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
We’re three polls in one day deep on Ballot Box Scotland: classic eve of poll shenanigans! For the last one I will be covering (even if someone has a very late arrival there is no way I have the time left in the day), we’ve got an MRP from Survation (link to original writeup).
This is another via the “Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification” approach, rather than just bog-standard opinion polling. This means it also comes with Survation’s own estimate for results in each constituency and region. I remain sceptical that for all their cleverness MRPs are, actually, any more informative or accurate than more simple projection methods such as those I use on BBS, though the last couple of MRPs of the campaign have been less eyebrow raising. In any case, we can nonetheless use their vote shares to drive a normal projection and compare.
As this is an MRP poll, I’m not treating it as comparable to previous Survation efforts. Changes that follow are therefore exclusively versus 2021.
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Regional Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
We can’t compare this directly with the previous Survation, but what really stands out here is the statistical three-way tie between Reform, Labour and the Greens. In particular, the Greens being on 15% with Survation is a real surprise given they have tended to be one of if not their absolute weakest pollster recently: overall, the Greens must be absolutely revelling in today’s polling. For a party that regularly underperforms its polling, having really strong stuff the day before the election is a great sign.
This is also what passes for a good poll for the Conservatives, the second best share for them in the current average. It’s still a shattering loss of support versus 2021, but it has been worse everywhere else bar last week’s Norstat. On the flip side, the Lib Dems won’t enjoy this one at all, which comes out at easily their worst share lately. To make matters worse for the Lib Dems, I’d say I’m more inclined to believe 8% than I am 10 or 11%, at least if their constituency polling of 10-11% is correct!
Constituency Vote
Change vs Last Poll
Change vs 2021
This caps off the day’s polling with another strong figure for the SNP, tied with YouGov. Here that puts the SNP 20 points clear of Labour, who are on an unremarkable share, far from what they’d need to be in contention to gain many constituencies. It’s also pretty middling relative to other recent polls for all of the other parties, meaning there’s nothing much else to say about it really.
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
Seat-wise this spits out equally good SNP and Green results as the YouGov MRP, which feeds into the sense that a Pro-Independence majority is a near certainty. This is also the best of today’s bunch for the Conservatives, given the other two were in single digits, but it’s still dire overall.
It’s relatively weak for Reform, who tie with Labour in seats rather than take the lead they have elsewhere, and also a really bad one for the Lib Dems. Although I think the vote shares could be close to correct for them, I think that will pair with a slightly different constituency outcome on the day that should give the Lib Dems seats in the North East and West regions.
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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