Contesting Sovereignty in Scotland

By Michael Keating and David McCrone

Regular opinion polls and surveys in Scotland on independence go back some fifty years and we know quite a lot. Support for independence was around 20 per cent in the 1970s, rising to 30 per cent in the 1990s, to reach 45 per cent in the 2014 referendum following a steep rise during the campaign. While there were short-term fluctuations over the years in response to different wordings of the question, it has remained almost unchanged since then. 

Recently, however, a related question has become equally important, that is who has the right to decide on the matter and whether Scotland could unilaterally secede. Successive governments and all the parties at Westminster agreed that Scotland has the right to self-determination including to become independent. On the other hand, they insist that only Westminster can decide when and how Scotland can exercise that right. The Supreme Court agrees. The issue became more salient when a narrow majority across the UK was taken as a mandate to withdraw from the European Union, in spite of majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain. For the Scottish Government, this gave a justification for a second referendum on independence, to allow Scotland to re-enter the EU. To put it slightly differently, the question here is the subject of self-determination rather than the object.

For a number of years, we have been exploring what Scots think about these deeper issues, with questions in the British Election Study of 2019 and 2024 and a larger set of questions in the Scottish Social Attitudes survey of 2021.

We asked two questions relating to the issue of the ‘right to decide’ or ‘sovereignty’: The first asks who has the right to determine Scotland’s future. The second concerns the issue of withdrawal from the EU, which the pro-Brexit side claimed was an exercise of sovereignty by the unitary British people. The questions took the form of two propositions:

1. People in Scotland have the ultimate right to decide for themselves who governs Scotland
2. Because a majority of people in the UK voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Referendum, people in Scotland should accept that decision

Agreeing with proposition 1 and disagreeing with proposition 2 are expressions of Scottish sovereignty. Disagreeing with proposition 1 and agreeing with proposition 2 are expressions of British sovereignty.

In 2024 the response distributions were:

Table 1: Sovereignty 1 Percentage

In summary: 62.5 per cent supported Scottish sovereignty (either agreeing or strongly agreeing), while 15.3 per cent rejected it (disagreeing or strongly disagreeing): a ratio of over 4 to 1 in favour.

Table 2: Sovereignty 2 Percentages

In summary 38.9 per cent were Scottish sovereigntists (either disagreeing or strongly disagreeing) while marginally more (43.3 per cent) were British sovereigntists.

Combining the two measures such that ‘Scottish sovereigntists’ are defined as those who agree with  sovereignty 1 and the disagree options on sovereignty 2, and omitting the ‘neither’ responses in both original questions, we find the following in cross-tabulated form:

Table 3: attitudes to sovereignty percentages

The largest proportion, 37.5 per cent, are ‘Scottish sovereigntists’; 13.2 per cent are ‘British sovereigntists’ and a further 20.1% are ‘mixed-sovereigntists’, accepting one measure of Scottish sovereignty but not the other.  Overall, these orders of magnitude are broadly comparable to our findings in the previous surveys (BES2019, and SSA2021), although proportionally fewer accept Scottish sovereignty on the Brexit question, possibly reflecting the temporal distance from the 2016 Brexit referendum, and acceptance, however reluctant, of the outcome. Note too that there is a substantial minority (30 per cent) who are neither sovereigntists, unionists nor mixed-sovereigntists as defined here. Removing entirely the ‘neither’ categories shows that 52 per cent are Scottish sovereigntists, 18 per cent are British sovereigntists, and 28 per cent are mixed-sovereigntists’, giving a ratio of 5:2:3. Keeping the last group in the analysis gives a better picture, given the fluidity of opinion (1).  

Looking at the party balance, we find, unsurprisingly, that support for Scottish sovereignty is strongest among SNP voters and Green voters; but also that a slim majority (52 per cent) of Labour voters also support Scottish sovereignty on this measure. A plurality of Tories (41 per cent) adopt the British sovereigntist view, while a plurality (40 per cent) of Reform supporters are Scottish sovereigntists (2). 

Table 4: attitudes to sovereignty 1 by voting intention (3)

Comparison over the three surveys shows a stable picture, consistent with the stability of opinions about independence. Conservatives are predictably British sovereigntist while the SNP and Greens are a Scottish sovereigntists. Labour and the liberal Democrats are somewhere in the middle. Reform voters, who enter the series in the 2024 survey are highly British sovereigntist in relation to the European question but on the issue of Scottish self-determination are in fact somewhere between the Conservatives and Labour. Indeed more of them support than oppose Scottish self-determination. 

The surveys show, even in their attenuated form, that issues of sovereignty remain salient in Scottish politics in the widest sense. Matters of national identity figure significantly in all three groups: Scottish sovereigntists are not only strongly Scottish, but also European, while being British helps to explain why people are British sovereigntists or semi-sovereigntists. Scottish sovereigntists are on the Left and more liberal; British sovereigntists are on the Right and more authoritarian; semi-sovereigntists are less identifiable by their ideological position, although they are more authoritarian.

Social and demographic factors are less determining, though Scottish sovereigntists are more likely to be younger, more highly educated, and female. British sovereigntists, on the other hand, are older, marginally better-off, while semi-sovereigntists are somewhat less well-educated than either sovereigntists or unionists. 

All in all, the surveys have shown consistency over the five years (2019-2024), and there is reason to think they will continue to define Scottish politics in years to come. 

1. It is, after all, possible to ‘disagree’ (or ‘agree’) on one dimension and occupy a mid-position (‘neither’) on the other. 
2. The numbers intending to vote Reform are sufficient to allow analysis, in contrast to 2019 and 2021. 
3. The measure of political support used in this table is voting intention. Broadly speaking, an alternative dependent variable, intended support in a forthcoming Scottish parliament election (for constituency vote), produced similar results. 

Michael Keating is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen. 

David McCrone is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and the University of Edinburgh.