24 Days to Go: Both flanks fracture

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 simulations ¹. 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.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies published a cross-party summary of all four major Scottish parties' election manifestos with a single headline: "Lack of credibility unites manifesto offering of three biggest Scottish parties" ¹. The verdict builds on the IFS's earlier individual party assessments , hardening the criticism from party-specific to collective.

Scottish Labour proposes £3.2 billion in resource spending and £1.2 billion in capital spending that significantly exceeds unallocated Scottish Government funding, with no comprehensive costings provided. The SNP projects £1.6 billion for the Scottish NHS from UK-wide spending increases, but the IFS says this is overstated because some UK increases are funded by income tax rises that do not apply in Scotland. The Scottish Conservatives underestimate their NHS "double lock" pledge cost by at least £600 million, more than a quarter of the policy's true price. Reform UK's income tax cut would cost £2-3.7 billion per year with no self-funding evidence. The Fraser of Allander Institute separately confirmed Reform's Scottish manifesto is unaffordable ².

No previous Holyrood election in 27 years of devolution that every major party contesting a Holyrood election has been simultaneously dismissed by the country's leading fiscal watchdog. When all options are equally discredited on spending, the election pivots to non-fiscal ground. The SNP's independence commitment is the strongest such offer on the table; no other party has an equivalent differentiator that the IFS cannot adjudicate.

Zack Polanski launched the Green Party's local election campaign on 10 April in Deptford, south-east London, explicitly targeting Labour's flagship councils: Islington, Lambeth, Hackney and Lewisham ¹. PollCheck projects possible Green control in Hastings and Norwich. The party now holds five MPs after the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Deptford sits in Lewisham, one of the four named targets. The choice of venue signals that the Green assault is not peripheral; it opens in the borough Labour considers home ground. The housing platform underpins the strategy: Labour's 2022 majorities in these inner-London councils were built on a voter base that has shifted as rents have risen. After Gorton and Denton proved the Greens could win in the north , this launch opens a simultaneous London front, compressing Labour's defensive perimeter.

If the Hastings or Norwich projections hold, The Greens would run English councils outside Brighton for the first time. That would give the party a governing track record to carry into the 2028 general election cycle, moving the argument from "protest vote" to "proven alternative."

The YouGov Senedd MRP projects the Wales Green Party at 10 seats, which would be the party's first ever Senedd representation . Combined with Plaid Cymru's projected 43 seats, a Plaid-Green coalition reaches 53, four seats above the 49-seat majority threshold ¹. The alternative, a Plaid-Labour combination, yields 55 seats with a six-seat cushion.

Anthony Slaughter, the Wales Green leader, told ITV News the party is "ready to be kingmakers" ². The New Statesman examined the coalition arithmetic on 1 April, noting that both parties have consulted Scottish counterparts about the SNP-Scottish Greens cooperation template ³. Green policy demands for any deal include rent freezes, council tax replacement, lower bus fares, and public control of water. The Scottish Greens' withdrawal from governance when principles were compromised is the precedent both parties reference.

Friction exists. Green candidate Tessa Marshall called Plaid "not a left-wing party", triggering pushback about vote-splitting that could let Reform through. The Wales result will test whether closed-list PR produces coalitions where FPTP produces ungovernable councils. On the same night, England votes under first past the post, Scotland under AMS, and Wales under its brand-new proportional system. Three electoral systems processing the same five-party fragmentation will produce visibly different outcomes by breakfast on 8 May.

PollCheck projects Reform UK to take control of Essex (projected 57 of 78 seats), Norfolk, and Suffolk county councils ¹. If those numbers hold, Reform would run three of England's largest local authorities, responsible for adult social care, children's services, highways and waste collection.

All three counties are subject to the LGR unitary decisions announced by MHCLG on 25 March . Reform councillors elected on 7 May will sit on transitional authorities with limited lifespans, governing councils that are being restructured into new unitary bodies. The governance challenge is therefore double: running councils that require institutional continuity through a complex transition, while a separate question about whether the party can retain the councillors it elects hangs over the result.

The PollCheck model carries explicit caveats about ward-level uncertainty, and county council projections depend on uniform national swing assumptions that may not hold in individual divisions. Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk voted strongly for Leave in 2016 and for Reform in 2024; the demographic fit is real. Whether the party's organisational infrastructure matches its electoral appeal is the test that begins on 8 May.

HuffPost UK reported that 65 of the 677 Reform UK councillors elected in 2025 have quit, defected, or been expelled ¹. HOPE not hate described the party's candidate vetting as "nil" ². Separately, HuffPost reported that Reform's membership team cold-called Sam Webber, a sitting Bromley councillor for a rival party, five days before nominations closed, asking him to stand as a paper candidate ³. Webber's response: "Is Reform just randomly calling up people across the country and asking them to stand for election?"

