Holyrood elections roundtable Scottish Parliamentary Elections Undergraduate Monitoring Project
With the 2026 Scottish Parliament election weeks away, the St Andrews Election Monitoring Project is bringing together some of the sharpest minds in Scottish electoral politics for a day of analysis, data and discussion.
This event marks the launch of our student-led project, which will use the 2026 Scottish Parliament election as a live, hands-on opportunity to teach ourselves and undergraduates about quantitative methods and the electoral process. Over the coming weeks, we'll be building an incumbency tracker across all 73 constituencies, aggregating voting intention data, and developing a predictive model for the Holyrood result with the goal of circling back after Thursday 7 May 7 to talk honestly about what we got right, and what we didn't.
Our expert guests are:
- Professor Sir John Curtice
- Dr Jan Eichhorn
- Allan Faulds
- Mark McGeoghegan
Professor Sir John Curtice is the UK's foremost election analyst. Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde and Senior Research Fellow at NatCen, he leads What Scotland Thinks and has been the go-to voice for electoral interpretation across decades of British elections and referendums.
Dr Jan Eichhorn is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh and co-founder of the think tank d|part. A Co-Investigator on the ESRC-funded Scottish Election Study, his research focuses on electoral behaviour, political participation, and the long-term effects of Scotland's decision to lower the voting age to 16, a question with direct relevance to this election.
Allan Faulds is the founder of Ballot Box Scotland, one of our key data sources and an indispensable resource for anyone trying to make sense of Scottish polling and constituency-level dynamics. Allan covers the full breadth of Scottish elections with a rigour and clarity that has made the site essential reading ahead of May.
Mark McGeoghegan is an author, columnist and pollster, and a doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, where his thesis examines the political tactics of self-determination movements. He writes widely on Scottish politics and secessionism, and brings both analytical depth and a keen eye for the bigger constitutional picture.