SNP members are now voting for the next leader of the SNP. Following a tough interrogation by Sky News’ Political Editor, Beth Rigby last night, tonight the contenders will debate each other in front of a live audience on BBC1 Scotland. The polls suggest there is everything to play for, at least so far as […]The post An Uncertain Contest: Polling on the SNP Leadership Election appeared...

Scottish Labour meet in Edinburgh this weekend in better heart than for a long time. The party outpolled the Conservatives in last May’s local elections, the first time it had done so in a Scotland-wide ballot since 2016. Almost every poll conducted since the beginning of last year has suggested that the party has now […]The post Could Labour Profit From Nicola Sturgeon’s Resignation?...

Scotland is currently preparing to enjoy Hogmanay, one of the distinctive highlights of the country’s cultural and social calendar. We thought we would mark the occasion by reprising a piece of ScotCen research unveiled during the year that looked at attitudes towards another distinctive feature of Scottish life and culture – the Gaelic language. The […]The post Does the Future of...

The Supreme Court judgement that the Scottish Parliament does not have the legal authority to hold a referendum on independence was widely welcomed by unionist politicians. However, so far at least, it seems to have undermined rather than underpinned the foundations of public support for the Union. Four polls of people’s vote intentions in a […]The post A Tale of Two Halves? The Supreme...

One remarkable development during the COVID-19 pandemic was a marked if temporary increase in the level of support for independence. Every published opinion poll conducted between June 2020 and January 2021 had Yes ahead of No when people were asked how they would vote in response to the question that appeared on the referendum ballot […]The post The COVID-19 Pandemic and Support for...

The latest Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) report on attitudes to government is published today. Given the ongoing coronavirus restrictions in place when the 2021/22 survey was conducted (October 2021 to March 2022), it could not be conducted as previously by face-to-face interviews in participants’ homes. Instead all interviews were conducted over the telephone. This difference […]The...

Today Nicola Sturgeon is releasing the latest and most important instalment in the Scottish Government’s series of white papers intended to make the case for independence. The latest publication will address the economy and currency. This is an important development in the independence debate. Attitudes towards the economy played a key role in voters’ decisions […]The post Attitudes...

Nicola Sturgeon speaks to her party’s annual conference in Aberdeen today facing a rather different political landscape than the one in place a few weeks ago. Four polls conducted in the run up to the conference indicate that the sharp swing from Conservative to Labour recorded in the British polls following the ‘fiscal event’ of […]The post How Much of a Challenge Do Labour Pose to...

Sir John Curtice, Ian Montagu, and Alex Scholes reflect on the constitutional events of the past few weeks, and consider what the accession of a new monarch might mean for the independence debate in Scotland. They examine how views on the monarchy might be structured both north and south of the Border, discuss the current […]The post Podcast: Independence, the monarchy, and constitutional...

Sir John Curtice, Ian Montagu, and Alex Scholes reflect on the constitutional events of the past few weeks, and consider what the accession of a new monarch might mean for the independence debate in Scotland. They examine how views on the monarchy might be structured both north and south of the Border, discuss the current pattern of opinion towards how an independent Scotland should be governed,...

Nicola Sturgeon has a fall-back plan. In her statement in June on how she proposed to set about trying to hold a second independence referendum in the face of opposition from Westminster, she indicated that, if she were unable to hold a legal referendum in October 2023, she would contest the next UK general election […]The post How The Constitutional Question Has Become More Divisive...

Queen Elizabeth sadly passed away last Thursday at Balmoral. Because she died in Scotland, her body will to be taken today to rest in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, before being transported in London to lie in state at Westminster Hall, after which her funeral will take place next Monday. This choreography is a reminder that […]The post The Monarchy and The Union: A Symbiotic...

Just twelve months after last year’s Holyrood election, Scotland goes to the polls again this week. This time the ballot is for all 1,226 seats on Scotland’s 32 councils. The electoral system, however, is very different. The local elections will be held using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation that was first […]The post Back to the Ballot Box:...

It has not been an easy winter for the Scottish Conservatives, whose conference takes place in Aberdeen today and tomorrow. The spring might not prove any easier either. The party reacted nervously to the ‘partygate’ row that engulfed the Prime Minister before and after Christmas. Most immediately it led to a call from its leader, […]The post Can The Scottish Conservatives Escape Boris...

Being a junior partner in government can be a painful and difficult experience. Just ask the Liberal Democrats, who still have to recover from the fallout from their decision in 2010 to enter into a coalition with the Conservatives at Westminster. Yet, so far at least, the decision of the Scottish Greens, who meet in […]The post A Natural Fit? The Greens in Government appeared first on What...

One of the signs of spring north of the border is the advent of the Scottish party conference season. The pandemic, of course, disrupted all of that, but today sees the opening of the first of three in-person Scottish party conferences, the first such clutch of gatherings since lockdown restrictions were initially introduced almost exactly […]The post Scottish Labour – Challenges and...

Voters’ evaluations of the economic consequences of independence played a central role in the choice they made in the 2014 independence referendum. In their final poll conducted before polling day, YouGov found that no less than 98% of those who said the country would be worse off if Scotland became independent were backing No, while […]The post How Voters View the Economics of...

The SNP meet (virtually) again this weekend for their second conference in three months. But have the polls changed significantly since the party’s previous conference in September, just before the seventh anniversary of the 2014 independence referendum? There is little sign of any erosion of the party’s dominance of vote intentions. Three polls of vote […]The post Runes from the...

Today’s British Social Attitudes report contains two chapters of particular relevance to the subjects covered by this website. The first is a chapter  by Chris Deeming of Strathclyde University that compares attitudes in Scotland towards aspects of social justice and inequality with those in England on the one hand and those in the three Nordic […]The post Questions of Values and...

Sir John Curtice, Ian Montagu, and Alex Scholes take a look at what the latest public opinion data tells us about voter’s attitudes towards the deal between the SNP and the Green party at Holyrood. They also examine whether the balance of support for independence has shifted during the summer, assess the potential for the substantive arguments on both sides of the constitutional debate to sway...