Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross struggled to answer when asked if he thought Rishi Sunak would win the General Election.
The Herald asked the Holyrood Tory boss three times if he thought his party would triumph on July 4.
It was only on the third time of asking that Mr Ross replied with a lukewarm “absolutely.”
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The MSP’s reluctance to predict a victory for his colleagues comes as polls show Labour extending its lead.
A survey carried out by Opinium for the Observer gave Sir Keir Starmer’s party a 20-point lead – the highest level the firm has recorded since Liz Truss’s brief time in No 10.
An MRP poll on Friday suggested the Tories could even be reduced to just 66 seats.
However, while UK-wide polls suggest a wipeout, the falling SNP vote means the Scottish Tories could hold on to their six MPs in the North East and the borders.
Mr Ross was speaking to journalists as he outlined his party’s new policy proposal for a £2 cap on bus fares.
He was visiting the First Bus depot in Glasgow’s southside.
Asked if he thought his party could still win the election despite the poor showing in the polls, he replied: “Well, I'm looking at the response we're getting on the doorstep here in Scotland.
“I've been in East Renfrewshire, I've been in Moray, up in in the North East, in Glasgow today, going down to the borders later on and right across the country people can see in key seats where it's a straight choice between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP, they're uniting behind the Scottish Conservatives.”
He said voters could not believe John Swinney was “still obsessing about independence” rather than the NHS, or education, taxation.
Asked again if he thought the Tories could win, he said: “I'm answering your question very specifically, by saying the opinion polls are not reflective of what I'm hearing on the doorsteps.
“In any part of Scotland I'm going to at the moment people can see that in key seats it's a straight choice between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP and they are uniting behind the Scottish Conservatives, because of the way the SNP have handled public services here in Scotland for the last 17 years, 16 of which John Swinney has been at the heart of.”
Asked for a third time if Mr Sunak and the Tories could win the election, Mr Ross replied “Absolutely, and what I'm saying is that here in Scotland, people are uniting behind the Scottish Conservatives to beat the SNP, and that is the message that I'm taking out in key seats across the country. And we're getting a very positive response to that.”
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Mr Ross was asked if he would support tactical voting in seats where the fight was between Labour and the SNP or the Lib Dems and the SNP.
He said: "I'm always going to encourage people to vote Scottish Conservative, I'm the Scottish Conservative leader, but what is very clear is Scotland is different from the rest of the United Kingdom because there are many seats where it's a straight choice between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP.
"Labour and the Liberal Democrats can't win in the seats, and if voters don't want a nationalist obsessed with independence, they can unite behind the Scottish conservative candidate who will be focused on the issues that really matter to them."
The survey by Opinium, carried out among 2,184 UK adults online from Wednesday May 29 to Friday May 31, put Labour on 45%, the Tories on 25%, Reform on 11%, the Liberal Democrats on 8% and the SNP on 3%.
Sky News are set to publish another seat-by-seat MRP on Monday evening.
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