From Opinium with sub-polls of around 160 Scots 18+years of age, on 29 and 13 (in brackets) November, 31 and 18 October (in brackets) support is (was):
- Con 15% (11, 14, 18)
- Lab 22% (27, 26, 25)
- LD 9% (14, 7, 11)
- SNP 31% (21, 29, 28)
- Reform 14% (11, 12, 18)
- Green 6% (5, 6, 8)
This suggests ongoing crises for Scottish Labour and Cons, LD and Greens with steady modest recovery of the SNP and growing support for Reform eating away at Cons and Labour.
Polls a few days earlier by More in Common and Find our Now tell a similar, if worse story for Labour and slightly better one for the Cons.
All six polls put the Greens in danger of serious loss post their split with the SNP.
Though all six polls have the advantage, for the SNP and Greens, of not having the sample adjusted in line with the 2014 Referendum result, they also do not include the 16-17 year-old group known to favour them.
What might this mean in terms of seats? I’m no psephologist and the complexities of the regional vote outcomes are beyond me but the Reform vote, I suspect, might weaken the Con and Lab votes enough to help the SNP to hold, perhaps win more constituencies as, the biggest party in a first-past-the-post system, despite a significantly reduced vote on 2021’s 47.7%.
Sources:
https://www.opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/VI-2024-11-27-Observer-Tables.xlsx
https://www.opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/VI-2024-11-13-Observer-Tables.xlsx
https://opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/VI-2024-10-30-Observer-Tables.xlsx
https://www.opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/VI-2024-10-16-Observer-Tables-v02.xlsx
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
For the first time ever, two people that I know have mentioned Reform in a positive manner. Eek! Help ma boab!
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Reform will be a huge threat. Even if Musk does not follow through on gifting $100M to Farage they are well funded and manipulate social media to produce support where others can’t seem to. They’re also more than happy to flout rules and with a maximum fine if a paltry £20k available as punishment they’ll simply see that as a cost of doing business.
Reform holding seats in Holyrood is a threat to devolution, they have no interest in making the Scottish parliament work.
My only hope is that they will stand candidates as inept as those that UKIP used to and be incapable of following through on threats.
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“Reform holding seats in Holyrood is a threat to devolution, they have no interest in making the Scottish parliament work”
I agree.
They are toxic and if they win seats at Holyrood then they will be just another source for the BBC to seek a negative opinion from in respect to the Scottish government (which hopefully will still be the SNP) and also against independence for Scotland.
As to Elon Musk well once more we see a wealthy donor thinking that they can buy influence in a country by donating to a pseudo political party whose focus is not on the people who elect them but instead is on their own self interest and those who financially back them.
Is this the kind of so called democracy some people, as in Voters, want for their future ?
Where as voters these people will vote for a party who are funded by the wealthy, and so as voters they never ask why is it that these very wealthy people are funding these parties?
As in what’s in it for them using a lot of their money to get a specific party elected ?
The irony of Reform UK, an English nationalist party, being a threat to the Tories and Labour party at Holyrood is that if anything , as a threat, it could strengthen the vote for the SNP as more decent people may choose to not vote for these so called traditional British Nationalist parties like Labour, Tory & Lib Dems and instead vote for the SNP.
We all know exactly who, as voters, it is within Scotland who will vote for Reform UK.
So the more that the useless media here and elsewhere in the UK emphasise the threat Reform UK are in perhaps gaining seats in 2026 , then the more that idea will be repelled by people who hate Farage and all that he stands for.
(Which is basically because Farage only cares about himself and also those who have financially backed his various pseudo ‘political’ parties, but who, as parties, are actually not political but protest parties , as in constantly protesting against all that is good and best for the people of a country, but not good or best for the financial interests of those who back his, Farage’s, various fake parties).
I guess this current support for someone like Farage would have been yet another thing people like Blair McDougall would have denied as a possibility in the future, just as he ridiculed the notion of Boris Johnson ever eventually being the Tory leader in the future, when he, McDougall, was a member of a panel in a BBC debate programme in 2014.
McDougall stated re BJ as a possible future PM “I’ve heard this argument from Nationalists that Boris Johnson’s going to be leader of the Conservatives. Well the only way that will happen is if David Cameron loses the next election so yes you need to work out which scare story is it. Is it going to be a Conservative victory at the next GE or is it going to be Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservatives.
The BBC’s James Cook who was the host for this debate then said to McDougall:
“It’s inconceivable to you that Boris Johnson might eventually lead the conservatives”?
McDougall replied “I can’t imagine that a serious political party would elect Boris Johnson for leader but that’s for them to decide”
So two things that McDougall said were merely “Scare stories” by “Nationalists”.
“Cameron did indeed win the next GE in 2015 so that was not a scare story but instead was an accurate prediction by the SNP.
Also not a scare story was the fact that the Tories did eventually choose Boris Johnson as a candidate for the Tory leadership and then he, Johnson, won that vote and became their leader and the new UK PM (so yet another accurate prediction by the SNP).
So one wonders would McDougall in 2014 have also ridiculed the notion that a political party led by someone like Nigel Farage would be a threat at WM and too at Holyrood to his Labour party in the future.
As to EU , well McDougall said in 2013, that “There’s one thing that’s absolutely certain – if the nationalists get a Yes vote, Scotland will be leaving the UK and so we’ll be leaving the European Union.”
Well he was half right as we , Scotland, did leave the EU but not via a YES vote in 2014 but via a NO vote as it was his UK that forced Scotland to leave the EU in 2016 as it was a UK wide vote , we Scotland voted to remain in the EU in 2016 but were ignored (yet again) within their and his, McDougall’s, UK.
Of course McDougall was eventually rewarded for his lying in 2014 , as in 2024 he was elected in a Scottish constituency as a Labour MP in the GE, so one wonders what his current (lack of) wisdom will be on the fortunes of the real Nationalists, English ones, as in the Reform UK party , will be.
The same kind of Nationalists as McDougall’s Labour party, who also , like Reform UK, pretend to be British Patriots but are just English Nationalists trying to ensure their nation controls all other nations within the UK via their English parliament at WM who also (over) control all of the UK.
Seems to me some people, as in voters in Scotland, should have listened more to the right people in 2014 then we could have avoided all of this pain and mess which the Labour party and especially people like Blair McDougall (aka the wrong people) have to take a H of a lot of responsibility for.
More people in Scotland need to stop voting for all of the British (English) Nationalists parties and also start seriously considering the only option for their future, as people in Scotland, is to both support and then vote for Scottish independence or still suffer the consequences via English nationalist parties as a part of the UK.
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