Next Scottish Parliament election

Next Scottish Parliament election

6 May 2021

All 129 seats to the Scottish Parliament 65 seats needed for a majority   First party Second party Third party   Leader Nicola Sturgeon Ruth Davidson Kezia Dugdale Party SNP Conservative Labour Leader since 14 November 2014 4 November 2011 15 August 2015 Leader's seat Glasgow Southside Edinburgh Central Lothian (List) Last election 63 seats 31 seats 24 seats   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman Willie Rennie Party Scottish Green Liberal Democrats Leader since 17 May 2011 Leader's seat Glasgow (List) (Harvie) North East Fife Last election 6 seats 5 seats

First Minister before election Nicola Sturgeon SNP Elected First Minister TBD

The next Scottish Parliament election is due to be held on Thursday 6 May 2021^[1] to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament. It would be the sixth general election since the parliament was established in 1999.

Five parties had MSPs in the fifth parliament: Scottish National Party (SNP) led by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Conservatives led by Ruth Davidson, Scottish Labour Party led by Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Greens, led by their co-conveners Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman, and the Scottish Liberal Democrats, led by Willie Rennie.

Date

Under the Scotland Act 1998, an ordinary general election to the Scottish Parliament would normally have been held on the first Thursday in May four years after the 2016 election, i.e. in May 2020.^[2] This would clash with the proposed date of the next United Kingdom general election.^[3] In November 2015, the Scottish Government published a Scottish Elections (Dates) Bill, which proposed to extend the term of the Parliament to five years.^[3] That Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 25 February 2016 and received Royal Assent on 30 March 2016, setting the new date for the election as 6 May 2021.^[1]

The date of the poll may be varied by up to one month either way by the monarch, on the proposal of the Presiding Officer.^[2]

If Parliament itself resolves that it should be dissolved, with at least two-thirds of the Members (i.e. 86 Members) voting in favour, the Presiding Officer proposes a date for an extraordinary general election and the Parliament is dissolved by the monarch by royal proclamation.^[4]

It does not necessarily require a two-thirds majority to precipitate an extraordinary general election, because under the Scotland Act Parliament is also dissolved if it fails to nominate one of its members to be First Minister within certain time limits, irrespective of whether at the beginning or in the middle of a parliamentary term.^[4] Therefore, if the First Minister resigned, Parliament would then have 28 days to elect a successor (s46(2)b and s46(3)a). If no new First Minister was elected then the Presiding Officer would ask for Parliament to be dissolved under s3(1)a. This process could also be triggered if the First Minister lost a vote of confidence by a simple majority (i.e. more than 50%), as s/he must then resign (Scotland Act 1998 s45(2)). To date the Parliament has never held a confidence vote on a First Minister.

No extraordinary general elections have been held to date. Any extraordinary general elections would be in addition to ordinary general elections, unless held less than six months before the due date of an ordinary general election, in which case they supplant it.^[4] The subsequent ordinary general election reverts to the first Thursday in May, a multiple of four years after 1999.^[4]

Election system, seats, and regions

The total number of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) elected to the Parliament is 129.

The First Periodical Review of the Scottish Parliament's constituencies and regions by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, was announced on 3 July 2007. The Commission published its provisional proposals for the regional boundaries in 2009.

The Scottish Parliament uses an Additional Members System, designed to produce approximate proportional representation for each region. There are 8 regions, each sub-divided into smaller constituencies. There are a total of 73 constituencies. Each constituency elects one MSP by the plurality (first past the post) system of election. Each region elects 7 additional MSPs using an additional member system. A modified D'Hondt method, using the constituency results, is used to elect these additional MSPs.^[5][6]

The Scottish Parliament constituencies have not been coterminous with Scottish Westminster constituencies since the 2005 general election, when the 72 former UK Parliament constituencies were replaced with a new set of 59, generally larger, constituencies (see Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004). The boundaries used for the Scottish Parliament elections were then revised for the 2011 election. The Boundary Commission also recommended changes to the electoral regions used to elect "list" members of the Scottish Parliament,^[7] which were also implemented in 2011. The Westminster constituency boundaries are due to be revised, with the intention of reducing the total number of seats to 600 and equalising the number of voters in each constituency.

Opinion polling

Constituency polling

Regional polling

Date(s) conducted	Polling organisation/client	Sample size	SNP	Con	Lab	Green	Lib Dem	UKIP	RISE	Others	Lead
24th-29th Nov 2016	YouGov/The Times	1,134	39%	24%	14%	11%	6%	4%	1%	0%	15%
28 Sep–4 Oct 2016	BMG Research	1,010	43%	20%	16%	8%	7%	3%		1%	23%
29–31 Aug 2016	YouGov/The Times	1,039	45%	21%	15%	9%	6%	2%	0%	0%	24%
24–28 Jun 2016	Survation/Scottish Daily Mail	1,055	40.6%	20.3%	15.9%	11.6%	6.9%	3.5%		1%	20.3%
5 May	General Election Result	2,285,752	41.7%	22.9%	19.1%	6.6%	5.2%	2.0%	0.5%	2.0%	18.8%

Target seats

Below are listed all the constituencies which require a swing of less than 5% from the 2016 results to change hands.

SNP targets

Conservative targets

Labour targets

References

Elections and referendums in Scotland
Scottish elections	Pre-1707 1999 2003 2007 2011 2016 Next
UK elections	1801 co-option 1802 1806 1807 1812 1818 1820 1826 1830 1831 1832 1835 1837 1841 1847 1852 1857 1859 1865 1868 1874 1880 1885 1886 1892 1895 1900 1906 1910 (Jan) 1910 (Dec) 1918 1922 1923 1924 1929 1931 1935 1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb) 1974 (Oct) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015
Local elections	1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1977 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1995 1999 2003 2007 2012 2017
Referendums	1979 1997 2014
Local referendums	Scottish licensing referendums Strathclyde (water) 1994 Edinburgh (congestion charge) 2005
See also: Elections in the Kingdom of Scotland (Pre-1707) Great Britain (1707–1800) United Kingdom Politics of Scotland