Yesterday people were looking at the result of the Kirkintilloch by-election, and because there was a Reform surge and an SNP collapse, they were rather simplistically assuming there must have been a big direct swing of votes from SNP to Reform. Of course it doesn't necessarily work like that, and especially not in a low-turnout local by-election. Reform could have gained their votes mainly from unionist parties or from people who abstained last time around, while the SNP could have lost votes to Labour, the Greens and abstentions.
I've been getting asked for a while to write a blogpost about where the polls suggest Reform's Scottish votes are coming from, so this may be as good a time as any. The most recent Scottish poll was from Find Out Now, whose data tables have their limitations, so instead I've looked at the next most recent poll, which was from Survation.
How current Reform UK supporters voted on the 2021 Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
Conservatives 44%
SNP 16%
Labour 10%
Liberal Democrats 4%
So above all else it's the Tories who are taking a hammering from the Reform surge, and the Kirkintilloch result (which saw the Tories lose two-thirds of their vote share) is consistent with that. I know some people will instantly leap on the fact that Reform are taking more votes from the SNP than from Labour, but remember the baseline here is the 2021 result, when the SNP took 48% of the vote and Labour only took 22%. So pound-for-pound, Labour are losing more votes to Reform than the SNP are. Specifically, Labour have lost 7% of their 2021 vote to Reform, while the SNP have lost only 5% of theirs in the same direction.
That point can be underlined by using the 2024 general election result, when Labour were slightly ahead of the SNP, as the baseline instead.
How Reform UK supporters (ie. people planning to vote Reform in Holyrood 2026) voted in the 2024 Westminster general election:
Reform UK 42%
Labour 23%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Conservatives 7%
SNP 1%
It's hard to escape the impression here that quite a lot of voters who switched from Tory to Labour in 2024 are now switching from Labour to Reform.
Another way to get a sense of the impact of Reform on the SNP's fortunes is to look at the breakdown of the SNP's 2021 vote - ie. how those people are planning to vote next year.
How people who voted SNP on the 2021 constituency vote are planning to vote now:
SNP 71%
Labour 9%
Greens 7%
Reform UK 5%
Liberal Democrats 3%
Conservatives 3%
Alba 1%
So although Reform UK are a non-trivial problem for the SNP, they're not quite the giant monster at the window that people are imagining. Farage remains disproportionately a threat to the unionist parties.
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jkellysta@yahoo.co.ukSource: Reform's Scottish votes are coming from unionist parties to a much greater extent than from the SNP (//)