THE pro-independence camp is moving into "pinch me" territory as 2024 draws to a close.
Six months ago, the consensus among commentators was that Scottish Labour's victory at the General Election was likely to be the springboard for Anas Sarwar to become first minister after the 2026 Holyrood election.
It looked as if the closest thing to "success" that the SNP could even dream of would be to remain the largest single party by a narrow margin. Perhaps they could somehow cling on as a weakened minority government if Unionist parties were unable to agree on a coalition deal. Actually retaining the pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament seemed an unattainable goal.
And yet, Find Out Now's new poll for The National is the second in a row, hot on the heels of the recent Norstat poll, to show that pro-independence parties are on course to win a majority of seats in 2026. Find Out Now's numbers are even better than Norstat's in that they suggest the majority would be as big as the one secured in the 2021 election, when Nicola Sturgeon was at the height of her powers.
It's true that the SNP are not as strong as they were in 2021, with the seats projection showing them taking 54 seats, a drop of 10. That would be offset by gains for the Greens and to a lesser extent for Alba, but in practice that would still be enough to make a pro-independence government a near certainty.
Although there has been some chatter about the possibility of the Greens installing Labour in power, the numbers simply wouldn't add up for that. Even with the Greens projected to hit an all-time high of 15 seats, they and Labour in combination would have only 34 seats, just over half of what is required for a majority. To reach or get close to the magic number of 65, support from both the Conservatives and Reform UK would be essential. It's impossible to imagine the Greens agreeing to such an arrangement – and that would leave a fifth successive SNP-led government as the only game in town.
There are health warnings that need to be applied to these numbers, though. With polls pointing to a pro-independence majority in 2026 being such a recent phenomenon, they need to be treated with caution until there is an established pattern of several polls all showing more or less the same thing. So far, we have only two.
The Find Out Now numbers are particularly difficult to place into proper context because they come from a polling firm that has not previously measured party political voting intentions in Scotland on a regular basis. It's known that Find Out Now consistently show a higher Yes vote on the independence question than most other firms do, so it can't be ruled out that there is a similar “house effect” which is producing better figures for the SNP and the Greens.
But intuitively the trend shown by both Find Out Now and Norstat makes perfect sense. Labour have continued to drift downwards in Britain-wide polls in recent weeks, due in part to Keir Starmer's ever-deepening unpopularity. There is no particular reason why that pattern wouldn't be replicated in Scotland, or why it wouldn't benefit pro-independence parties.
It's also extremely hard to see how the damage for Labour can be repaired in time for the 2026 election – by which point Starmer may actually have moved even deeper into mid-term unpopularity. It's possible that Labour at Westminster might yet panic and attempt a hurried “reset” under a new prime minister, but failing that, the election appears to be the SNP's to lose.
A breakthrough for Reform UK is still on the cards, with the projection from the Find Out Now poll showing them on 10 Holyrood seats. But whereas a few months ago the Reform UK surge looked like the killer ingredient putting a pro-independence majority out of reach, it now seems to be far more of a problem for the Unionist side.
By taking around one-tenth of the vote on the constituency ballot, Reform are effectively contributing to the scale of the SNP's lead over both Labour and the Tories, which under the electoral system generates a "winner's bonus" for the SNP in terms of seats.
A more fragmented Unionist vote also makes cobbling together a non-SNP coalition government a more complicated process, even assuming the pro-indy parties fall short of a majority. It suddenly looks like a very long road for Anas Sarwar.