Reform's membership team reached beyond its own base to fill ballot lines, cold-calling a councillor who already held office for a rival party. Its candidate pipeline cannot match the seats its polling demands. In Wales, at least six Senedd candidates quit by 7 April , including former UKIP MS Caroline Jones, who cited racism allegations. Three left the Bridgend constituency alone. Under closed-list PR, each departure permanently reduces the party's seat ceiling in that constituency.

If the 2025 attrition rate repeats at county council scale, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk face governance instability within months of the election. County councils manage budgets exceeding £1 billion and employ thousands of staff. Winning a seat requires a name on a ballot; chairing a scrutiny committee requires a councillor who stays.

The Electoral Commission confirmed it cannot verify Reform UK's Cryptocurrency donations because the party has not provided wallet addresses ¹. Reform's processor, Radom Pay, operates from Poland outside Financial Conduct Authority regulation, leaving the Commission with no mechanism to compel disclosure.

The unverifiable crypto donations sit alongside Christopher Harborne's £12 million in documented donations and Reform's record Q4 2025 campaign spending, which outpaced Labour 2.7 times . The Representation of the People Bill bans Cryptocurrency donations retrospectively, but Royal Assent cannot precede 7 May. The regulatory gap the Bill is designed to close will therefore remain open for the entirety of the 2026 elections.

The combination is a transparency deficit with no short-term remedy: a party leading national polls, funded at record levels, processing donations through a jurisdiction the UK regulator cannot reach, with the corrective legislation timed to arrive after the votes have been counted.

Democracy Club entered candidates for 3,073 of 3,074 areas (99.97%), up from 86% on 10 April . The volunteer-driven ingestion closed the remaining 14 percentage points in three days following the completion of English and Welsh Statement of Persons Nominated publication.

The completed database locks in the candidate picture for the 7 May elections. Cross-referencing against Reform UK's spending records and candidate attrition patterns across nations is now viable for the first time. The single missing area is a rounding artefact, not a data gap.

The Representation of the People Bill passed Second Reading on 2 March and entered Commons committee on 18 March . Committee reports are due by 23 April. Report Stage and Third Reading follow; the parliamentary timetable rules out Royal Assent before 7 May ¹.

The Bill imposes a retrospective ban on cryptocurrency donations and caps overseas elector donations. Both provisions land hardest on Reform UK, whose unverifiable crypto donations and Harborne's record contributions are the most visible examples of the gaps the Bill addresses. But the legislative timetable means the ban does not apply to the 2026 elections. The regulatory gap persists through polling day and beyond.

The SNP manifesto launch is scheduled for 16 April at Edinburgh Park, with independence as the lead commitment ¹. The party enters the launch with two independent MRPs projecting a majority , all major opponents' fiscal plans dismissed by the IFS, and 39 MSPs having retired at dissolution .

Independence as the lead commitment is rational when the fiscal credibility argument has been cleared from the table. No opponent can outbid the SNP on spending credibility because none has passed the IFS test. The constitutional offer becomes the differentiator by default, not by design.

Welsh Labour launched its Senedd manifesto on 30 March with a £4 billion NHS investment programme, £2 bus fares, 100,000 new homes, and an income tax freeze ¹. The pledges compete directly with Plaid Cymru's free childcare and ten surgical hubs, launched from Newport a month earlier .

The YouGov Senedd MRP projects a Plaid-Labour coalition at a comfortable margin above the majority threshold, four more than the Plaid-Green alternative. Welsh Labour's manifesto therefore functions as a coalition offer as much as an electoral one: the party is projected out of first place, and its programme must appeal to Plaid's negotiators as much as to voters. The Wales Governance Centre thesis suggests the Welsh/Left bloc is consolidating behind Plaid, not Labour. If that consolidation continues to polling day, the £4 billion NHS pledge becomes a bargaining chip rather than a governing mandate.

The Electoral Commission set the voter registration deadline for the 7 May elections at 20 April, with a Voter Authority Certificate (photo ID) application deadline of 28 April. The Commission is targeting young voters, students and recent movers.

The 20 April deadline falls seven days from this briefing. The demographic the Commission is targeting, under-30s and recent movers, overlaps with the cohort most likely to favour the Greens, whose rapidly expanded membership base under Polanski skews young. Democracy Club's near-complete candidate database means registration figures can be cross-referenced against candidate-level data for the first time. A post-deadline registration pattern showing high uptake among that group would be the first empirical signal of whether the YouGov Green-Labour parity translates to actual ballots. The photo ID requirement adds a second barrier: voters who miss the 28 April Voter Authority Certificate deadline cannot vote even if they are registered.