an informal relationship with STV as a convenient way of promoting the results.

UPDATE: OK, the commentary follows from here! This poll basically contradicts the Norstat poll, because it shows the SNP getting closer to an overall majority rather than further away. It not only has the SNP gaining three points on both ballots, but also shows the Reform vote holding up on the constituency ballot and Labour slumping horrifically. The main reason that Norstat were suggesting the SNP's chances of a majority were slipping was because there appeared to be a big swing from Reform back to Labour - but Ipsos are showing the opposite. Theoretically that might be explained by the fact that Norstat's fieldwork dates were a bit more recent - but not by much. The Ipsos poll opened four days earlier than Norstat's on 26th March, and the two polls even overlapped by a couple of days later on. I think this is more a straightforward case of two different polling companies showing opposite trends for reasons that have yet to be determined.

The Greens clearly aren't really going to take 7% of the vote on the constituency ballot, because they're only standing in a handful of constituency seats, and I doubt if that's been taken into account in the seats projection. If the SNP take, say, just over half of that 7%, it might inch them a bit closer to a majority.

The 39% for the SNP on the constituency ballot equals their highest in any poll from any polling company since September 2023, when an Opinium poll commissioned by the Tony Blair Institute (!) had them on 42%. By contrast, Labour's 15% share appears to be their lowest in any poll from Ipsos or the predecessor firm Ipsos-Mori since the 2021 Holyrood election.

One small bit of bad news is that this is a rare example in recent times of an Ipsos poll not showing a lead for Yes on the independence question - instead it's a 50/50 split. However, the last couple of polls from the firm have had Yes on 51% or 52%, so normal sampling variation made it almost inevitable there would eventually be a poll showing either a small No lead or a dead heat.

As usual, John Swinney's net personal rating (-8) is superior to that of his main rivals, with Anas Sarwar on -29 and Reform's Malcolm Offord on an embarrassing -41. That should exclude the main danger of any major turnaround in the parties' fortunes over the remaining month of the campaign.

Although Westminster elections are not forefront in our minds just now, it shouldn't go unmentioned that the Westminster figures set the SNP up for a stonkingly good result in a first-past-the-post election...

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 37%

Reform UK 16%

Labour 16%

Conservatives 11%

Greens 9%

Liberal Democrats 8%

In terms of a seats projection, I make it: SNP 49, Liberal Democrats 5, Conservatives 2, Labour 1.

The Find Out Now poll did not predict 8% for the Alliance to Liberate Scotland. Don't be silly. If you were simply honest about what that poll actually did show, you'd instantly have your answer as to why nobody else regards the result as being of much interest. https://t.co/tVu7ARVVg1
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 8, 2026

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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.