Barring a last-minute surprise, the Holyrood election will probably return the Scottish National Party (SNP) to government for the fifth time in a row. The nationalists have been in office for so long that thousands of Scots who weren’t even born when the party entered office in 2007 are now going to the polls for the first time.

But just 23% of respondents think the Scottish government is doing a good job, according to the Scottish Election Study’s final pre-election Scoop poll in February. This is down from 44% immediately before the 2021 election. And according to the latest opinion polls, the party is on track to drop at least 10 percentage points of the 47.7% constituency vote share it recorded back then.

It was always going to be challenging for the SNP to sustain such high levels of support given the economic climate. As our public opinion tracking data demonstrates, it didn’t take long after 2021 for the public mood to sour as the second-order impacts of the COVID pandemic and longer-running economic woes sank in.

Issues such as inflation, a creaking health service, chronic housing shortages and high street stagnation dented voters’ faith in governing parties at both Westminster and Holyrood. The share of Scots who thought the country was heading in the right direction dropped from just over 40% in 2021 to under 20% by 2025.

Pro-independence voters, who........

© The Conversation