Thursday’s Scottish Parliament elections saw the SNP emerge as the largest party in Scotland for the fifth consecutive election, winning 58 of the 129 seats available. The election also saw a breakthrough for Reform UK, who won 17 seats.
Whilst the election might not represent a huge amount of change (the SNP will almost certainly form the next Scottish Government), there are several ways that the election results can be incorporated into a number of different areas of the A level course.
Electoral systems
The additional member system (AMS) combines both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and proportional representation. It means that the MP-constituency link is retained, but it also ensures that smaller parties whose vote is not sufficiently concentrated to win a plurality are still able to win seats. This is because the distribution of regional seats takes into account the number of seats already won under FPTP.
A good example of this is in the Central Second and Lothians West region. The region comprises of nine single-member constituencies and seven regional members. The SNP won all nine constituency seats, and the party also won the most votes of any party on the regional list. However, because the party performed so well under FPTP, it doesn’t receive any additional seats. These instead went to Reform (3), Labour (2), the Greens (1) and the Conservatives (1). It means that, overall, five parties have representation in the Scottish Parliament for the region.
Looking across Scotland as a whole, Reform were clear beneficiaries of AMS. Reform was not able to win a single seat under the FPTP method, despite polling 15.8% of the vote. However, under the proportional system for electing regional MSPs, it gained 17 seats (13.2% of the total seats) – winning at least one seat in each of the eight regions. This is a far more proportional outcome than at the 2024 UK General Election, when the party won just five seats (0.8% of the total) despite receiving 14.3% of the vote.
It is also noteworthy that the proportional seats eliminate the need for tactical voting. The Scottish Greens, for example, jumped from 2.3% of the vote under FPTP to 14.3% on the regional list. This is because many Green voters know the party will struggle to win a plurality of the votes, which risks their vote being wasted. However, under the proportional system, every vote counts.
Minor and emerging parties
Whilst the SNP dominating Scottish Parliament elections is nothing new, it continues to serve as a good example of why the UK can be said to have developed a multi-party system. Although relatively small in the House of Commons (the SNP won nine seats in the 2024 General Election), they have been the largest party in Holyrood since 2007. Combined with the Welsh Parliament results, it means that the largest party in each of the devolved regions is a nationalist party (Plaid in Wales and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland). This could also be used as a reason to suggest that devolution has weakened the Union.
The strong performance of Reform UK in Scotland (tied with Labour in second place) is further reason to think that the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives is looking increasingly precarious. It also goes some way to challenging the notion that Reform is an ‘English’ party rather than a British one.
The results will be particularly disappointing for Labour, which two years ago was level in the polls with the SNP. John Swinney’s leadership of the SNP has gone a long way towards repairing the damage done to the party by Nicola Sturgeon and the collapse of the SNP-Green arrangement during Humza Yousaf’s year as First Minister.