SNP to fall short of overall majority at Holyrood election, poll finds
The Norstat survey for The Sunday Times suggested the Nationalists would secure 57 MSPs
The SNP is on course to comfortably win the Holyrood election but fall well short of an overall majority, a new poll has found.
The Norstat survey for The Sunday Times suggested the Nationalists would secure 57 MSPs, eight short of a majority.
Reform UK would become the largest opposition party, with 19 seats, while Labour and the Conservatives would both have 16 MSPs.
The Greens would win 11 seats and the Liberal Democrats 10, according to seat projections by the pollster Sir John Curtice.
The poll of 1,002 Scots of voting age, which was carried out between Monday and Thursday last week, found there would still be a pro-independence majority at Holyrood between the SNP and the Greens.
However, First Minister John Swinney has repeatedly emphasised the need for the SNP to secure an overall majority - as it did in 2011 - to "break the logjam" and help secure a second independence referendum.
The survey suggests Scottish voters have not been impressed with any of the party’s campaigns, with 32 per cent saying they are only following the election campaign a little or not at all.
There is also widespread scepticism over the SNP's flagship pledge to cap the price of essential supermarket groceries. Fewer than one in ten believe this will definitely be delivered, compared with more than a quarter who think it will definitely not happen.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir John said: “The SNP enters the final few days of the Holyrood election campaign with some clear advantages.
"There is majority support for independence. The party is reckoned to have fought the best campaign. It has the least unpopular leader.
“Yet it seems none of this will be sufficient to ensure that Swinney will achieve his objective of winning an overall SNP majority at Holyrood.
"Indeed, if anything that prospect now seems further away than at the beginning of the campaign.”
The poll, the first by Norstat to take into account the fact the Greens are standing in only six seats, found the SNP is on 36 per cent of the vote in constituencies, up 2 percentage points on last month.
Labour, Reform and the Lib Dems are all up 1 point, to 20 per cent, 16 per cent and 11 per cent support respectively. The Scottish Tories are up 3 points to 14 per cent.
On the regional list vote, the SNP is on 28 per cent, a fall of 2 points, Labour and Reform are on 17 per cent, the Tories on 14 per cent, the Greens 12 per cent and the Lib Dems 10 per cent.
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