The Scottish National Party faces the most challenging election it has contested at Holyrood in over two decades as polling ahead of 7 May suggests its previous dominance has been substantially eroded. While the party remains the frontrunner to be the largest force in the parliament, the scale of its likely majority — or whether it achieves one at all — is far less certain than in either 2016 or 2021.
The main challenges come from different directions. Labour is fighting to reassert itself as the main progressive alternative in Scotland, bolstered by the party's performance in Westminster constituencies during the 2024 general election, when it made significant gains north of the border. However, the party's declining national polling and the controversies surrounding the Starmer government's first year have complicated its Scottish messaging.
Reform UK's Scottish operation, led by Malcolm Offord, presents a different kind of threat — principally in the regional list vote, where the proportional element of the additional member system allows smaller parties to gain seats even without winning individual constituencies. Reform's Scottish polling trails its English figures by around ten percentage points, but that is still sufficient to make it competitive for several regional list seats, potentially at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives.
The independence question continues to define much of the Scottish debate, though the SNP's handling of the issue since the 2023 Shona Robison leadership transition has attracted criticism from within the nationalist movement. Some pro-independence voters have migrated to the Scottish Greens, whose support for independence is perceived as less equivocal, while others have disengaged from electoral politics altogether.
For Westminster observers, the Holyrood results will be read as a proxy indicator of whether the SNP can continue to hold Scottish Labour in check at general elections, a factor that remains critical to the arithmetic of any future hung parliament at Westminster.
