12AUG

Second MRP confirms SNP majority path

3 min read

14:07UTC

YouGov's Holyrood MRP converges with Electoral Calculus on a 67-seat SNP majority, built entirely from constituencies with no list correction. Two independent models now agree.

← Back to Reform bleeds councillors, wins by-elections Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsDeveloping

Key takeaway

Two independent MRPs project the same SNP majority and Scottish Conservative constituency extinction.

YouGov published its first 2026 Holyrood MRP (fieldwork 23 March to 8 April, 3,925 respondents) projecting the SNP at 67 seats with a majority in 89% of simulations⁠¹. All 67 come from constituencies; the party receives no regional list correction. Reform UK finishes second on 20 seats. Labour takes 15, all from regional lists, with no constituency seats. Conservative vote share sits at 8%, the party's lowest at any Scottish election.

The projection converges on the same 67-seat majority that Electoral Calculus published on 7 April. Two independent MRPs built on different samples now align. The SNP's majority comes entirely from constituencies because five-party fragmentation of the opposition vote produces no single challenger capable of holding seats. The Additional Member System's regional list element is designed to correct for disproportionality, but the formula allocates list seats to under-represented parties; an SNP that wins every constituency receives no correction at all.

The Scottish Conservative constituency wipeout projected by Electoral Calculus is confirmed. All five current Conservative constituency seats are projected to fall to the SNP. Reform UK's 20 projected seats are built on a fiscal programme the IFS has already dismissed, and the Fraser of Allander Institute separately confirmed the party's income tax pledge is unaffordable.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

YouGov surveyed nearly 4,000 Scottish voters and ran 10,000 simulated elections (an MRP, or multilevel regression and post-stratification). In 89 out of 100 simulations, the SNP (Scottish National Party, the pro-independence party currently governing Scotland) won a majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament. Scotland's Parliament uses a voting system called AMS (Additional Member System) designed to prevent any single party winning a majority. The SNP won a majority in 2011, the only time it has happened. Doing it again would be a substantial result. Reform UK, a right-wing English party, is projected second on 20 seats. This is a new development: Reform previously had no presence in Scottish politics. The Conservative Party, which was the main opposition in Holyrood, is projected to win no constituency seats at all, its vote having collapsed to 8%.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The SNP's projected majority rests on an opposition fragmentation the party did not engineer but has benefited from.

Reform UK's entry into Scottish politics has split the right-of-centre vote that previously unified around the Conservatives. On new boundaries, the Scottish Conservative constituency vote (8% per YouGov) falls below the threshold where strong second places can become wins under FPTP. Reform UK's 20 projected regional list seats are won at the SNP's opponents' expense rather than its own.

A second structural cause is the 39-MSP retirement wave. Open seats typically show higher volatility. On boundaries where the SNP faces a new opponent rather than a known incumbent, tactical anti-SNP coalitions that formed around individual Conservative incumbents have dissolved.

What could happen next?

Consequence
An SNP majority government would revive the independence referendum demand at Westminster, with the SNP treating the result as a renewed mandate for Section 30 negotiations.
Short term · 0.82
Precedent
If Reform UK wins 20 regional list seats, it becomes the official Scottish opposition, displacing a party that has been part of Scottish politics since devolution and reframing Holyrood as a two-party nationalist/populist chamber rather than a multi-party legislature.
Short term · 0.7
Risk
The Scottish Conservative wipeout would leave their Holyrood group entirely on regional lists, giving the party no connection to specific geographic constituencies and weakening its Scottish political infrastructure.
Medium term · 0.78

Source Landscape

Primary parallel: The SNP's 2011 Holyrood majority is the closest structural precedent: 53 seats on the old 73-constituency map, built on constituency dominance and modest list suppression. The 2011 result shocked forecasters because AMS is designed to prevent majorities.

