How Much of a Breakthrough? Reform in Scotland

The second in our party by party analysis. Last time I discussed the guaranteed polling miss for the Greens, this time it’s the unknown quantity that is Reform.

Reform UK are likely to break through and take a significant number of seats in both Scotland and Wales next month. There is a possibility that they go from winning 0 seats in 2021 to being the second largest party in both devolved legislatures, in Scotland this would be a big achievement. In Wales their polling is so strong that second place would be slightly disappointing for them.

I’m going to go through Scotland first as the nomination deadline hasn’t passed in Wales. I’ll explain where we think Reform are strongest and how we’re handling this (almost) brand new political force.

Projecting Reform

Like most projections, our system relies on previous results to indicate areas of strength and weakness for each party. For example, the Lib Dems always win Orkney but struggle in Glasgow so a projection that had the Lib Dems winning Glasgow Southside but losing Orkney wouldn’t be much good. This is what makes Reform really tricky to project.

Last time Reform did technically stand in Scotland but they won between 0.2% and 0.3% across every region and didn’t stand in any constituencies, from a projection perspective this is useless and Reform didn’t contest the 2022 locals. They’re now polling around 17% on the constituency ballot so we have to be creative.

Looking at their 2024 General Election shares provides some information, they were strongest in Aberdeenshire North & Moray East (ANME), this largely overlaps with the Holyrood constituency of Banffshire & Buchan Coast as well as in Dumfries & Galloway (D&G), which largely overlaps with Galloway & West Dumfries at the Scottish Parliament.

The problem is that they weren’t really that strong in either one. In ANME they got 14.6%, in D&G they got 9.4% but there are loads of areas where they got between 7 and 9%, including across the north east and the south which had always been home to a lot of Conservative voters, but also in post industrial places in the Central Belt which were historically strong for Labour. They did about as well in even more surprising places like Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross where we expect the Lib Dems to easily take the overlapping Holyrood seat.

Reform did struggle in Edinburgh, Glasgow and some parts of the northwest, but even still their worst result was a reasonable 4.8% in Glasgow North. The gap between their second best result and their worst was 4.6%, that’s a really narrow spread. For comparison the Lib Dems got 1.7% in Glasgow North East and 54.7% in North East Fife. This wild variation is why the Lib Dems are set to win at least 4 constituencies while Reform could get 0 despite receiving considerably more votes.

Our Solution

At first we make no geographical assumptions at all and let the swing guide us. We do the swings for all the established parties with existing baselines first and give Reform the remainder. Without explicitly saying it, this takes more from the Conservatives than Labour, the Lib Dems or SNP. As a result the south and north east naturally emerge as Reform’s best areas. Although parts of the central belt outside of the major cities, the likes of Eastwood, Airdrie and Bathgate, also emerge as strong areas. This all tracks with the 2024 results but lacks nuance because some constituencies change more than others from election to election.

According to Ipsos, the only pollsters which release regional crosstabs, Reform are performing much better in the north east than anywhere else. Now, Ipsos are still using the 2021 boundaries, there haven’t been that many Ipsos polls, and crosstab diving is usually a bad idea because the margins of error are pretty big. But we have very little else to go on.

Ipsos’s findings also track with Reform’s 2024 result in ANME and makes sense given the party’s constant blaming of the EU for the decline of the UK fishing industry, opposition to Net Zero, and demand for more North Sea oil drilling. The Conservative voter base in the south also skews older and wealthier than in the North East, in England those groups are more resistant to Farage’s charms, are less fussed about culture wars and more loyal to the Tories.

We’ve opted to run with this limited information by giving Reform a boost across the north east. In doing so we somewhat limit them in the south and central belt since more votes in one area means losing them elsewhere. We expect them to come second across a huge area of Scotland, stretching from Moray to South Ayrshire.

Our system believes that Banffshire & Buchan Coast is Reform’s best constituency, but since First Past the Post is a terrible electoral system, it is not the one that we think they have the best chance of winning. This is because the SNP are stronger there than in Aberdeenshire West, Reform’s second best seat. To be fair though, both are quite similar in terms of margin so I’d expect Reform to win both or neither.

A split favouring the south would give Reform a very good chance in Galloway & West Dumfries and Dumfriesshire. A more equal split would reduce their chance of taking a seat in either area, but with a higher chance of a clean sweep if they’re being underpolled. A split favouring the central belt would make it very difficult for them to win any seats, but cause a huge spike in seats for Reform in the very unlikely event that they are being badly underpolled, which you can game out here.

On the Regional List

Again we apply a small boost in North East Scotland which solidifies Reform’s three seats there. They’d still probably get 3 even without our boost. Reform should get at least one seat in every region and usually two, only in Edinburgh is the second at major risk.*

Projections are hard at the best of times but we’re really flying blind here. As far as I can tell, we’re outliers in favouring the North East rather than an equal split or picking the central belt. I’m doing it because I believe it’s more accurate, if I’m wrong I’ll take it on the chin.