Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has said that poor polling projections are “motivating” his party ahead of the Holyrood election. Mr Findlay said the party has proved polling experts wrong after being “written off” ahead of previous elections, and he urged voters to help do so again by backing the Scottish Tories on the peach-coloured regional list ballot paper.
Campaigning in Burnside, South Lanarkshire, on Saturday he was joined by former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Ruth Davidson who described the peach ballot as “voters’ secret weapon”. Recent polls suggest the Tories – who were the second-largest party in the Scottish Parliament after the last election – face losses this time round. One survey carried out for More in Common projects that the Tories would drop to 12 seats, compared with 31 in 2021.
Mr Findlay told the Press Association: “These polls are motivating us because we are so used to being written off. You look at previous elections, all the experts said the Scottish conservatives would have a dreadful result. We proved them wrong, and the way in which we did so is using that peach-coloured ballot paper to return as many Conservative MSPs as possible, to stop the SNP. And we’re standing up for hard-working Scots. We want to reduce their taxes. We want to get Scotland working again. We’ve got the people to do so, and we’ve got the plan to do so.”
The major multilevel regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll for More in Common spoke to more than 5,000 Scots between February 4 and April 10. According to the survey, the SNP would drop to 56 seats – down from 64 at the last election. Reform would move into second place on 22 seats, while Labour would fall to 17 MSPs and continue in third.
Asked whether Lady Davidson was joining the campaign trail because the party felt it needs an extra boost, Mr Findlay said: “I’m joined by colleagues every single day. Last week, I was up in Aberdeenshire with Douglas Ross, our former leader. Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Ruth and every day we’re out, a huge, enthusiastic team, because we all understand how critical this election is. John Swinney thinks he’s going to walk back into Bute House, immediately demand another referendum from the weakest Prime Minister in living memory, and that’s the last thing that Scotland needs. People are desperate to have common-sense MSPs at Holyrood focused on the cost of living, and that’s what we are doing.”
Mr Findlay and Lady Davidson were campaigning in Glasgow with Annie Wells, Scottish Conservative candidate for the Rutherglen and Cambuslang constituency and the party’s lead candidate for Glasgow on the regional list. He said that voting Scottish Conservative on the regional list stopped an SNP majority in 2016 and 2021 and urged people to do so again on May 7.
