Anas Sarwar suffered a fresh poll blow as Scottish Labour fell to fourth place in the race for Holyrood.
The Scottish Opinion Monitor found Labour had sunk from 16 to 14 per cent since October on the regional list, while the Greens had jumped from 13 to a record 16 per cent.
The list system gave Labour 20 of its 22 MSPs at the last Holyrood election.
The change means Labour now trails the SNP, Reform and the Greens on the vital measure.
Scottish Labour’s vote share has more than halved since the 2024 general election. Labour remained in third place on the constituency vote on the new poll despite falling from 16 to 14 per cent, while the Greens edged up from 10 to 11.
Pollster Mark Difflley said the numbers indicated Labour would come fourth in seats.
He forecast the SNP would win 57 seats – eight short of John Swinney’s majority target – Reform 22, the Greens 16, Labour 15, the Liberal Democrats 10 and the Tories nine.
One downbeat Labour MSP admitted: ‘It’s clear that Keir Starmer is a drag on the ticket.’
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and his wife Furheen on stage at Friday’s party conference
A Labour MP summed up the party’s position as ‘a s***show’.
The SNP remained unchanged since October at 34 per cent on the constituency vote and down from 30 to 28 per cent on the list.
Reform UK were down from 19 to 18 on the former, and down from 20 to 19 on the latter.
The YouGov survey for Edinburgh University’s Scottish Election Study polled 1,517 Scottish adults between February 11 and 18.
It found more than two-thirds of those who voted Labour at the 2024 general election had drifted away, with only 32 per cent planning to back the party again in May.
While 23 per cent were undecided, 14 per cent had switched to Reform UK and 13 per cent to the SNP.
Just 23 per cent of respondents said the SNP Government was doing a ‘good job’, down from 40 per cent in December 2021, while 46 per cent said they were doing a bad job.
But the UK Labour Government was rated far worse, with only 8 per cent saying it had done a good job, against 67 per cent saying a bad one.
Most voters decided opposed independence by 54 to 46 per cent.
Fraser McMillan, lecturer in Scottish Electoral Politics at the University of Edinburgh, said Reform were ‘now clearly in pole position to become the official opposition after polling day’.
Ailsa Henderson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘The SNP is faring well for three reasons: they are buoyed by support from pro-indy voters, the pro-indy Scottish Greens have opted not to stand candidates in seats where they might have challenged the SNP, and increased competition on the pro-union side.’
The poll was released on the same day as Scottish Labour held its special election conference in Paisley.
Asked by the media about it, Mr Sarwar said: ‘If I believed every pollster, we wouldn’t have won the Rutherglen byelection in 2023, we wouldn’t have won the general election in 2024, we wouldn’t have won the Hamilton byelection in 2025.
‘We’ve proven them all wrong before, and I’m telling you, we’re going to prove them all wrong again in ten weeks’ time by making sure we win the election in Scotland.’
Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay said Labour collapse and a Green win in the Gorton & Denton byelection south of the Border ‘wasn’t a fluke or an accident, it was a sign of what’s coming for Labour this May’.
