JOHN Curtice has said he doubts Reform will win an upcoming Scottish by-election, adding it would be “quite an achievement” for them even to come second.
The top pollster has thrown cold water over rising speculation Reform will take second place in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, where the SNP are trying to hang on to the seat previously held by the late Christina McKelvie.
SNP figures, including an MSP, told The National this week they believed Reform were poised to come second in the June 5 vote and that Farage’s troops had taken “wholesale” the support which used to go to the Tories in the South Lanarkshire seat.
However, the MSP insisted there was a hard “ceiling” on Reform’s support, adding they would be surprised if they won.
There is growing concern over the success of Reform following their victory in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in England last month and several council elections.
Curtice said Reform’s threat in Scotland should not be ignored, but he still predicts they will come a “good third” in Hamilton.
Asked how he felt the party would do, he told The National: “All we know is Reform are continuing to ride on a high in the English election polls, they’re running at about 30%, so running at about 20% in Scotland is perfectly conceivable, but you then have to ask can Reform get from 20% to being able to get to a third of the vote and manage to win the seat? That’s quite a challenge.
“While they managed to win Runcorn and did pretty well, what we don’t know yet is whether Reform are capable of doing what I would call a LibDem by-election spectacular – that is to record an increase in support in a by-election that is way beyond what you would expect given the party’s standing in the national polls. I’m not sure Runcorn provided any clear evidence that that was the case.
“It’s not a threat to be ignored but at the moment one’s expectation would be that Reform ought to come a good third.”
Reform took Runcorn from Labour by just six votes as Sarah Pochin overturned a 14,696 majority, while the party took control of 10 councils in England earlier this month.
Asked if there was any chance of them winning in Hamilton, he said: “The difference between 25% and 33% isn’t so great, and given the limited knowledge we have, we can’t say it’s impossible, but it would be spectacular if they managed to win.
“I think even coming second would be quite an achievement.”
Earlier this month a poll from Survation suggested Reform would become the main opposition at Holyrood.
It said the SNP would remain, by far, the biggest group in the Parliament, with 33% on the constituency vote and 29% on the regional vote, while Reform UK would come second with 19% on the constituency vote and 20% on the list vote.
Curtice said while the result of the by-election is difficult to predict given the lack of Scottish polling, he said whoever does emerge victorious will probably only require a third of the vote to do so, meaning the result is not likely to mean as much as the winning party will make out.
“No one is going to do terribly well. We’re living in a very fragmented political environment, and the winner may well end up with no more than a third of the vote,” Curtice said.
“Whoever wins will win on a low share of the vote and their rhetoric will vastly overestimate the significance of their achievement. That is the one safe prediction we can make.”
He went on: “One cannot rule out the possibility that any one of those three parties [Labour, SNP or Reform] could possibly win. That’s as far as we can go.”
What Curtice said he is hoping is that the by-election – taking place just under a year before the wider Holyrood election – will go some way to confirming whether Reform’s rise is real in Scotland.
“It looks as though the SNP are the favourites but thereafter life becomes pretty uncertain,” he said.
“We’re looking for evidence at the ballot box beyond what we’ve got so far, that the world is as the polls say it is and that we are indeed in a different world north of the Border than we were 12 months ago. That’s what we’re looking for an answer to.”
