On 6 May 2021, the Scottish Parliament will hold its sixth election. I’ve previously polled Scottish Grindr users on independence in 2014, Brexit in 2016, the European election of 2019, and the general elections of 2015, 2017, and 2019. (I also conducted polls for those elections in Wales, London, and London, respectively, plus 2 polls in the United States for their 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.) This time, I asked 992 Grindr users across Scotland who they’re electing to Holyrood.

The following is a sample of the replies.

(Faces in profile pictures have been censored.)

STATISTICS:

Of the 992 users I managed to question before I gave up evading my Grindr bans, 380 responses were counted. 160 of these users answered with parties (not including joke answers like “The Sex Party” and “The Naked Party”).

Voters in Scottish Parliament elections get two votes – one vote to elect an MSP in their constituency using first-past-the-post, and one vote to elect additional MSPs from broader regional lists using proportional representation. In order not to overly harass users for specific details of their votes, I made the following assumptions: that anyone who replied with only one party was supporting them in both the constituency and list vote, and that anyone who replied with two parties without clarifying which was their constituency vote and which was their list vote was naming them in sequential order – the first being their first vote (i.e. their constituency vote), and the second being their second vote (i.e. their list vote).

This is every combination of parties I received:

*Neither of these votes is possible – the Alba Party is not standing in any constituencies, and the Monster Raving Loony Party is not contesting this election at all.

Here are the constituency votes on their own:

And here are the list votes on their own:

Additionally, I kept count of unprompted negative mentions of parties (“definitely not SNP”, “fuck the tories” etc):

(3 negative mentions of the SNP, and 1 of Labour, came from users who claimed to be disenchanted former voters.)

Not counted towards the percentages are the following responses:

And evasive or unclear responses can be roughly divided into the following categories:

On 23 May 2019, member states of the European Union will elect MEPs to the European Parliament. Despite its best efforts, the United Kingdom is still an EU member state, and will be participating.

I’ve previously polled Grindr users on Brexit, Scottish independence, the 2016 US election, the 2015 UK general election in Scotland and in Wales, and the 2017 election in Scotland and in England. This time, I asked 1,024 Grindr users across the Central Belt of Scotland, in and around Edinburgh and Glasgow, who they’re supporting in this year’s European election.

The following is a sample of the replies.

(Identifiable faces in profile pictures have been censored.)

STATISTICS:

Of the 1,024 users I questioned, 406 responses were counted. 133 of these users settled on a party or candidate. Here are their results:

In addition, some votes were received for parties and candidates who are not on the Scottish ballot. These were:

A further 273 users responded, but did not settle on a party.

46 were undecided, and could not be swayed to pick a favourite.

Some voters who were undecided, or unwilling to express support for one specific party over the others, still gave some indication of their preferences:

In any case where a Grindr user was undecided on their final vote, but still able to pick a favourite party, they were counted towards that party’s tally. However, I also noted their second preferences.

• 7 SNP supporters are also considering voting Green.
• 1 Lib Dem supporter is also considering voting Green.
• 1 SNP supporter is also considering voting Lib Dem.
• 1 Brexit supporter is also considering voting UKIP.

44 polled do not support any party, or stated that they were not going to vote. This includes 1 respondent who intends to spoil their ballot.

27 are not eligible to vote. Of those who gave reasons, 17 are not European citizens, 5 are travelling or busy on election day and unable to arrange a postal or proxy vote, 3 missed the registration deadline, and 1 is underage.

Other responses can be roughly categorised as follows:

Finally, let’s go back to the parties’ votes and calculate how they’d equate to MEPs. In European Parliament elections, the UK uses the D’Hondt system, in which each seat is given to the party with the greatest number of votes, divided by one plus the number of those already allocated to that party. Each MEP would be as follows:

If only Grindr users vote on May 23, Scotland will elect 4 SNP MEPs, 1 Green MEP, and 1 Brexit MEP.