BREAKING: New poll finds Burnham’s indyref2 test met: Yes 52%, 67% say another referendum should happen

A new Scotland-wide poll has found that two-thirds of people who express a view believe the UK Government should agree to another independence referendum when there is clear majority public support for holding one. And that majority support already exists!

The Norstat poll, commissioned by Believe in Scotland, polled public opinion on the triggers for indyref2 raised by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in the House of Commons earlier this month.

Burnham told MPs on 9 September that he was not aware of majority public support for another Scottish independence referendum and indicated that another vote would not take place until that changed. He also drew a comparison with Northern Ireland, where public opinion forms part of the legal mechanism governing a future border poll. 

Our new poll therefore asked Scots whether the UK Government should agree to another referendum if there was clear majority support for holding one.

Overall, 59% said Yes, 29% said No and 11% said they did not know. As is standard practice on binary questions, once those who did not express a view are removed, that becomes 67% Yes to 33% No. 

Clearly voters can both believe in or against independence itself while still believing that Scotland should have a democratic route to another referendum when a clear majority wants one.

Timing increasers referendum support to 68%

The poll also found substantial support for another referendum when people are asked about timing. The same Norstat poll found that only 20% believe there should never be another independence referendum. In the unrounded data, 68% stated that another referendum should take place at some future point. Some 48% suggested one be held within five years, rising to 56% within ten years. A further 13% selected more than ten years from now, while 11% did not know.

Those figures are remarkably close to independent polling carried out by Ipsos after May's Holyrood election. Ipsos found that only 22% said there should never be another referendum, 2% more than this new poll. Ipsos also found 48% wanted another referendum within five years and another 19% wanted one later. It is not unreasonable to conclude from those polls that more people are moving towards supporting calls for indyref2.   

Majority support for independence

The new Norstat poll also asked the standard independence question. Among likely voters choosing between Yes and No, 52% said Yes and 48% No. 

To be clear - There is 52% support for independence among likely Yes/No voters and there is 68% support for another referendum taking place. Additionally, there is 67% support for the UK Government agreeing to a referendum where clear majority support for holding one exists and this poll finds that support clearly does exist and that last finding also crosses party lines.

Among people who voted Labour in the Holyrood constituency ballot in May, 50% said the UK Government should agree to a referendum in those circumstances and 43% disagreed. Among Liberal Democrat voters the figures were 47% and 38%. Reform voters divided 41% to 50%, while Conservative voters divided 31% to 58%. We will examine those figures separately. Read more about how our poll debunks those false unionist claims here.

The poll shows clearly that party voting and constitutional preference are not interchangeable. Significant numbers of people who voted for Labour, Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in May currently support independence. 

What the new poll does establish is that the public-opinion condition Burnham discussed is no longer an abstract question; the conditions for a second independence referendum have been met. 

Believe in Scotland founder Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp said:

“A clear majority say that another referendum should happen at some point. A clear majority of those expressing an opinion say the UK Government should agree to one when majority support for holding it exists. And the standard independence question currently has Yes ahead in this poll and consistently in other polls too - so bring it on.

The great irony is that if the Prime Minister and the Scottish Secretary thought No would win, we would already have a date for indyref2.”

Notes:

Norstat interviewed 1,001 Scottish adults aged 16 and over between 15 and 18 September 2026. The online survey was weighted by age, sex, 2024 Westminster election vote, 2014 independence referendum vote and country of birth. Numbers presented may not add up to 100% due to rounding effect.