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!
Poll Details and Context
Can you believe that polling day is tomorrow? To cap out the campaign, we’ve got a couple of final polls. In this entry we’ll be looking at the last in the series but regular partners STV News (link to original writeup) and Ipsos (link to tables). I think it’s fair to say I’m also one of the regular partners on this front, as I shall once again be on Scotland Tonight to give my analysis, so don’t forget to tune in!
The previous Ipsos covered the 26th – 31st of March 2026. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election). At this late stage I do not have time to go through Westminster and Independence figures, so apologies for skipping over those.
Note: You may also notice some changes in the BBS website layout with a new theme. Hopefully all recent and relevant pieces have migrated over to the new theme alright, but if you spot anything odd, please drop me either an email or a message on Bluesky to let me know, including whether you encountered the issue on the desktop or mobile version of the website.
Regional Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
Margin of error warning!
As ever, we need to be very cautious about reading too much into individual polls and shifts that are within margin of error, but I would describe this poll as having three clear winners and losers. The winners are all those who have seen gains in this poll, with Reform continuing a recent poll trend which does seem to suggest they will place ahead of Labour on the day. The Greens also continue to poll strongly, albeit Ipsos are very much on their upper end, and the Lib Dems also add another double-digit share to their set.
On the other hand, this is poor for the current big three. The SNP never poll that well on this vote at the moment, so we can wait until the next question for the really bad bit for them. A loss of support for the Conservatives puts this as their second worst poll in the average at that point in time, and this is a joint worst for Labour. Remember, Holyrood is meant to be reasonably proportional: if Labour are down on 2021 on this vote, they are down in seats, it’s really as simple as that.
Constituency Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
Margin of error warning!
We have some much bigger movements on the constituency vote, the first of which is even bigger than on the surface. As the last Ipsos poll was in March it still had the Greens nationwide, but this time they’ve only featured where they are standing, so they wave goodbye to 5% of the vote. What makes this so bad for the SNP is that they are losing support versus the last poll even with that being the case. Ipsos were a high outlier in the last poll and my model’s redistribution of the Green vote had them even higher, on 42%. So their 35% share here is… not great!
This has now been a pattern across a few polls and so it’s possible that what’s happening here is those Green votes are plugging a leak in SNP support. It nonetheless still keeps them 15 points ahead of Labour, who have a 5% gain on the wrong vote. Yes, this could flip a handful more close constituencies than my model allows for if distributed right. But again, we go back to “the system is meant to be proportional, and their proportional vote is down”: there is mathematically no way, if this poll was correct, for them to gain on 2021. They can at least take comfort from being ahead of Reform here, albeit within the margin of error, but this is still a dire poll for Labour.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
What amounts in my model to a 7% cut for the SNP’s constituency share has consequences, losing 7 of those in total versus the last poll. Things are so bad for the SNP in Edinburgh and Lothians East that they even get a list seat there, which negates one of the losses. Nonetheless, they are still by far the largest party, and could easily claim a Pro-Independence majority with the strengthened Greens. My model hands them four constituencies as well, which would be a real shock result but I would take with a big pile of salt.
Reform end up with a clear lead over Labour in seats and would thus be first up at FMQs, though not the “Official Opposition” as no such post exists at Holyrood. It’d be absolute calamity for the Conservatives in single digits and dropping out of two regions entirely, and naturally dire for Labour as well. The Lib Dems though would be much happier, this being their second best seat projection in the current set of polls; as ever, I doubt the reality of a Glasgow seat for them.
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
- Grand Coalition: SNP and Labour
- Union Bloc: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Reform UK
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