Polling shows immigration is a growing concern to Scots voters

A few weeks ago, pro-independence newspaper The National ran a story headlined "Immigration becoming growing concern among Scots, poll claims.

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The Times carried the same story. “Immigration now one of Scottish voters’ top concerns,” said its headline.

Both were covering results from The Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker conducted by Edinburgh University’s David Hume Institute and leading Scottish polling company the Diffley Partnership, which found that 21 per cent of a sample of 2190 Scottish adults said immigration was now a top three issue, up from just 4 per cent in 2023.

Then last month Sarah Kyambi, the founder and director of Migration Policy Scotland, which has coordinated analysis of attitudes in Scotland for three years, including a survey of 2300 people last February, told a BBC documentary that attitudes towards immigration were “cooling”, adding that, “The idea that there is an inherent greater positivity among the Scottish people towards immigration is likely to be mistaken.”