THE majority of people who voted for the SNP in the Holyrood elections believe the party should form a Yes coalition government with the Greens, a new poll has found.
The Panelbase research, conducted for The Sunday Times, shows 54% of SNP voters back a coalition. Some 35% would prefer Nicola Sturgeon’s party to rule as a minority government, as they did from 2016.
A total of 11% of SNP voters told pollsters that they did not know which option they preferred.
The poll found that, among voters as a whole, 34% would like a coalition, 32% would prefer an SNP minority government and 34% said they did not know.
READ MORE: Greens open to coalition Yes government with SNP after May elections
Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has signalled that his party would be open to a coalition, telling The National in March that “Greens want to be in government in this country”.
The Sunday Times reported that some senior SNP figures are also open to the idea, but that the 64 seats the party won in the elections has made it less likely.
The Scottish Cabinet is due a reshuffle after four of the 11 secretaries stood down at the May 6 vote.
Meanwhile, a poll in the Scotsman today found that 63% of Scots want to hold a second independence referendum.
While the Savanta ComRes poll found that 27% of Scots, and half of all Tory voters, "never" want a new vote and one in 10 are undecided, the remainder want it at some point in the future.
A total of 16% said they wanted the vote in 2026 or later, and 17% want it in 2022, the most popular year.
READ MORE: REVEALED: Conclusive proof Scots DID vote for indyref2 at Holyrood election
Only 6% of people want indyref2 this year, while 12% want to see it in 2023.
More than half of SNP voters (52%) want to see the vote in either 2022 or 2023.
The poll also gave a glimpse of the scale of tactical voting among Unionists, with one in three people who voted for major No parties saying they did so tactically.
The Savanta ComRes poll estimated that around one in three people who voted for either the Tories (29%), Labour (33%), or LibDems (27%), did so tactically.
By contrast, just 7% of people who voted SNP said that they had done so tactically.
One in five Scots who voted at the election did so for a tactical reason, according to the poll of 1003 people.
Overall and with don’t knows excluded, support for No was leading Yes by six points, with 53% of Scots favouring the Union.
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