There’s little love for the SNP – so why does the party look set to win in Scotland?

Barring a last-minute surprise, the Holyrood election will probably return the Scottish National Party (SNP) to government for the fifth time in a row. The nationalists have been in office for so long that thousands of Scots who weren’t even born when the party entered office in 2007 are now going to the polls for the first time.

But just 23% of respondents think the Scottish government is doing a good job, according to the Scottish Election Study’s final pre-election Scoop poll in February. This is down from 44% immediately before the 2021 election. And according to the latest opinion polls, the party is on track to drop at least 10 percentage points of the 47.7% constituency vote share it recorded back then.

It was always going to be challenging for the SNP to sustain such high levels of support given the economic climate. As our public opinion tracking data demonstrates, it didn’t take long after 2021 for the public mood to sour as the second-order impacts of the COVID pandemic and longer-running economic woes sank in.

Issues such as inflation, a creaking health service, chronic housing shortages and high street stagnation dented voters’ faith in governing parties at both Westminster and Holyrood. The share of Scots who thought the country was heading in the right direction dropped from just over 40% in 2021 to under 20% by 2025.

Pro-independence voters, who had loyally voted SNP as a bloc since the 2014 referendum, began to point the finger at the party even before long-time first minister Nicola Sturgeon resigned.

The nationalists dropped in the opinion polls after enduring a year of scandal and two fraught changes of leadership, losing most of their Westminster MPs at the 2024 general election. This was their first popular vote loss to Labour since 2010.

Any other unpopular, long-in-the-tooth incumbent would be staring down the barrel of a decisive defeat. And the party’s vote share will undoubtedly decline. But two big factors will combine to buoy the SNP’s seat count at this election and likely propel the party back to power. First, the continued polarisation of the Scottish electorate on the question of independence. And second, an ever-more fragmented opposition.

Crossing the divide on independence

Although the salience of Scottish independence has declined since 2021, the SNP retains the support of two thirds of pro-independence voters. At the same time, the only other pro-independence party, the Scottish Greens, has withdrawn from all but a handful of constituencies.

Voters appear to be more willing to cross the constitutional divide than they did five years ago. But attitudes to independence continue to structure voting behaviour and views on the governments at Holyrood and Westminster. Enough voters still trust the SNP to “stand up for Scotland” within the union to stick with the party, even if they’re less enthusiastic on this occasion.

What’s more, the opposition is now even more divided. Both Labour and the Conservatives also look likely to lose support compared to peaks in recent elections. The Conservatives, the second-largest party in the previous parliament, are set to shed around half their vote from 2021. And Labour look likely to lose much of the ground they had made up by 2024 due to a faltering first two years in power at Westminster.

Combined, these parties and the SNP secured 91% of constituency votes in 2021 – this figure could drop to somewhere between 60% and 70% this time. Reform UK is competing with Labour for second place from a standing start, while the Liberal Democrats are also likely to advance. Voters hoping to unseat the SNP may agree on that, but little else.

When this is fed into the electoral system, with 73 of the parliament’s 129 seats decided by first-past-the-post constituencies, the SNP can afford to lose a sizeable chunk of support and live to fight another day. Its vote is evenly spread around the country, and the splintering opposition (not to mention changing constituency boundaries) make it difficult to unseat when there is no consensus challenger of the kind Labour looked like being two years ago.

There are, however, substantial risks here for the nationalists (assuming they remain in charge). Instead of running a “big tent” campaign resembling the pre-indyref years – and with a two-decade record to defend – the SNP has been forced to pursue a core vote strategy, hoping to maximise turnout of the left-leaning, socially progressive “Yes” base.

To this end, the Scottish Greens have done the party a big favour by retreating in most constituencies and will expect to be rewarded. A Swinney government may find itself with some very difficult budgetary choices in a tightening fiscal environment which are at odds with an expansionary manifesto.

And the so-called “scunner factor” at this election, with low turnout expected and Reform UK and Green gains virtually guaranteed, suggests that patience is running thin with mainstream parties.

While it’s unlikely to bottom out as quickly as backing for Keir Starmer’s Labour government, continued stagnation in living standards could see SNP support erode further. Then again, the nationalists’ superpower has always been to use the political weather to their advantage – and the wide-open 2029 UK general election could provide another such opportunity.

If the nationalists can hang on to power, analysts looking back in another 20 years might regard Swinney’s own “loveless landslide” as the most important SNP victory of them all.

Fraser McMillan receives funding from UKRI/ESRC as part of the Scottish Election Study.