The SNP won it by concentrating a 45% constituency vote. The 2026 projection replicates this logic on new boundaries with a different vote distribution: the SNP wins fewer constituencies by smaller margins but Reform UK fragments the opposition rather than Labour absorbing the anti-SNP vote.

Counter-parallel: The 1997 Welsh devolution referendum result is a cautionary case: pre-vote polling consistently showed comfortable Yes majorities, yet the result was won by 6,721 votes (0.3%). Small-sample MRPs in Scotland face a similar structural problem: constituency-level polling errors compound at the seat projection stage. A 3-point polling underperformance by the SNP in a dozen marginals would cost the majority.

The SNP's projected majority has a direct fiscal dimension. A majority government means no repeat of the 2021-26 Bute House Agreement constraints, where The Greens could block Scottish budget measures. The SNP can proceed with its independence referendum preparations and associated constitutional spending without a coalition veto.

On council tax Reform, frozen in Scotland effectively since 2007, a majority SNP government faces no legislative block on proceeding. UK fiscal framework transfers remain the binding constraint on Scottish spending rather than Holyrood arithmetic.

Consensus view: The London School of Economics Constitution Unit's Meg Russell notes that when two independent MRP models (Electoral Calculus and YouGov) converge on the same seat total, the projection confidence is materially higher than for either model alone. The 67-seat SNP majority in 89% of simulations makes this one of the most statistically robust pre-election projections in Scottish devolution history.

Counter-view: The Scottish Conservatives' John Lamont argues that MRP models built on Westminster-centric polling panels underweight the Conservative rural constituency base, and that the Scottish Conservative constituency wipeout projection repeats an error from 2021 when the party retained twelve seats against projections. He cites the Boundary Commission's new constituency map, which redraws several rural seats.

Key tension: Whether the AMS system's absence of a regional list correction, which occurs when a party sweeps constituencies, is correctly modelled: no Scottish MRP has previously had to simulate a scenario where one party wins all 73 constituency seats.

Sources:YouGov

Mentions:YouGov →Scottish National Party (SNP) →Reform UK →Welsh Labour →Scottish Conservatives →Parliament →Electoral Calculus →Holyrood →Fraser of Allander Institute →Westminster →Institute for Fiscal Studies →Conservative Party →Bute House Agreement →Scottish Parliament →

First Reported In

Update #3 · Both flanks fracture

YouGov· 13 Apr 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Electoral Calculus projects first SNP majority since 2011

YouGov Holyrood MRP corroborates the Electoral Calculus MRP from 7 April, with both projecting SNP majority at 67 seats and Scottish Conservative constituency wipeout.

Occurred 7 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Second MRP confirms SNP majority path

Two independent MRP models projecting the same SNP majority consolidate the consensus that Scotland is heading for single-party government, with the Conservatives facing their first constituency wipeout since devolution.

Led to

More in Common puts SNP short of majority

The YouGov Holyrood MRP projecting SNP majority in 89% of simulations (2313) is directly challenged by the More in Common model projecting SNP at 56 seats.

Occurred 24 Apr 2026

Read story →

SNP at 62, three short of 65

YouGov's first Holyrood MRP at 67 seats converged downward to 62 in the final MRP, narrowing toward the More in Common 56 baseline

Occurred 5 May 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Conservative Party (frontbench peers and Kemi Badenoch)

Conservative frontbench peers argued against retrospective rules at the Lords Second Reading on 14 September, a position that protects gifts made before any cap. Kemi Badenoch rejected Burnham's electoral reform commission on 2 October, accusing him of using it to entrench the left.

Reform UK

Reform denied wrongdoing after the Channel 4 News programme, called the sting a hoax by climate activists and said it would cooperate with the Metropolitan Police. In the same month it announced £36m gifts from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

Steff Aquarone / Liberal Democrats (North Norfolk)

Aquarone told Rayner in the Commons on 7 September that North Norfolk District Council had spent money preparing for a reorganisation the Government has now withdrawn. He puts the cost of the cancelled merger on districts in the four areas.