First Past the Post is to blame if SNP win unrepresentative majority
The SNP are on track to win an historic fifth term in government in next month's Scottish Parliament election. Recent seat projections put John Swinney comfortably on course to return as First Minister with slightly less than or even a majority of seats. That's despite a measurable fall in SNP support since 2021, with Scotland's Proportional Representation voting system not working as intended.
YouGov’s first-ever MRP poll for a Scottish Parliament election is the latest such example. Unlike standard polls, which sample and weight voters to measure overall voting intentions, MRPs model traditional polling with local constituency characteristics to estimate results seat by seat.
This poll estimates that the SNP could win 67 of the Scottish Parliament's 129 seats, giving them a majority (67 being YouGov’s central projection in a window of 63 to 69 seats). However, modelled voting intention data for the poll puts the party on 41% of the constituency vote (Holyrood's First Past the Post seats) and 32% of the list vote (which provides MSPs elected via eight multi-member regional lists, accounting for the number of constituency seats won by each party in each region to ensure a proportional element).
The projection also places insurgent Reform on 20 seats, Labour on 15 (down from 22), the Greens on 11 (slightly up), the Lib Dems on an impressive nine (up from four after years of decline) and the Conservatives on a humiliating seven seats.
Other recent polls tell a similar story, with projections putting the SNP anywhere between 50-something and 69 seats on vote shares that don't reflect that level of support. In polling models where the SNP don't win a majority, the party is still massively over represented. This week's Survation poll for Ballot Box Scotland puts the SNP on 57 seats (44% of all those available) on just 35% of the constituency vote and 29% of the list vote.
Scotland's Additional Member System has long been championed by electoral reform activists as a superior system to the unrepresentative results provided by First Past the Post alone in Westminster. So why is the system creaking at the seams now?
Simply put, this projected disproportionality is being caused by a deep flaw with the system being exposed by changes in voting behaviour. This structural flaw is that the majority of seats up for grabs are First Past the Post seats (73 of 129), meaning that all the disadvantages of that system are in the driving seat, causing unrepresentative results. With the number of list seats fixed at 56, they can only go so far to limit any mismatch between seats and votes. And in the case of the YouGov MRP, the SNP are estimated to win 66 constituency seats. That's an overall majority on constituencies alone.
And that's where voting behaviour comes in. SNP support has fallen but that’s also the case for Labour and the Conservatives. Reform’s surge from nowhere also gives the SNP an advantage of being ahead of four competitive, but not dominant, unionist parties in most seats, despite the SNP’s fall in support.
They are also aided by the lack of Scottish Green candidates in all but six seats, giving the SNP a good chance of winning the vast majority of First Past the Post contests by winning over most independence supporters in the face of a divided opposition.
This YouGov poll reflects a wider trend of polls in recent weeks suggesting a fall in SNP support alongside them winning an unrepresentative share of seats. As ever, polls are snapshots of particular points in time, not predictions. Yet while anything can happen on the campaign trail to shift the dial, the SNP look set to do very well this May despite a fall in support.
The Additional Member System has other flaws too. The d’Hondt calculation for list seats has a bias in favour of larger parties and proportionality is determined regionally, distorting national proportionality. Lists are also closed meaning parties have much ore power than voters in determining which individual candidates get elected.
But this poll ultimately puts Scotland on track for its least representative election ever due to the dominant First Past the Post ballot. Any result that comes close to this on the day must be a wake up call for MSPs to ensure seats match votes in elections going forward.
A number of alternatives are available such as modifying the Additional Member System to improve proportionality and voter choice, replacing the system with the Single Transferable Vote (already used in Scottish local government with great success), which if designed well would improve proportionality and empower voters, or adopting something completely different like an open list system with levelling seats.
The Scottish Parliament was purposely designed to be proportional. That commitment must be maintained to ensure seats match votes in Scotland.
Richard Wood is a better democracy campaigner and founder of Upgrade Holyrood. He was previously an Electoral Reform Society board member.
