Local elections 2021: a visual guide on what to expect in Scotland

Ashley Kirk and Pablo Gutiérrez
·3 min read

The Scottish parliamentary elections will take place on 6 May to elect 129 MSPs to Holyrood.

The results will determine whether Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National party (SNP) can secure a majority in favour of a second Scottish independence referendum.

Matters have been complicated by the fact that in late March the former first minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond announced his intention to run in the election as the leader of a new party called Alba.

scottish parliament makeup

In 2016 the SNP fell two seats short of a majority, with 63 seats in total. At the parliament’s dissolution it will be defending 61 of these. The Labour party dropped to third place for the first time after a large increase in support for the Conservatives.

Sturgeon’s SNP still dominates the electoral map, with Conservatives holding seats along the English border and Labour holding some seats in the central belt.

scotland map

Polling shows healthy SNP lead

The polling in Scotland is looking promising for Sturgeon, with a healthy lead for the SNP. The latest 10-poll average puts the party on 49.4%, well ahead of the second-placed Tories on 21.7%.

This lead has narrowed in recent months, with the Salmond crisis making SNP splits public, but still makes an SNP majority a reasonable outcome of the election.

scotland polling average

Salmond targets Scottish voting system

The news that Salmond is standing his newly formed pro-independence Alba party in the elections may initially sound like bad news for the SNP, threatening to split the pro-independence vote. But in fact, Scotland’s voting system – the additional member system (AMS) – allows for the two parties to potentially form a super-majority.

Under this system, there are 73 constituencies where the candidate with the most votes in each seat wins. This is similar to the Westminster system, which leads to an inconsistency between the number of seats won and the number of votes cast.

Scottish voters also get to cast an additional ballot in which they vote for a party. These votes are then counted in eight regions, and seats are allocated within those regions to top up the constituency totals in order to make the regional representation more representative of the party vote share.

Because of this, parties that win a lot of constituency seats tend not to win as many additional regional seats, as the regional lists aim to make the overall result better reflect the national vote. In 2016, 59 of the SNP’s 63 seats were constituency seats.

scotland regional v constituency seats

But Salmond’s Alba party plans to only stand candidates in the regional ballot, meaning that, if successful, the SNP will perform well again in the constituencies and then the other party will be topped up in the regional lists.

Such a move to exploit the electoral system would mean that previously wasted SNP votes in the regional ballot will count for another party with the same goal: an independent Scotland.

Elections will also take place on the same day to elect assemblies in Wales and London, as well as for 143 councils, 13 mayors and 39 police and crime commissioners in England.

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