The Scottish Election Study’s Christopher Carman, Stevenson Professor of Citizenship at the University of Glasgow, discusses our data on attitudes to the expansion of the franchise in Scotland
Since its inception in 1999, the Scottish Parliament has been a leader in adopting mechanisms and policies designed to encourage and promote public political participation and engagement with the Scottish political system. In so doing, the hope was that the institutional structure would help lend a political voice to groups that are often under-represented in democratic systems.
Whilst many of the institutional arrangements adopted by the Consultative Steering Group for the Scottish Parliament could be argued to be only initial, baby-steps in promoting participation, such as the mixed-member proportional electoral system (often referred to as the Additional Member System in Scotland), other arrangements were arguably more innovative, such as the public petitions system and the cross-party groups.
With the push to allow 16- and 17-year olds to vote in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, the Scottish Government again took a step toward expanding not only the franchise, but political participation more broadly. This was enshrined in the Scottish Elections (Reduction of Voting Age) Act 2015. In reducing the voting age Scotland joined a relatively small handful of countries (and sub-national jurisdictions), such as Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Ecuador and Malta, that extend some form of the voting franchise to people 16 years of age and older.
Further advancing its idea of an inclusive, civic (residence-based Scottish) nationalism, the Scottish Government later argued that anyone legally living in Scotland and contributing to Scottish society should also have a say in how the nation is governed. The Scottish Elections (Franchise and Representation) Act 2020 further expanded the franchise to legally resident non-citizens in Scottish parliamentary and local elections.
According to the National Records of Scotland, “There were 195,400 foreign nationals on the electoral register at December 2024. This is up 3.1% on the previous year, and is the highest number ever recorded. This group represents 4.6% of the total electorate.” And, “of the 4,283,300 people registered to vote in Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections, 74,800 (1.7% of the total electorate) were aged 16 or 17.”
Whilst these expansions of the franchise were not without controversy and prompted lively public debate (in Edinburgh and London), the 2015 Act passed by unanimous vote, with all MSPs present in the chamber voting in favour. The 2020 Act, on the other hand, generated more dispute in Holyrood, with 92 votes in favour and 27 against. In this case, the Conservatives opposed the measure as the bill also extended the franchise to incarcerated individuals serving prison sentences of 12 months or fewer.
With the next Scottish elections looming in May 2026, the Scottish Election Study sought to gauge public support for these significant changes in who is allowed to vote in Scottish elections. We included questions on the franchise extensions in our October 2025 SCOOP survey, fielded between the 10th and 20th of October 2025 by YouGov to a representative sample of 1,242 Scottish residents aged 16 and over.
Public Opposition (and Support) for expanding the voting franchise
In 2016, at the first regular Scottish Parliamentary election following the adoption of the 2015 Act that formally expanded the right to vote to include 16 & 17 year olds, the Scottish Election Study asked respondents the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “The voting age should be lowered to 16 for all elections and referendums in Scotland.” In 2016 we found that 45.3% supported votes for 16 & 17 year olds, whilst 41.4% opposed, and 13.3% said they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. (Of note, 7.4% of our respondents said they “did not know” and thus did not answer in that year – they were excluded from the percentages just mentioned.)
Fast forward to October 2025 – after 10 years of young people having the right to vote in Scottish elections, what does the public think of having 16 & 17 year olds vote in elections? In our October 2025 Scottish Opinion Monitor (SCOOP) survey, we asked respondents, “Since 2015, people 16-years-old and over have had the right to vote in Scottish Parliament and council elections. To what extent do you support or oppose the decision to allow 16 and 17-year olds to vote in Scottish elections?” As the table below shows, Scots seem to have largely – but far from unanimously – settled into the idea of young people voting in Scottish elections, with 56% supporting and 44% opposing. And people clearly seemed to have firmed up their opinions on the issue, as only 5.5% of our respondents did not have a view on the matter (they were not included when computing the percentages presented).
| Response | Share (%) | Total support/oppose (%) |
| Strongly support | 30.8 | |
| Somewhat support | 25.6 | 56.4 |
| Somewhat oppose | 21.6 | |
| Strongly oppose | 22.1 | 43.7 |
What about the more recent expansion of the franchise to people who are legally resident in Scotland, but who are not UK citizens? We asked our respondents a very similarly phrased question to the one above: “Since 2020, people 16-years-old and over who are legal residents in Scotland, but who are not UK or Commonwealth citizens, have had the right to vote in Scottish Parliament and council elections. To what extent do you support or oppose the decision to allow legal, non-citizen residents to vote in Scottish elections?” Here the tables are turned, and more than half (52%) of our respondents opposed the expansion of the franchise to resident non-citizens, whilst 48% support the more inclusive franchise. And we have a sense that a greater percentage of Scots have yet to clearly formulate a view on the issue as almost 10% responded “don’t know” when asked the question.
| Response | Share (%) | Total support/oppose (%) |
| Strongly support | 22.2 | |
| Somewhat support | 25.6 | 47.8 |
| Somewhat oppose | 22.6 | |
| Strongly oppose | 29.9 | 52.2 |
It is worth noting as well that the difference in the averages between these two questions is statistically significant. The mean for Votes at 16 is 2.36, whilst the mean for Votes for Residents is 2.59 (difference significant at p<.00). In short, more people support Votes at 16 than Votes for Residents, and significantly so.
Who Opposes (or Supports) expanding the franchise?
Despite the significant difference in the means for Votes at 16 and Votes for Residents, the two are nonetheless highly correlated (r=.77, p<.00), meaning that those people who tend to support granting younger Scots the right to vote also tend to support granting resident non-citizens the vote. For example, people who support Votes at 16 have an average support score of 1.88 (on the 1=Strongly Support to 4=Strongly Oppose) on Votes for Residents, whilst people who oppose Votes at 16 have an average score of 3.46, placing them squarely in the “oppose” Resident Votes camp.
