Polling places open in less than 24 hours. Here are some of the key points from the final day on the campaign trail:

• Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater wants to see every region of the country elect Green MSPs. She insists her party has the "solutions to the climate crisis".
• Voting for the Scottish Conservatives in the regional list vote is the “tried and tested way to stop an SNP majority”, claims the party’s leader Douglas Ross.
• Willie Rennie takes to the skies in a microlight and asks voters to support the Scottish Liberal Democrats if they want to put the pandemic recovery first.

• In Aberdeen SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon insists it is important to have "strong and experienced leadership" to take the next steps out of lockdown and return the country to normality.
• Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar says Scotland faces a "stark choice" between the country’s recovery from the Covid pandemic and an independence referendum as he calls for people to use both their votes to back his party.
• Campaigning in England, Boris Johnson insists now is not the time for a "reckless" and "irresponsible" second independence referendum.

That's all from us for today. We'll be back with all the results, analysis and reaction from around Scotland on Friday morning.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said now was not the time for a "reckless" and "irresponsible" second independence referendum.

He was asked if he would allow another vote on the issue, if pro-independence parties were to win a majority in the Scottish Parliament elections.

Mr Johnson said: "Let's wait and see what actually happens, but I think most people in Scotland, and around the whole of the UK, feel that - as we're coming out of pandemic together - this is not the time to have a reckless and, I think irresponsible, second referendum."

The Conservative Party leader was campaigning in the West Midlands, where there are local and mayoral elections.

Image source, PA Media

Voting for the Scottish Conservatives in the regional list vote is the “tried and tested way to stop an SNP majority”, claims the party’s leader Douglas Ross.

He said the SNP government had “failed Scotland by focusing only on their own selfish obsession” of independence “at the expense of everything else”.

The Tory MP for Moray, who is aiming to return to the Holyrood parliament, said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon should be “ashamed” of her record on drugs deaths, as well as “schools slipping down league tables and 3,000 avoidable deaths in Scotland’s care homes”.

Image source, PA Media

BBC Radio Scotland

Polling expert Sir John Curtice (JC), Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University has been discussing some of the themes of this election on BBC Radio Scotland's Kaye Adams programme.

Q: Do the polls suggest Alex Salmond’s Alba Party is cutting through?

JC: Frankly, no. The straw polls that have come out in the last 24 hours give him 2%, 3%, 3%, 3%. Even the one company that gave Alba their most optimistic reading during the campaign suggested the figure had gone down from 6% to 4%.

So it is possible they may pick up one seat – maybe Mr Salmond will get elected. The crucial benchmark here is 6%; once you get to 6%, you can anticipate picking up a seat at least in the majority of regions, and they seem to be well short of that. So unless the polls are badly out, it doesn’t look terribly likely that Alba are going to ensure a significant addition to the total number of pro-independence MSPs in the next parliament.

Image source, PA Media

Q: If Mr Salmond squeaked through as the sole member of the Alba Party to win a seat, how significant or influential would that be?

JC: I think utterly uninfluential. In those circumstances I think he would find himself cutting a rather isolated and lonely figure in the parliament. It is clear his relationship with Nicola Sturgeon is poor. Even if the SNP don’t get an overall majority on their own, it looks as if the Greens are going to take the pro-independence side over the line. It’s the Greens who are probably going to secure a substantial majority of pro-independence MSPs.

To that extent it is not clear Alba will have any leverage, or that very many people in the parliament will want to be seen to be particularly close to the former first minister. He will hope the polls are wrong, and maybe they are, but I fear at the moment his political story is going to come to a rather unfortunate end after what in many respects has been a remarkable and very successful career.

Image source, PA Media

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar says Scotland faces a "stark choice" at Thursday’s election between the country’s recovery from the Covid pandemic and an independence referendum.

In an eve-of-poll message to voters, Mr Sarwar warned that “jobs are on the ballot - our children’s education is on the ballot - our NHS is on the ballot”.

He urged people to use both their votes for Labour, insisting that his is the only party which “has what it takes to hold the SNP to account and prevent an SNP majority”.

Mr Sarwar, who is standing against SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon in her Glasgow Southside constituency, said the SNP “cannot be trusted” and the Scottish Conservatives have been “exposed as a game-playing opposition”.

Image source, PA

BBC Radio Scotland

Polling expert Sir John Curtice (JC), Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, has been discussing some of the themes of this election on BBC Radio Scotland's Kaye Adams programme.

Q: What issues apart from independence have been cutting through?

JC: The constitutional question is the big dividing line for voters. The problem voters face if they want to vote on pretty much anything else is that it has proved to be quite difficult to find much difference between the parties on some of the issues. Glenn Campbell did have some success in last night's leaders’ debate in demonstrating that there are disagreements in how we should manage social care for example, and what we should do about taxation.

Many are asking why aren’t people holding the SNP to account about their record in office? But essentially the pandemic has wiped clean the political memory slate of everything that happened before March last year. It is very difficult to persuade voters to vote on the basis of how well or badly you thought the SNP were, for example, closing the education attainment gap up to 12 months ago.

Last year that perception that Nicola Sturgeon was dealing with the pandemic well was seemingly boosting support for independence, but that mood seems to have dissipated and is perhaps why we are now seeing support for independence back to around the 48-49% that it was before the pandemic started.

