More than half of tactical votes in the upcoming Holyrood election on May 7 will aim to defeat the SNP, a polling expert reveals. The emergence of Reform UK in Scottish politics disrupts traditional patterns of tactical voting along constitutional lines.
Tactical Voting on the Rise
Professor Ailsa Henderson of the Scottish Election Study highlights a surge in tactical voting since 1999, reaching 20 percent in 2021. Recent February polling shows 15 percent of voters plan to cast tactical ballots.
In 2021, over 83 percent of these votes opposed the SNP, a trend that persists. Professor Henderson states: “We know tactical voting has increased in every election since 1999, and in 2021 it was 20 per cent. The Scottish Election Study asked voters this question in February, and 15 per cent said they would be casting a tactical ballot. We also know that most tactical voting is anti-SNP. Over 83 per cent of tactical votes in 2021 were anti-SNP. It does look like that will remain the bulk of tactical voting with over half being anti-SNP, but a fifth say they will cast a tactical ballot against Reform.”
Reform UK Shifts Dynamics
Tactical voting typically occurs within constitutional blocs, where pro-independence voters back other independence parties and pro-union voters support rivals to the SNP. However, Reform UK’s entry challenges this.
Professor Henderson explains: “One thing we know about tactical voting is that it happens within constitutional blocs – pro-independence voters will cast a vote for another pro-independence party, and pro-union voters are shuffling across pro-union parties to cast their ballot. We know that in 2024 the result was that the Scottish electorate arranged itself into a series of extreme two-party contests, where in more than half of the constituencies the third placed party had less than 10 per cent of the vote. The electorate reduced the non-competitive parties to single digit support to put support behind the party best placed to defeat the SNP. We know Reform could fundamentally change that within constitutional bloc tactical voting.”
Norstat polling in two-party scenarios shows two-thirds of Labour voters and three-quarters of Lib Dem voters prefer the SNP over Reform UK. Professor Henderson adds: “Norstat has some really interesting polling where they offered people a series of two-party contests and said it was a fight between two parties, and we saw that when it was a contest between the SNP and Reform UK, 2⁄3 of Labour voters and 3⁄4 of Lib Dem voters would rather go to the SNP than Reform. So the arrival of Reform is causing a breakdown of the constitutional bloc tactical voting, so there is a very different picture from 2021.”
