Scottish election: What does polling tell us about the result?

EVERY poll of the 2021 Scottish Parliament campaign is in. What do they tell us, and what remains up in the air?

This election has been a strange one. The core issue, of whether Scotland should have another independence referendum, has been practically settled since before the campaign began.

Even the least positive poll for the pro-independence camp, a Savanta ComRes poll finding the SNP constituency vote on just 42%, predicts a pro-independence majority – as has every poll since 2018.

And so, barring a wild shock tomorrow, the political battleground of the next Parliament is already set. Holyrood will legislate for a referendum, and it will be for Westminster to choose whether to take the issue to the courts.

READ MORE: Latest Holyrood election poll predicts SNP will win a majority

What is not clear from the polls is how strong the political hands of each side will be.

Of the five "call polls" (polls intended to predict the outcome on the day), three have the SNP winning 50% or more of the constituency vote and one has them winning 49%. That should (though it is not certain) be enough for an outright majority.

One poll, the Savanta ComRes poll, has them winning 42%. While this poll is an outlier, outliers can be correct – you need only ask America’s Democratic Party just how right they can be.

So, the most we can say about an SNP majority is that it has a 50/50 chance of occurring. This is the key "knife-edge" of the campaign. Should the SNP win a majority, the democratic argument for an independence referendum will be politically unanswerable, even if it may still be legally contestable.

Second place also remains too close to call. This might not seem of much concern to independence supporters, but if Scottish Labour take second place it makes Anas Sarwar the ascendant leader of Scotland’s Unionist opposition.

Why does that matter? The Yes camp would much rather face off against the toxic Conservative Party in a future referendum than a Scottish Labour Party that retains, perhaps, enough residual goodwill in Scotland for voters to at least listen to its arguments. There is no doubt that an Anas Sarwar-led opposition to independence would be more sympathetic than one led by Douglas Ross (or a Tory successor).

Yet such an outcome looks unlikely. Despite Sarwar’s strong personal ratings, his party is set to finish third in the constituency vote in three of five call polls, and level in one, while finishing third in the – arguably more important – list vote in every call poll. Scottish Labour is set for its worst-ever Holyrood performance, despite having its most popular leader since at least 2007.

A third key question is the extent to which Scotland sets the tone for a continental flourishing of Green parties later this year. While the Scottish Greens are nowhere near the competitive position of Germany’s Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, they are set for their best Holyrood performance and, in three of five call polls, a double-digit vote share on the list.

The Greens could win 10 or more seats. Even if they fall slightly short of that, this election may mark a significant step forward in the emergence of a larger block of left-wing, environmentally focused, pro-independence voters that could carry the party to even greater success in future.

Lastly, the polls remain unclear on whether Alex Salmond’s Alba Party will win seats. The five call polls place Alba on 2-3% of the vote, and the last Panelbase poll (having consistently put Alba on 6% of the list vote) placed their support at 4%.

In 1999, Tommy Sheridan won a Holyrood list seat on the back of 7.2% of the vote in Glasgow, despite his Scottish Socialist Party winning just 2% nationally. In the same election, the Scottish Greens won a seat with 3.6% of the national list vote. So, it is perfectly possible that Alba will win a seat.

Yet many parties have won more than that without winning a single seat.

It all comes down to the distribution of Alba’s vote, and the polls cannot reliably tell us what that distribution will be. Received wisdom seems to have it that they will do better in the North East, or Highlands & Islands, than elsewhere. Perhaps they will, in which case one of (or both of) Alex Salmond and Kirk Torrance could find themselves in Holyrood.

But for Alba to win more than that will require a result that the polls simply do not suggest. And, given the good chance the SNP will win a majority, and the virtual guarantee of an SNP-Green majority – with the Greens being Nicola Sturgeon’s preferred partner on constitutional issues – an Alba contingent could find itself politically irrelevant.

READ MORE: The most reliable prediction for this election is that predictions will be wrong

The polls can only tell us one thing for (almost) certain: there will be a pro-independence majority in the new Scottish Parliament. That majority will legislate for a referendum. But the strength of its political hand is up in the air.

If pro-independence Scots want a new referendum – if they want a choice between Brexit Britain and independence in Europe – they cannot leave it to chance. The polls are clear on this also: turnout will be everything, so get out and vote.