BREAKING: New poll debunks Unionist claims that Holyrood delivered a pro-Union majority

Our new poll completely destroys claims that Holyrood party votes can be counted as Pro-union votes.

In the face of growing support for a second referendum on Scottish independence, desperate unionist politicians and commentators have been scrambling for a justification for their continuing anti-democratic stance.

The argument they are grasping for is that, although May's election returned a record pro-independence majority of 73 SNP and Green MSPs, the four largest pro-Union parties collectively received more constituency votes than the SNP and Greens.

The problem with that argument is that it requires all votes for pro-Union parties to be treated as if they were automatically votes against Scottish independence. However, our poll finds that large swathes of Unionist party voters actually support Scottish independence and calls for a second independence referendum.

New Norstat polling for Believe in Scotland completely destroys those simplistic and ill-informed unionist claims. Among voters who backed one of the four principal pro-Union parties with their Holyrood constituency vote in May, support for independence sits at

• 33% among Labour voters, 

• 30% among Reform voters, 

• 21% among Liberal Democrat voters

• 17% among Conservative voter

The official constituency total votes cast were 440,708 votes for Labour, 361,994 for Reform, 271,740 for the Conservatives and 261,408 for the Liberal Democrats.

Applying the Norstat percentages to those actual vote totals suggests that 355,000 people who voted for one of those four parties in May supported Scottish independence.

Breaking that down, roughly 144,000 Labour voters, 108,000 Reform voters, 55,000 Liberal Democrat voters and 47,000 Conservative voters would vote Yes in a future independence referendum. Note: numbers subject to rounding.

In a nutshell - claims that more people voted for unionist parties, meaning that there is no mandate for a second independence referendum, are completely bogus.

Although some SNP and Green supporters would not necessarily vote Yes, it's a much smaller effect, and the polling suggests (unsurprisingly) that 52% of voters in the Holyrood election support Scottish independence.

Despite the SNP's partially successful attempt to make the election largely about independence, people choose political parties and candidates based on a huge range of issues. Only a referendum asks a specific binary constitutional question.

The Norstat poll contains another finding which is particularly interesting.

People were asked what would happen to their support for independence if there was sustained majority support for another referendum, but the UK Government continued to refuse one.

Among Labour's May constituency voters, 35% said that would make them more supportive of independence, compared with 10% who said it would make them less supportive.

Among Reform voters, the figures were 30% more supportive and 9% less supportive.

Among Liberal Democrat voters, 24% said more supportive and 10% less supportive.

Conservative voters were different: 15% said more supportive and 19% less supportive, with 62% saying it would make no difference.

This demonstrates that even more unionist party voters will switch to supporting independence if the UK Government continues its refusal to agree to a new referendum, particularly amongst Labour and Reform voters.

The Holyrood election tells us who people wanted to represent them in Parliament. It produced 73 pro-independence MSPs, and that is a record pro-independence majority won on a pledge for a second referendum. This polling also proves that Holyrood 2026 cannot be treated as a referendum by unionist politicians in which every Labour, Reform, Conservative or Liberal Democrat ballot is retrospectively converted into a No vote. This is because large numbers of their own voters already support independence, and more and more seem ready to move towards independence if their anti-democratic stance continues.

Party support and constitutional preference overlap. They are not the same thing.