Scottish election 2021: Alex Salmond's party on track to win eight seats, poll suggests

Alex Salmond’s Alba Party is on course to win eight seats at next week’s Holyrood election, according to a new poll.

The survey also suggests the Scottish Greens will return 11 MSPs, with the SNP, Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour all losing seats.

Polling by Panelbase for the Scot Goes Pop website found 6 per cent of voters will support the former first minister’s new party in the regional ballot, delivering a pro-independence majority of 16 seats.

Alba Party leader and former first minister Alex Salmond gets into the ring at candidate Alex Arthur's boxing gym. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

The projected outcome of next Thursday’s election would see the SNP as the largest party, with 61 of the 129 seats at Holyrood – two fewer than at the 2016 election.

The Scottish Conservatives would remain the second-largest party despite being forecast to lose seven of the 31 seats they currently have, with Labour down four on 20 seats, followed by the Greens and then Alba.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats would remain on five seats, according to the poll of 1,075 over-16s carried out between April 21 and 26.

All For Unity, the party created by former MP George Galloway, is polling at 2 per cent on the regional list ballot, but would win no seats.

The poll suggests only 70 per cent of people who voted SNP in the 2019 Westminster general election are planning to vote SNP on the list this year, with 11 per cent indicating they will give their vote to Alba and 13 per cent to the Scottish Greens.

The seat projection shows an exact repeat of the 2016 result in the constituency ballot, with Labour retaining their three constituency seats and all the changes applying to the allocation of regional representatives.

Commenting on the poll, Mr Salmond said: “Across Scotland, the message of the Alba Party is hitting home.

“Because the SNP are projected to do so well in the constituency votes, this poll shows they have no chance of winning any list seats.

“Alba is the party that has brought an urgency for independence to this election campaign.”

He added: “Next week, by voting Alba on the list for independence, the people of Scotland can generate a political earthquake – the tremors of which will be felt in the very heart of Westminster.”

Scottish Conservative lead candidate for Glasgow Annie Wells said: “When our Scottish Parliament should be entirely focused on post-pandemic recovery, the threat of a so-called nationalist super-majority has never been so real.

“[Nicola] Sturgeon and Salmond’s mutual self-loathing would be set aside to inflict a divisive referendum on ripping Scotland out of the UK.

“But all pro-union voters across Scotland have one guaranteed way of stopping their dangerous and reckless plan, and that’s by backing the Scottish Conservative on the party list vote using the peach-coloured ballot paper.”