Oh. Joy. I was just thinking to myself, six days after we last had a Survation poll published (even if the data was from a week before that), “what we really need is another Survation poll.” In Scotland’s truly bustling polling landscape, filled with a diverse array of polls from lots of different pollsters, it’s great that plucky little Survation is getting a fair crack at some of all that cash sloshing around. Even so that means they only have a paltry, a tiny, meaningless four out of the five polls currently sitting in the BBS tracker average. How awful! We really must have them taking all five slots!
Sorry, is that laying it on a bit thick? Okay, the honest short assessment: I’m sick fed up of Survation polls. I’ve paid them for some myself in the past! They’re a good firm! But for heavens’ sake can we hear from somebody bloody else (and I don’t mean the charlatans at FindOutNow)? Why is every other polling firm and every other possible commissioner of Scottish polling just asleep at the wheel? This isn’t good!
We already don’t get enough Scottish polling. That’s why I’m limited to an already unsatisfactory “5-poll average” rather than being able to do something like the past 30 days. I don’t have a PhD in statistics or anything related, so I’m already working at a simpler level than academic boffins. To then have a situation where we’ve only got three polling firms doing any polling at all, one of which is spitting out complete bollocks and another which has seemingly captured the entire market of active poll commissioners (again, *including myself*)? Bordering on catastrophic for our understanding of Scottish politics.
But fine. Whatever. True North wanted a “one year to go” poll. They use Survation. So here we go. A poll (link to tables).
The previous Survation covered the 16th – 22nd of April 2025. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Regional Vote
Let’s start with the boring bits of this poll. All of the SNP, Lib Dems, Greens and Alba have one point shifts in their support; completely within margin of error, completely meaningless overall. Where this gets really dramatic though is of course that shock second place for Reform, with an absolutely eye-popping 8 point gain since two weeks ago, with Labour and the Conservatives each bearing half of the net effect of that (beware assuming direct transfers; if I had more time I’d look more deeply into the tables, but that’s for a later date!)
This is a great example of why we desperately need more polls, coming more frequently, from more firms. I’m not sure I buy the idea that last week’s English County Council results have galvanised well upwards of 100,000 Scots to swing behind Reform. I am also aware that versus the Survation from six weeks ago it’s only a 4% gain, which is less dramatic.
Regardless, this is a further devastating poll for Labour. In the clip of his “one year to go” speech played just before my own appearance on Scotland Tonight this week, I was struck by the mismatch between Anas Sarwar’s words and appearance. His voice said he was fighting to win the election. His face said he was at the wake for his dreams of becoming First Minister. There’s time yet to turn this around, but the trajectory is dire. It’s also the joint-worst figure for the Conservatives this term.
Constituency Vote
It’s a similar pattern of support but with slight differences n pattern shifts over on the constituency ballot. The SNP retain their 14% advantage over Labour through both of them dropping 3 points, and there’s an equal-but-opposite two pointer shift that ties the Conservatives and Lib Dems. That takes the Conservatives to a record low since the last election, and the Lib Dems to a joint best.
Again though the big swings are in Reform’s favour, though they were starting a touch higher and end a smidge lower on this side of the ballot, “merely” tying with Labour. I say “merely” because this time last year the idea Reform could tie Labour in a Scottish poll would have been laughable.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this (note that the Previous Poll figures have been re-projected for the new boundaries):
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
No surprises if you spotted that this is the worst (BBS-tracked) poll of the term for the Conservatives thus far, this spits out the worst seat tally for them too, coming perilously close to single-digit seats. The SNP remain far out in front, and although the Greens take a hit (not for lack of support, but for the proportionality being thrown) relative to their notional starting point, the two retain an overall Pro-Independence majority.
This is probably the best example so far of how much the system strains under this kind of constituency vote lead for the SNP whilst their list vote remains below a third. Note that the North East region is projected to have a Reform UK lead on the list vote (only by about 0.5% mind you), which in an “ideal” scenario would give 5 MSPs apiece for Reform and the SNP. As the SNP project to 9 constituencies though they deny one MSP to each of Reform, Labour, Conservatives and Greens.
With even bigger caveats around projections for individual seats, Reform only place 0.04% behind in Banffshire and Buchan Coast. If they did win that, the net effect would be that the Greens recover the seat they are due. Again, a great example of how when the SNP are warping proportionality like this it’s not the case that “X party wins a constituency” becomes “X party wins one more seat overall.” Central and Lothians West is also 4 SNP seats over-budget, as it were; together these two regions account for almost half of the SNP’s 18 seat overhang.
Possible Majorities
Note: these majorities relate simply to passing a vote in the Scottish Parliament. They do not imply the formation of a full coalition government.
- Traffic Light: Labour, Lib Dem and Green
- Independence Bloc: SNP, Green and Alba
- Grand Coalition: SNP and Labour
- Union Bloc: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Reform UK
The pain for Labour and the Conservatives continues at Westminster, as both are again hit with big decreases whilst Reform surges into second. Similar to the Holyrood constituency, this has the Conservatives and Lib Dems tied for vote share, at respectively the lowest and highest figures since last year’s election. To be honest, this is the kind of Reform share at which I start to wonder if they’d win the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat.
As is so often the case at the moment, almost no change here. It’s all within margin of error, and the slight downtick for Yes with increase in Don’t Knows doesn’t shift the pure Yes-No balance. Same spiel as always then: too close to call, question isn’t actually settled, foolish complacency on both sides worth packing in.
Hypotheticals
As ever, the last little bit of analysis concerns those hypothetical and more proportional voting systems that BBS likes to play about with. The use of pure FPTP at Westminster is an affront to democracy, and though Holyrood fares far better, AMS is still deeply imperfect. The examples here simply transpose the poll findings onto more proportional voting systems – the reality is that different systems would of course result in different voter behaviour.
Scandinavian Style Westminster
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