Given the strong relationship between support and opposition for expanding the voting franchise, we created a single measure that combines the two indicators of support/opposition. (For the anoraks, the “index variable,” with the pithy name Opposition to Franchise Expansion, ranges from 1 (Support) to 7 (Oppose) and has a mean of 3.96.) We used this measure as the dependent variable in an OLS regression equation which allows us to examine the influence of different factors on the outcome we’re interested in when we consider them together. We predicted opposition to expanding the franchise with the standard suite of demographic variables, as well as respondents’ views on rejoining the EU; Scottish independence; the state of their household finances; political ideology on a left-right scale; political ideology on a libertarian-authoritarian scale; and their assessment of the state of democracy in Scotland.
To summarise the overall findings (the full statistical results can be found below), holding the other variables in the model constant:
- Holding a University degree (or not) does not matter for supporting expanding the franchise. And there is no difference between women and men; white and non-white respondents; nor across the social classes.
- We do find that older respondents – those over the age of 55 – tend to be more opposed to expanding the franchise, and that opposition increases with age.
- Respondents who say their household economic situation has declined in the last 12 months are rather opposed to expanding the franchise.
- Perhaps not surprisingly, as the positions are aligned with the parties that advocated for expanding the franchise, people who favour rejoining the EU and who support Scottish independence are strongly in support of expanding the franchise.
- And also not a surprise, people who express more authoritarian views and are to the right of the ideological spectrum tend to oppose expanding the franchise (whilst those on the left and libertarian ends of those scales support).
- Finally, those who tend to think that the country is currently being governed in a democratic way tend to support expanding the franchise, whilst those who do not see the country as democratic oppose expanding the franchise. Of course it is possible that part of what drives that response is the fact that the franchise has already been expanded to include non-citizen residents – unfortunately our survey data would not allow us to unpack that particular relationship.
Summing Up
What does all this tell us?
First, over the last 10 years Scots have grown accustomed to young people voting in Scottish elections. The far more recent expansion of the voting franchise does not benefit from the same levels of support – indeed, voting by resident non-citizens is currently under water in public support. What we can’t say, of course, is whether public support will rise (or fall) as time passes and the policy beds in.
We do know, though, that those people who tend to support Votes at 16 also tend to support Votes for Residents. And given that most of us tend to prefer our policy views to be aligned (and we tend to try to limit cognitive dissonance), we might expect support for Votes for Residents to slowly creep up in due course.
And we likely should not be surprised that people who hold political ideologies that tend to advocate for more inclusive and participatory democratic innovations also tend to support expanding the voting franchise to include younger voters and legal, non-citizen residents of Scotland. Those who tend to prefer the status quo and are resistant to societal and political change tend to view expanding the voting franchise with scepticism.
On one hand, one might think this is a rather long way of pointing out the obvious. Nothing reported in this blog post is particularly surprising, after all.
On the other hand, we could return to the points that started this post: Scotland is a unique nation that has sought to use its devolved powers to expand the voting franchise to increase inclusion and political participation. Academic studies consistently show that the earlier one starts to vote, the more likely they are to get in the habit of voting and then be regular voters throughout their lives. And integrating legal residents into communities has been shown to have social and economic benefits to wider society.
To be sure, some might point out that the SNP Government may well have expected the expansion of the franchise to break in their favour. And in some ways it may have – our October SCOOP showed that 32% of 16-24 year olds said they would vote SNP in Scottish Parliament constituency races if the election was held when they were surveyed. But within that same age group, looking at the list vote, 31% said they would vote Greens, 21% SNP, 12% Labour; 11% Reform; 7% Liberal Democrat; and 6% Conservatives (the remaining 12% said they would not vote).
And of the few people born outside of the UK who told us how they would vote on the list vote in a hypothetical election held today (N=74), 32% said that they would vote SNP and 26% would vote Green. The Conservatives, Labour and Reform each were on 6%, the Liberal Democrats on 4% and 9% said they would not vote. (It should be said that we do not know if all of these people would be eligible for vote under the “legal resident, non-citizen” rule.)
That is to say, young voters and immigrant (potential) voters have a wide range of opinions and it is a mistake to place all of them in the same box.
| Variable | Coefficient (SE) |
|---|---|
| Education | |
| University Education | -0.144 (0.102) |
| Age Categories (Ref: 18–24) | |
| 25–34 | 0.070 (0.193) |
| 35–44 | 0.172 (0.176) |
| 45–54 | 0.239 (0.183) |
| 55–64 | 0.366 (0.176) |
| 65–74 | 0.472 (0.175) |
| 75+ | 0.456 (0.206) |
| Gender | |
| Female (ref: Male) | -0.046 (0.087) |
| Social Grade (Ref: A) | |
| B | 0.100 (0.165) |
| C1 | 0.039 (0.148) |
| C2 | 0.117 (0.165) |
| D | 0.009 (0.179) |
| E | 0.113 (0.181) |
| Ethnicity | |
| BAME (ref: White) | 0.137 (0.192) |
| Economic Perception | |
| Household situation declining | 0.231 (0.050) |
| Political Attitudes | |
| Would vote to Rejoin EU | -0.744 (0.106) |
| Would vote for Independence | -0.969 (0.101) |
| Authoritarianism scale | 0.119 (0.009) |
| Left–Right Ideology (Right high) | 0.055 (0.009) |
| Perception of democracy | -0.063 (0.020) |
| Model | |
| Intercept | 1.263 (0.371) |
| Observations | 1071 |