As the 2026 Scottish Parliament approaches, keep up to date with all the latest polling and analysis on Ballot Box Scotland’s Holyrood Hub page!
Poll Details and Context
With just 9 weeks left to go until the election, we’re starting to get into the crunch part of the Holyrood campaign. We’ve heard from a few other pollsters this year, but hadn’t heard from Ipsos (link to tables) yet, so it was about time for their usual partnership with STV News (link to original writeup). As is absolutely typical in Scotland, we actually had two polls (the other from Survation) across almost identical fieldwork dates, yet throwing up somewhat different scenarios, a real reminder why we shouldn’t take individual polls as gospel.
Note the fieldwork dates: this took place before the Gorton and Denton by-election which saw the (English and Welsh) Greens win their first ever Westminster by-election. We’ve since seen some immediate impacts of that on GB-wide polling, including a YouGov with the Greens in second. Whilst we shouldn’t over-estimate the potential effects of a single by-election, in England, for a different party, on Scottish politics, it could still have an impact up here, in terms of suggesting Labour are in trouble, that voting Green can be worthwhile, and indeed it can be a way to stick it to Reform.
The previous Ipsos covered the 27th of November – 3rd of December 2025. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Note that I have recently been made aware that if you primarily consume these pieces through emails to your inbox, the charts don’t actually show up. I therefore recommend you click through to the website!
Regional Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
Margin of error alert!
Regular readers may notice I’m now in the habit of pointing out when things are within the margin of error. To a certain degree that’s always going to be the case this close to an election because there isn’t time for big changes, but it’s still important to remember!
In this case, the SNP’s two point dip takes them down to the lower end of their current polling trend, allowing Labour to close in on them a little. They are still the only party in the 20’s though, even if they’re barely scraping over a quarter of the vote.
It was unlikely the Greens would maintain their record figure from the last poll, but this is still a very good share for them and one that bodes well. Interestingly, Ipsos tried a little bit of an experiment with how they asked about the Greens for this vote, with half the sample being prompted for them and the other half having to select the “other” option then pick Green on the next page. This made no statistically meaningful difference to results, so whatever is driving Ipsos’ high Green trend, it’s not that.
Where things get close to exceeding the margin of error are the 3% swings for Reform (down) and Lib Dems (up). For the former, that puts them on their lowest share of any poll in the BBS tracker since April last year, whereas for the Lib Dems it lifts them back out of a low not seen since August 2024.Â
Constituency Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
Margin of error alert!
Movement for everybody on this question, and actually for Labour it’s just a smidge above the usual margin of error. I’m intrigued by the fact they’re up four points here because the general trend lately has been towards reducing support, or at least flatlining. To record a statistically-significant increase is something of an outlier, and we’ll need to see if it’s a wider trend or a simple house effect.
It doesn’t matter here anyway, because the SNP are still 16% ahead, meaning they’d still be favoured in the overwhelming majority of constituencies. It does however put Labour ahead of Reform on both votes, which they’ll welcome. The Greens have a slightly larger decline on this vote, which softens the blow oh-so-slightly for the Conservatives falling into single digits for the first time this term: a devastating verdict on the party that would be.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
Some lovely round figures here, with all of the historic Westminster parties on a multiple of ten (or just on ten, for the Lib Dems and Conservatives) and summing up to 100, leaving the remaining 29 split between the Greens and Reform. Despite the relatively narrow lead on the list, the SNP’s proportionality warping constituency advantage gives them a whopping 22 seats more than their ideal share, for a total three times that of Labour.
This is nonetheless the first time I’ve projected Labour to be above the teens in seats since last June’s Ipsos, and the first time I’ve had Reform below 15 seats since April last year. The Lib Dems will also welcome going back into “serious gain” territory, after the last poll came out at just five seats. What’s happening on the Pro-Union side of the aisle is however largely meaningless in this poll, as with a weighty 16 MSPs, the Greens easily combine with the SNP’s 60 for a Pro-Independence majority.
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
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2024
Margin of error alert!
I’ve kept the margin alert here, but to a certain degree this is the part of the poll it’s least necessary. Just like on the Holyrood Constituency, Labour are up a just about statistically meaningful 4%. That’s still 12% behind the SNP, but that would translate to a relatively better constituency haul than at Holyrood, as it’s approaching the 10% danger point for the SNP where seats would fall away from them like dominoes due to having a more evenly distributed vote share than their competitors.
Small changes for the Conservatives and Lib Dems bring them to a tie, on what is a joint-worst share for the Conservatives since the election. Lastly, and again pressing up against the edge of the margin of error, are three point dips for both Reform and the Greens.Â
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2014
No margin of error warning here because actually, although it’s again only barely outwith that margin, there’s a big dip for Yes here. Ipsos have been notably favourable to Independence support for a long time, so it’s perhaps a concern for that camp how close this one is. Of course, it’s still a tiny lead albeit within a statistical tie, and it’s still better than 2014, but it’s made Ipsos the most uncertain pollster in the current mix, with a pretty hefty 13% undecided. You’d expect somewhat more of those to swing for the status quo than change in reality.
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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