Humza Yousaf is to be the first minister of Scotland after narrowly winning the election for leader of the Scottish National Party. In his victory speech, he said he was “determined to deliver” independence for Scotland. But Yousaf only narrowly won the contest, which is a significant hindrance to this aim.
Only SNP members were allowed to participate in the vote to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader. A recent poll showed that had the election been open to the wider voting public rather than SNP members, one of Yousaf’s two rivals, Kate Forbes, would have been the more likely winner. As it stood, a second round was needed in the contest because Yousaf did not win more than 50% in the first round. When the second preference votes for Ash Regan were redistributed to her rivals as the system required, he won by the very small margin of 52% to 48%.
Independence was the prize Sturgeon had been seeking all her political life but a majority vote for independence in a referendum eluded her. And the evidence shows that it was her divisiveness that prevented her from securing the independence vote. This can be shown using data from the Scottish Election Study conducted at the time of the Holyrood parliamentary elections in 2021.
