As the 2026 Scottish Parliament election approaches, keep up to date with all the latest polling and analysis on Ballot Box Scotland’s Holyrood Hub page!
The big beast of Scottish politics for nearly two full decades now, by rights the SNP should be approaching this election with real trepidation. Nicola Sturgeon had been a titanic figure, and the chaos that ensued when she stood aside was breathtaking. A promising, next generation leader made several astonishing mistakes, not least of which was (and this falls on advisors too) believing in the myth of the Green tactical vote and throwing them out of his government. If Humza Yousaf had the sense to end the Bute House Agreement gently, perhaps via a joint press conference, he could still be First Minister today.
Instead, the SNP go into this election led by the longest serving parliamentarian in Scotland. John Swinney is an undoubtedly experienced and talented operator, but he had his shot at leadership in the early 00’s, and he was all but set to retire at this election. A consummate party man, he was drafted in to steady the ship and help stave off the worst of the losses. That didn’t do anything to forestall a brutal result in the 2024 UK General Election, where the scale of Labour revival meant the SNP losing even harder than expected.
18 months ago, you’d have expected Swinney would be headed into this election preparing to hand Anas Sarwar the keys to Bute House, and SNP leadership to… somebody, unclear who, especially with his Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes standing down. Instead, the complete and utter implosion of Labour has all but cemented his tenancy on Charlotte Square. He might even win a completely unearned and undue majority.
Regardless, don’t let anyone away with claiming what’s coming is a vote of confidence in the SNP. Swinney is about to partly echo Starmer, winning with an unremarkable vote share because his opponents did themselves in.
Holyrood History
Note: For consistency, all current polling average references and projections in the Party Profiles series are based on the last data point by the 1st of April 2026, as it was at time of publication *of the start of the series*. That point did change after the series started, and after I had already pre-loaded the data for every party, but due to the work involved in making very minor tweaks to account for changes, it’s easier to leave as-was.
SNP Vote Share at Scottish Parliament Elections
Labour MP George Robertson infamously stated that Devolution would “kill the SNP stone dead”. The very first Holyrood election seemed to disprove that, as the SNP scored a better result than they’d seen since their fleeting breakthrough in the 1974 UK elections. Contrary also to the silly idea that the voting system was set up to stop the SNP, it in fact massively boosted them by ensuring every part of Scotland now had several SNP MSPs. However 2003’s famous Rainbow Parliament came largely at the SNP’s expense, in the last time their vote would slump across both ballots until, well… now.
Their narrow 2007 victory didn’t even score a third of the vote on either ballot, but they went stratospheric in 2011, with a share that genuinely merited (under the rules of AMS, an imperfectly proportional system) the majority they won. At the two subsequent elections they saw their votes diverge: increasing on the constituency ballot, decreasing on the list. A large part of that is down the rarity of Green constituency candidacies, and since the two parties draw from similar slices of the electorate, that has advantaged the SNP in constituencies.
That’s set to continue into this election. On the face of it, the SNP are on track to lose a quarter of their support (or just over) on both ballots. Importantly, that has been an extremely consistent figure for nearly two years now. Individual polls have varied a little, but on average the SNP have been around 35% on the constituency and 30% on the list the whole time. That’s why I said earlier this isn’t a vote of confidence in the SNP. 18 months ago these same shares had them second to Labour. In any case, add around 4% to the SNP’s constituency figure to account for the lack of Greens in most constituencies.
SNP Seats Won at Scottish Parliament Elections
Even allowing for their substantial loss of seats in 2003, the story of the SNP’s representation at Holyrood has been gradually dispensing with representation via the proportional lists. They have gained constituencies at every election to date, and may just about manage to do so again this year. Crucially, the turning point where constituencies became the bulk of their representation didn’t hit until 2011. If you’re the kind of SNP supporter who seethes with fury at there being a proportional element to the system, despite PR being very much party policy, you absolutely must understand: they potentially never enter government at all without it.
Speaking of 2011, note the list contingent still remained substantial. That’s immediately a clue that the SNP’s majority was “earned”: you do not get proportional seats unless you are proportionally due them. They did not break the system, but merely landed on exactly the level of support needed to get a majority within the system’s own rules.
Right now however, the SNP are projected to win zero lists for the first time ever. Unfortunately I expect this will turbocharge the democratically illiterate complaints about list MSPs, when in fact this time the SNP are on track to egregiously break the system. They are consistently around 20 seats ahead of what they are fairly due, all delivered due to Labour’s collapse and Reform UK splitting the anti-SNP vote in constituencies. An MSP getting back in on 35% who won 45% last time is not, in fact, being handed a resounding personal mandate that list MSPs do not have.
SNP List Vote Distribution by Region in 2021 (Notional)
One of the things that has defined the SNP, and has been why their highs have been so incredible and their lows so shatteringly bad, is their relatively even spread of support across the country. Five of the eight regions were around 1% off from their national support in 2021. Of the three that weren’t, only one is notably weaker: Edinburgh and Lothians East. This reflects the much more diverse and fractured electorate in the capital, which is typical of European capital cities. By contrast, Central and Lothians West and Glasgow represent the real heartlands of the post-IndyRef SNP, the very same areas where Labour’s votes were traditionally weighed, not counted.
The expectation that this pattern will largely hold is also why my model doesn’t give them any list seats. Even in Edinburgh, which could be the region with the fewest SNP constituency wins, they probably won’t have enough votes to replace any losses. That’s why the constituency vote is more important than ever for the SNP in this election. In both 2016 and 2021 they may have been no longer due a majority, but they were only 1 and 4 MSPs (respectively) above AMS perfection. Government was assured regardless. This time, an alternative government could be possible were it not for their excess.
