The Scottish Greens will demand cabinet positions to prop up an SNP government if Nicola Sturgeon fails to win a Holyrood majority.
Polls are split on the prospect of the SNP having full control of the Scottish parliament, with the leakage of votes to Alex Salmond’s Alba Party potentially costing the nationalists on the regional list.
Two separate surveys published today suggested strong leads for Sturgeon’s party but returned vastly different projections about what that would mean for the make-up of the parliament after May’s election.
A Savanta ComRes poll for The Scotsman suggested the SNP would fall one MSP short of a majority, while an Opinium survey for Sky News forecast a 13-seat majority.
Under both scenarios the Greens would improve their standing, and the party’s co-leader has raised the prospect of a formal coalition with the SNP.
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Lorna Slater, who is standing in the Lothians, said she would “absolutely” accept a ministerial post if offered and cited the industry brief as her preferred job.
“We have big ambitions for the Scottish Green party. We do want to be a party of government,” she told The Daily Record.
The Savanta ComRes poll predicted that the SNP would return 64 MSPs, and Salmond’s Alba Party would return none despite taking 3 per cent of the list vote.
However, the poll indicates that Alba could cost the SNP its majority at Holyrood were voters to choose it on the list ballot instead of Sturgeon’s party. The poll forecasts that the SNP will win a constituency vote of 49 per cent and a list vote of 40 per cent.
The research found that 4 per cent of those who planned to vote SNP on May 6 would choose the SNP for their constituency vote and Alba on the list. It predicted a pro-independence majority at Holyrood when the ten Scottish Green MSPs were included.
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Analysis of the poll also forecasts that the Scottish Conservatives will return 25 MSPs, Scottish Labour 23 and the Scottish Liberal Democrats seven.
The Opinium survey puts the SNP on 53 per cent in the constituency vote and 44 per cent on the list vote, predicting a majority of 13 for Sturgeon’s party.
Using a uniform swing calculator — a crude method to predict the number of seats using the percentage share of the vote — Opinium puts the Tories on 27 seats, Labour on 21, the Greens on six and the Lib Dems on four. Alba is unlikely to gain a seat as it will poll just 2 per cent in the list vote.
It also found that Sturgeon had a net approval rating of plus 23. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, received a significant boost to his personal ratings, going from minus 3 to plus 10. Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, is on minus 31, while Salmond is on minus 60.
The former first minister predicted that his party would enjoy a late surge in the polls. He told the Through A Scottish Prism podcast that the party had “in a sense . . . already been successful because we’ve injected independence into this election debate”.
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He added: “If of course — and it’s a possibility — we take off during this campaign in the last few weeks then who knows what we might achieve.”
Chris Curtis, senior research manager at Opinium, said: “If Scottish unionists had been hoping that the fallout between Salmond and Sturgeon would hurt the SNP, then our latest polling is going to be a disappointment.
“It looks like being on the campaign trail has further boosted the first minister’s ratings, while the unpopularity of Alex Salmond has meant he is struggling to make a dent.”
Savanta ComRes surveyed 1,007 Scottish adults between April 2 and 7. The Opinium research is based on a survey of 1,023 Scots between April 1 and 6.
