Should Scotland be an independent country? (Norstat / Sunday Times, 27th-30th May 2025)
Yes 54% (+4)
No 46% (-4)
Although it's the independence numbers that leap out as truly spectacular, in the current circumstances it's the party political voting intentions that the SNP leadership will be far more interested in, and they'll be enormously relieved by them. There's been a peculiar string of Scottish subsample results from GB-wide polls putting Reform either ahead of the SNP or level with them, and although the sample sizes were small, there was an uneasy feeling growing that a full-scale Scottish poll might show something very similar, and right on the eve of the Hamilton by-election too. Thankfully that hasn't proved to be the case at all.
Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:
SNP 33% (-2)
Labour 19% (+1)
Reform UK 18% (+4)
Conservatives 13% (-2)
Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:
SNP 28% (-2)
Labour 18% (+1)
Reform UK 16% (+3)
Conservatives 15% (-)
The percentages above are incomplete, ie. they're missing the Lib Dems and the Greens, because as far as I can see those parties' vote shares are not mentioned anywhere in the Sunday Times write-up. However, the seats projection is: SNP 54, Labour 20, Reform UK 18, Conservatives 17, Liberal Democrats 11, Greens 9. Unusually by the standards of recent polls, that's not quite a pro-independence majority - the SNP and Greens between them have 63 seats, which is two short of the target of 65. However, all that the SNP will care about right now is that they have a significant national lead over both Labour and Reform, which I would have thought means on paper that they ought to be in the lead in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. I'm not sure there's anything strange enough about the constituency that would suggest that Reform will be massively bucking national trends there, notwithstanding the Larkhall factor. However, as we all know, parliamentary by-elections are profoundly weird bubble environments in which pretty much anything can happen.
Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election:
SNP 31% (-1)
Reform UK 21% (+4)
Labour 20% (+2)
Conservatives 12% (-5)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-3)
Seats projection: SNP 30, Labour 16, Liberal Democrats 6, Conservatives 5
A lot of the interest about this poll may focus on a hypothetical supplementary question about how people would vote in an independence referendum if Nigel Farage becomes Prime Minister. The results are: Yes 58%, No 42%. That's actually not especially meaningful, because people are terrible at answering hypothetical questions - the results are strikingly similar to how people said they would vote on independence if Brexit happened, and yet when the real thing did happen, there was no real breakthrough for Yes at all. However, that's not to say that Farage as Prime Minister wouldn't boost Yes support. It would very much depend on what he actually did in office. If he rolled back or abolished devolution, for example, I could imagine Yes surging to way higher than 58%.
Net approval ratings of leading politicians:
John Swinney (SNP): -7
Anas Sarwar (Labour): -25
Nigel Farage (Reform UK): -26
Russell Findlay (Conservatives): -32
Keir Starmer (Labour): -39
Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -44
Donald Trump (US Republicans): -51
People will look at the above numbers superficially and assume that they mean that Nigel Farage is nowhere near as unpopular in Scotland as he's cracked up to be, but in a sense that's missing the point. Approval ratings like these can tell you how many people dislike a particular leader, but not how deeply those people hate him. That was always Mrs Thatcher's problem in Scotland.
Source: Massive boost for the SNP prior to the Hamilton by-election as they retain a substantial lead in full-scale Scottish poll - and support for independence has surged to astonishing 54% (//)