Key Areas
For brevity, I’ve picked out five of the most important places for the SNP in this election. Not being included in this list doesn’t meant a constituency or region isn’t important, or that the SNP aren’t in with a chance of winning it. Since there are five other major parties, I’ve picked one seat apiece where they are squaring off against the SNP. You can find more detail about other interesting seats in the Ballot Box Battlegrounds series, and information about every constituency in region via the Regional Preview series.
Edinburgh Northern (Constituency)
Notional 2021 Constituency Vote
Note: the Green vote is based solely on where they stood in 2021 and does not reflect a “true” share for this constituency.
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
The key thing about each of the constituencies in this section is that they are closely fought marginals without which the SNP’s chances of a majority basically fade to nothing. Edinburgh Northern is consistently SNP in the BBS model, but the thing about models based on national polling is you can’t make them account for local factors. Local factors here are “the Edinburgh Lib Dems have turned their formidable election machine on a seat they won the most votes at council level in 2022.”
That history of past Lib Dem success in the area is quite important. Voters can and do vote differently at different elections, but it’s a lot easier to get someone to vote for you at one level if they’ve already done so at another. The SNP cannot afford to lose this one, but they also cannot afford to pile too much resource here when there are other marginals across this same region. The Lib Dems themselves know how crucial this seat is and have even been talking up how it may be the seat that denies the SNP a majority. Don’t understimate how appealing that prospect might be to people who would otherwise vote Labour or Conservative.
Edinburgh Central (Constituency)
Notional 2021 Constituency Vote
Note: the Green vote is based solely on where they stood in 2021 and does not reflect a “true” share for this constituency.
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
The Edinburgh Central of 2026 is not the same seat as 2021, and the Conservatives were knocked out of contention by boundary changes even if their own dire polling hadn’t killed their chances. On paper this is an SNP-Labour contest, but the Greens are making a strong play for what is (on the list vote) the strongest constituency that’s ever existed for them. I know that some, ahem, other sources are very unhappy at the suggestion this seat could go Green, but Angus Robertson is clearly and obviously panicked about this seat.
That’s presumably because he’s getting the same feedback on the doorsteps I’ve now heard from three different political parties: things are looking very, very good for the Greens. I’m at risk of having to revise my prediction for this constituency from “sure, my model says the Greens will win this, but I’m not sure they have the ground game to do it” to “actually, it’s going to be a bad night for the Greens if they fall short here”.
Dumfriesshire (Constituency)
2021 Constituency Vote
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
Dumfriesshire isn’t the easiest of the current Conservative seats for the SNP to gain, but that’s what makes it the most crucial. In my model, it’s not uncommon for them to take all of Eastwood, Aberdeenshire West, and Galloway and West Dumfries. Those seats are therefore effectively already factored in for the SNP’s progress towards a majority. Dumfriesshire however is even more knife edge, and without out, their path to a majority narrows enormously.
Alongside Orkney, this is one of just two parts of Scotland that has never had SNP constituency representation at either Westminster or Holyrood. That makes it even more impressive if they were to manage to snatch it from the Conservatives this year.
Banffshire and Buchan Coast (Constituency)
Notional 2021 Constituency Vote
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
The best shot at a Reform constituency in my view, given the SNP cannot afford to lose any of their current constituencies if they want a majority, holding this is crucial. They may be aided if the Conservatives push too hard to try and gain this and lead to a split right vote, similar to that which made the UK equivalent seat the only SNP gain in 2024. Of all the seats listed in this entry, this is also the one where it matters least the Greens aren’t standing: this was their worst list vote anywhere in 2021, and thus they’d have drawn very little support from the SNP overall. That’s not to say it couldn’t make a difference if margins were as fine as those projected above!
Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse (Constituency)
2021 Constituency Vote
2025 By-Election Vote
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
When Labour won this constituency in the by-election last year, they clearly wanted it to be presented as a step on the route to Bute House. In reality, their win was extremely fragile. This is the third easiest constituency for them to gain from the SNP in the whole of Scotland, and they only managed it by 2% at a by-election, at a time they were doing much better than now, and when the Greens and SSP were on the ballot drawing a wee bit of support away from the SNP.
Regaining it is vital to John Swinney’s hopes of a majority. If they fail to do so, it almost certainly means they’ve done badly enough to lose East Lothian Coast and Lammermuirs to Labour as well, which would put Labour on at least 4 constituencies. Since the Lib Dems are nigh-on guaranteed another 5, it’s goodbye majority.
What to Watch for in 2026
Note: Obviously, your personal perception of a good or bad result will depend on how much you like a given party. For the purposes of this piece, good and bad relate to how an impartial observer might view the result, taking into account other elections and the general situation facing that party. They are not a commentary on whether such results would be good or bad for the country.
Good Result
As set out above, the SNP are in the odd situation where they are going to have a bad election in terms of vote share, but a good one in terms of seats. Clearly then what stands out as a remarkably good result for the SNP then is a majority. They were only one seat shy in 2021 (notionally two on the new boundaries), so that’s also the number they need for an overall gain in their numbers.
It’d be even better for them to go beyond the bare 65, because they’ve lost MSPs each of the past three terms. To go from a majority to minority as a result of one MSP turning out to be a bampot or, and we should all hope this doesn’t happen, because one of them dies is not a comfortable possibility to leave open.
Bad Result
Taking into account the weight of expectation around their constituency share, I reckon a bad result for the SNP is if they underperform against models and end up with fewer than 60 MSPs. A really bad result would entail losing the overall Pro-Independence majority, but that is admittedly very hard to see happening at the moment: the excellent and much more statistically rigorous Devolved Elections mark out the likelihood of such a majority as 99.99%.
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