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Second MRP confirms SNP majority path

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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.

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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 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.

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 (ID:2102). 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 →Prima →Electoral Calculus →Holyrood →Fraser of Allander Institute →Westminster →Welsh Conservatives →Institute for Fiscal Studies →

First Reported In

Update #3 · Both flanks fracture

YouGov· 13 Apr 2026

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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

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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.

Different Perspectives

Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission confirmed Christopher Harborne's £9m Q3 2025 donation as the largest from a living individual in UK party finance records, noting compliance with PPERA 2000 permissibility rules; its enforcement function extends to permissibility, not scale. No party has formally challenged the declarations, leaving structural concentration of party finance without a statutory trigger for the current parliament.

Welsh Labour

Welsh Labour enters the Senedd election projected to fall from 29 seats to 12 under a closed-list PR system the party introduced, with First Minister Eluned Morgan polling below the constituency entry threshold. The party faces becoming third-largest in the chamber it redesigned, a devolution-era first.

Scottish National Party

The SNP is projected on 67 Holyrood seats, two above the majority threshold, on the first election under redrawn boundaries; John Swinney has stated a majority constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum. A confirmed majority would reopen the constitutional question dormant since 2014 with no current Westminster route to a Section 30 order.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

MHCLG reversed the postponement of 30 elections under Divisional Court pressure, committed £63m to affected LGR areas, paid approximately £100,000 in Reform UK's legal costs, and has not published the legal advice justifying either decision. Robert Jenrick's Hansard account that prior advice already judged postponement unlawful has not been addressed or refuted by the department.

HM Government / UK-wide parties

The government frames the Representation of the People Bill as a proportionate foreign-influence response implemented at unusual speed. Reform UK holds its polling position while staying silent on crypto donation quantum. The Liberal Democrats frame the English local elections as a binary contest against Reform.

Scottish parties (SNP, Conservatives, Labour)

The SNP enters the regulated campaign as projected majority government through opposition fragmentation, not a vote surge. The Scottish Conservatives defend a manifesto the IFS dismisses and face zero constituency seats. Labour is the only party projected to retain any constituency presence beyond the SNP.