The Scottish Election Study (SES) is a detailed independent study of politics and elections in Scotland, funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council. The study provides world-class data and research that provide unique insights into the political attitudes and behaviour of Scottish citizens at election time.
The SES has run in-depth surveys at every devolved election in Scotland, the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum, the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, and the 2017, 2019 and 2024 UK General Elections. These surveys were influenced by earlier pre-devolution work in Scotland, notably the work of William Miller and Jack Brand on the 1979 Scottish Election Study (Miller and Brand, 1981), and the 1992 Scottish Election Study carried out by James Mitchell and Jack Brand which was administered as an ‘add-on’ to the 1992 British Election Study (Brand & Mitchell, 1994).
The 2026 study consists of a two-wave panel survey of 5,000 Scotland-resident eligible voters (aged 16+) fielded online before and after the election. The panel design enables us to track campaign dynamics. It will include a booster sample of young voters to allow for reliable inferences about subgroups within the population. The 2026 SES also continues the Scottish Opinion Monitor (Scoop) polling series started in 2021, which fields three cross-sectional surveys to a sample of 1,500 Scots three times annually.
Current Team
Professor Ailsa Henderson
Ailsa is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and Principal Investigator of the Scottish Election Study. Her research is on comparative sub-state political behaviour and political culture, as well as on young people’s civic engagement. Ailsa previously served as PI for the 2016 and 2021 Scottish Election Study projects, as well as the 2014 Scottish Referendum Study. She also headed the behavioural research survey programme of the Centre on Constitutional Change funded by the ESRC under its Future of the UK and Scotland programme. Co-Director of the Future of England/State of the Union surveys, she is the co-author (with Richard Wyn Jones) of Englishess: The Political Force Transforming Britain (OUP, 2021). She is also Deputy Chair of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland, Commissioner for the Boundary Commission for Scotland and one of three independent researchers for Scotland’s Citizens’ Assembly.
Professor Rob Johns
Rob is a Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. He has been a PI or CI on four Scottish Election Studies to date and co-authored book-length studies based on three (Johns et al. 2010; Carman et al. 2014; Henderson et al. 2022). He has also particular expertise on the electoral rise of the SNP (Mitchell et al. 2012; Johns and Mitchell, 2016). His broader research interests are in political psychology, public opinion and survey experiments, with recent work appearing in the American Journal of Political Science and European Journal of Political Research.
Dr Jan Eichorn
Jan is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh and joined the SES as a Co-Investigator in 2026. Working in conjunction with the Scottish Youth Parliament, he will lead the development of the study’s first youth survey panel. His primary research interests are political participation and public perceptions of the economy. Jan is also Research Director of the d|part think tank.
Professor Christopher Carman
Christopher is the Stevenson Professor for Citizenship at the University of Glasgow. His research addresses public evaluations and expectations of representation and participatory democratic systems. He was lead investigator on the 2011 Scottish Election Study and lead author on the resulting monograph (Carman et al. 2014).
Dr Fraser McMillan
Fraser is a Lecturer in Scottish Electoral Politics at the University of Edinburgh. He earned his PhD from the University of Strathclyde in 2019. In addition to devolved voting behaviour and party competition, his main research interest is the role of campaign promises in representative democracy. He joined the project as a postdoctoral researcher in 2021 and is a Co-Investigator on the 2026 grant.
Dr Jac Larner
Jac is a Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University. His primary research interests are multilevel voting, national identity, and survey design, as well as political psychology and group conflict. He joined the project as a research associate in 2016 and is a Co-Investigator on the 2026 SES. He was previously Co-Investigator of the Welsh Election Study.