As campaign season begins, Ipsos polling suggests Scots are less certain of their vote and less impressed by party leaders, setting up a volatile contest, says Rachel Ormston.

If they haven’t already, voters across Scotland will soon begin to see the familiar array of leaflets on their doormat from local candidates and parties, exhorting them to vote for them in the Holyrood election on 7th May. Commentators have already begun to throw around words like ‘historic’ about the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. But what are voters in Scotland thinking ahead of the start of formal campaigning later this month? New polling from Ipsos in Scotland, released this week, sheds light on both how people are minded to vote at this stage, and how much room there is for movement before May 7.

Back in May 2021, the SNP were backed by almost half of all voters (48%) on their constituency vote and 40% on the regional list vote. Given the challenges the party has experienced this term – two changes of leader, painful and public investigations into party finances, the breakdown of the power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens, to name but three – it is perhaps unsurprising their support is now substantially lower. However, they still top the poll, with 36% likely voters saying they will support an SNP constituency candidate and 26% planning to support the party on their regional list vote. 

In 2021, the competition for second place was firmly between the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour Party, each of whom eventually secured 22% of the constituency vote. However, this year, Reform UK, who are fielding Scottish Parliament constituency candidates for the first time, are vying with Scottish Labour and the Scottish Greens to become the second biggest party at Holyrood. 20% of likely voters say they will vote Labour on their constituency vote, compared with 16% for Reform. The Conservatives are in fifth place on 9%, behind the Liberal Democrats on 10%. And on the regional list, Labour are on 19%, the Greens 16%, and Reform UK on 14%, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats further behind, on 11% and 10% respectively.

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National polls estimate vote share, not seats. However, with that caveat in mind, modelling from Ballot Box Scotland estimates that, were this pattern replicated on May 7, it could translate into 60 seats for the SNP (short of the outright majority John Swinney has stated would provide the basis for demanding the UK Government agree to another referendum on independence), 20 for Labour, 16 for the Scottish Greens, and 13 for Reform, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on 10 each.

The presence of a sizeable number of Reform UK MSPs, a much-weakened Conservative cohort, and a boost for both the Greens and Liberal Democrats will clearly make for a somewhat different parliament. While the SNP look likely to remain the largest party, they would need to work with others to get bills through, while Reform are likely to disrupt the cross-party consensus on issues like net zero. 

However, as the well-worn phrase goes, a week is a long time in politics, and two months is an age. Much can change once campaigning gets into full swing. Sandwiches can be eaten in public. Politicians can give televised speeches without umbrellas. And so on.

And Ipsos’s poll suggests that voters may be more open to changing their minds in 2026 than they were at a similar point in 2021. In our most recent poll, 40% of voters who expressed a view on who they might vote for said they might still change their minds on their constituency vote. This is higher than in February 2021, when just 31% said they might shift. Younger voters (under 35) and graduates are relatively more likely to say they may still change their vote.

Moreover, some parties’ support looks substantially ‘softer’ than others in this regard. Support for Reform UK looks firmest – 72% of those inclined to voter Reform said they had ‘definitely’ decided, as did 64% of those inclined to vote SNP. But only 56% of those inclined to vote Labour and 52% of those inclined to vote Conservative were similarly certain. So while Labour may be pleased to have jumped ahead of Reform UK in this poll, having trailed them in a number of other recent polls, their support looks to be considerably shakier.

The Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats look best placed to benefit from potential vote switching. Labour’s main risk is losing votes to other left- and centre-left parties. Among Labour supporters who say they may still change their mind, 31% say they would consider voting Liberal Democrat, followed by 24% who would consider the SNP and 20% the Green Party. Just 5% of those currently inclined to vote Labour say they may switch to Reform. Meanwhile, although SNP support looks firmer than Labour’s, the Greens may yet scoop up some of their more tentative supporters. 43% of voters currently inclined to vote SNP could switch to the Scottish Greens, followed by 23% who would consider voting Labour instead.

This level of volatility and openness to other options, combined with a potential for tactical voting and a willingness to vote for different parties on the constituency and list votes, means all parties will need to bring their A-game to the campaign. The ability of key spokespeople – especially party leaders – to engage and win over the public is often crucial in this period.

However, the Scottish public looks considerably less favourably disposed towards all the main party leaders in Scotland ahead of the 2026 election compared with 2021. In April 2021, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had a net positive rating of +29, Anas Sarwar was on +26, and both the Liberal Democrat and Green leaders had net positive ratings, with only the Conservatives’ Douglas Ross bucking the trend on -23 (but still, less negative than Russell Findlay’s current rating). 

Now, every one of the Scottish party leaders receives a ‘net negative’ rating from the Scottish public, meaning that more are dissatisfied than satisfied with their performance. John Swinney is the least poorly rated, on -16, with Anas Sarwar on -29, and Russell Findlay and Malcolm Offord on -31 and -32 respectively (though 1 in 3 do not know enough to rate Findlay or Offord, so their ratings may change if their visibility improves once campaigning starts in earnest).  

While Scotland’s political parties have everything to play for ahead of this election, then, they also face an incredibly challenging context for engaging with a general public who are both less sure than they were about which party to vote for, and, at this point, not particularly impressed by the leadership on offer.

Rachel Ormston is a Research Director at Ipsos Scotland

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