For only our second poll since the summer’s general election, occasional partners Survation (link to tables) and Scotland in Union are back with a new Holyrood poll. Given they don’t appear to have asked the Westminster question (perhaps oddly, given SiU’s former Chief Executive now sits in that parliament) and continue to ask a non-standard Independence question, and the fact I’m swamped by by-election previews, this is a relatively short and sweet analysis.
The previous Survation covered the 21st – 25th of June 2024. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Regional Vote
The short summary of this poll is that it’s bad for the big parties, and good for the small parties (except Alba). The most eye catching figure here is that the Labour vote is down a staggering 6% versus the last poll; as I noted though, Survation have often had a bit of a history of highballing Labour. I think that was a clear outlier and this is more of a return to the kinds of shares other pollsters have found, rather than a savage blow for Labour. Both the SNP and Conservatives are also suffering chunky decreases here, and the latter had better brace for the following phrase to occur a few times: worst poll of the term so far.
It’s much rosier for the Greens and Lib Dems, who both squeak into double digits. For the Greens especially that’s a big improvement on a (joint) worst poll of the term last time. The other big item here is Reform UK placing only a point behind those two established parties, though I’d assume they’d have been on roughly similar support had they been prompted last time around. That may account for a large part of the decrease for the Conservatives and, yes, Labour. Alba meanwhile are completely unchanged and nowhere near seats, as is usual for all pollsters bar Panelbase.
Constituency Vote
There’s a similarly huge chunk out of the Labour share on this vote, which means that despite a decline of their own the SNP squeak a (statistically meaningless) single-point lead. Again, the Conservatives slip to their worst share of the term (jointly, for this vote), but they aren’t alone on this front: it’s also the worst the SNP have polled for the constituency ballot in this session.
As with the list vote, the Lib Dems and Greens are up, and Reform UK record a very good share. It won’t affect the model too much given the state of the SNP and Conservatives, but Reform UK’s stated intention to contest constituencies widely is one of the things I’ll need to revisit as the 2026 election approaches.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
Obviously, relative to the last poll Labour end up losing a lot of seats, but it still leaves them with nearly twice as many as they won in 2022, placing one seat ahead of the SNP. The Conservatives are on another joint-worst in terms of their seat share, putting them pretty much on a par with the Lib Dems and Greens, and even Reform UK aren’t too far behind. If polling like this continues, it’s not impossible that there may be a four-way scrap for third place at the election.
One big caveat for this seat projection, which you may have seen me issue previously: I don’t buy the idea of Lib Dems in Glasgow and Central regions. That is effectively an artefact of modelling, as they can’t double their national share without my model thinking that’s going to give them seats everywhere. However, we’ve just had an election earlier this year where the Lib Dems got around 10% of the national vote, and they were well short of the share they’d need to secure MSPs in those two regions. What I could see instead however is an additional Highland constituency, if they can carry their Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire success at Westminster over to Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch.
In terms of possible majorities (of the votes in parliament – again, let me hammer this home, not necessarily a full-scale coalition government), this one is a fair bit less messy than the Panelbase shortly earlier. Obviously, the Pro-Union camp is miles out ahead of the Pro-Independence side, at 77 to 52, but a majority can be formed from that side of the divide without any need to rely on Reform UK, the three mainstream parties tallying up to 68 seats. In addition, where it is unappealing to work with the Conservatives, there’s a bare majority of bang on 65 here for the Traffic Light arrangement between Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens.
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
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.
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