It is worth bearing in mind when we think about the scenario after 6 May. We are probably going to end up with a parliament with a substantial pro-independence majority but it will be representing a country that is split down the middle on the subject. An electoral system that was designed in part at least to try to block the path to independence is actually going to treat the pro-independence side favourably.

Image source, REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

Nicola Sturgeon argues she can provide strong, experienced leadership to keep Scotland safe "at this critical time for the country".

Ms Sturgeon took her "Both Votes SNP" tour to Footdee Harbour in Aberdeen and warned the election was "on a knife-edge" and "nothing can be taken for granted".

She said: “The SNP is the only party with an immediate plan to get Scotland through the Covid pandemic.

“By giving both votes to the SNP tomorrow people will get experienced leadership, a serious programme for government, and when the Covid crisis is over the right to decide whether Scotland should be an independent country.”

Image source, PA Media/Russell Cheyne

Analysis: Polling eve and dissolution daypublished at 12:18 British Summer Time 5 May 2021

12:18 BST 5 May 2021

Philip Sim
BBC Scotland political correspondent

Uniquely for a Scottish election, this isn’t just polling eve – it’s also dissolution day.

This means the Scottish Parliament has now formally broken up for the election. There is still a government in place, but MSPs are out of a job.

This would usually happen at the start of the campaign, six weeks before polling day. But Covid-19 meant members were kept on the books in case the parliament had to be recalled in the event of an emergency.

This is just another way in which the pandemic election has been a bit different – although when parliament was actually recalled it was due to the death of the Duke of Edinburgh rather than a fresh public health crisis.

For all that they only have one day to wait to cast a ballot in their bid to get back into Holyrood, the pandemic also means the now-former-MSPs will have a bit later to wait to see if they have succeeded.

With ballots being counted over Friday and Saturday, some will be on tenterhooks until well into the weekend to learn their political fate.

The co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, have been making their final pitch for votes. The party was in Edinburgh on the last day of campaigning.

Patrick Harvie said: “The stakes are high at this election. We’ve shown in our campaign that Green voters made a real difference to the last five years, and can have a huge impact in the next five years as we face up to the bold decisions needed to tackle the climate emergency.

“This is the time to take matters into our own hands, to build a Scotland that can lead Europe in tackling the climate emergency. But there is no time to lose. That’s why the time to vote Green is now. It’s time to vote like our future depends on it.”

Willie Rennie insisted the Liberal Democrat campaign was reaching new heights as he delivered his final pre-election message to voters.

The Scottish leader took to the skies in a microlight from North Berwick on his final day of campaigning.

Mr Rennie is confident his party can make gains at the Holyrood election to avoid "so much political energy being wasted" on an independence referendum.

He said depriving the SNP of a majority should put an end to its "constitutional obsession" allowing politicians to focus on recovery from the pandemic.

"I think most people would recognise - in the wake of a deadly pandemic where thousands of people have lost their lives and thousands more have lost their job - that maybe now is not the moment to pursue another referendum that inevitably, no matter what the best intentions are, is going to divide the country."

A day before the Holyrood vote, many of Scotland's newspapers discuss what last-minute polling might tell us about the result of tomorrow's election.

Take a look at some of the front page headlines here.

Unusual - but extremely high stakespublished at 10:53 British Summer Time 5 May 2021

10:53 BST 5 May 2021

Glenn Campbell
BBC Scotland Political Editor

Image source, PA Media

Hands left unshaken. Babies spared the kisses of publicity-hungry politicians. It is the most unusual Holyrood election.

Close contact with voters and their unsuspecting offspring is not allowed under Covid rules and that has changed the character of this campaign.

Social distancing has spared political candidates from much of the potential jeopardy of facing the public in community hustings or TV debate studios.

The pandemic has produced a more sanitised election - less eventful, even a little dull at times.

Read more here.

With only hours left to polling day, the leaders of Scotland's biggest political parties have made their final pitch to the nation in a BBC TV debate.

What were the key takeaways from the last big set-piece of the Holyrood campaign?

Image source, Pa Media

1. The parties actually have a lot in common
2. The row over indyref2 mandates has already begun
3. Covid-19 is a political issue
4. Parties are much happier talking about spending money than raising it
5. Familiar messages to the fore

Read more from our political correspondent Phil Sim here.

Today is the last chance for Scotland's main party leaders to pitch for your vote. How do they intend to go about it?

Willie Rennie will take to the sky to get the Scottish Lib Dems final message across - via a microlight flight.

Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie make a final push for your votes in Edinburgh.

Footdee Harbour in Aberdeen is where Nicola Sturgeon makes the case for another SNP government.

Anas Sarwar joins former prime minister Gordon Brown for an eve of poll drive-in rally for Labour supporters.

On the last day before polls open, Douglas Ross and Ruth Davidson will appeal to pro-UK voters to give their peach party list votes to the Scottish Conservatives.

Good morning and welcome to BBC Scotland's coverage of the final day of the Scottish Parliament election campaign.

Tomorrow from 7am voters can go to their polling station and decide who will represent them at Holyrood.

We'll keep you up to date with the latest news, analysis and explanation from the election trail.

We'll also take a look back at last night's final leaders' election debate.