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Scotland uses different electoral systems for elections to (the UK) Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and to local councils. A different system was also in use between 1999 and 2019 for United Kingdom elections to the European Parliament. Historically, only First Past the Post (FPTP) was used for all elections in Scotland, but this changed in 1999 both with the introduction of D'Hondt elections to the EU Parliament and the inception the same year of the devolved Scottish Parliament. [1] Two of the devolved legislatures in the United Kingdom - the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd - use the Additional Members System (AMS). [2] AMS has been used for every Scottish Parliament election since 1999, with the most recent being in 2021.
Local council elections were reformed to be held under Single Transferable Vote (STV), [3] which has proven to be proportional, unlike FPTP.
However, elections to the UK Parliament are still held under FPTP. [4] This has led to the Scottish National Party (SNP) dominating Scottish seats in the UK Parliament. The SNP won 48/59 seats in Scotland in 2019, while the Conservative Party won 6 seats, the Liberal Democrats won 4 seats, and Labour won 1 seat. [5]
The history of using First Past the Post in UK Parliament elections in Scotland means that the development of political parties in Scotland was affected to some extent by Duverger's Law, which causes the agglomeration of related political ideologies into a few large parties with many small parties rarely winning representation, though a four party system did develop in Scotland prior to the introduction of voting reform.
The Scottish Parliament uses the additional member system (AMS), a compensatory form of proportional representation, to elect MSPs.
It consists of 73 FPTP constituencies and 8 regional lists. [6] The 8 regions are: [7]
All together, every area of Scotland has 8 MSPs (1 constituency and 7 regional). A voter is given two ballot papers, one peach coloured and the other lilac. On the constituency ballot the voter has to put a cross in the box next to one of the candidates they want to represent them. On the regional list ballot the voter does the same, but for the party they want to represent them. The regional list ballot paper is usually a lot longer than the constituency ballot paper as smaller parties have more of a chance of being elected on the regional list. [8]
The method of calculating which parties win regional list seats is called the 'D'Hondt' method. The specific method used for Scottish Parliament regions gives preference to parties which haven't won any constituency seats in the region.
AMS doesn't always provide a proportional result, as parties can obtain a higher seat share than vote share. In recent years, this has benefited the SNP, although in the early years of the Scottish Parliament Scottish Labour was the main beneficiary.
Elections to Scotland's 32 councils are held under Single Transferable Vote (STV). All wards in Scotland are multi-member wards, meaning there are multiple councillors per area.
Under this system, voters must number their candidates by preference. First-preference votes are counted and the candidates with the least get eliminated, so the first-preference votes for the candidates get ignored and their second preferences get counted instead. This continues for many rounds until one candidate wins.
This has proven to be more proportional than many other systems and small parties and independents have a lot of representation in local councils due to the system, for example Highlands Council is run by independents.
All elections to the UK Parliament are held under First Past the Post (FPTP). There was a referendum in 2011 proposing to change the electoral system to Alternative Vote, which returned a result in favour of keeping FPTP.
There has been reluctance from both Labour and Conservative (UK) Governments to back electoral reform, it has been argued this is because they heavily benefit from FPTP.[ citation needed ]
Under this system, voters put a cross in the box next to the candidate they want to represent their constituency, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This simplicity of this system means there is a higher turnout than elections under other systems. While this may be the case, parties with less than 50% of the vote commonly get a large majority of seats and form the government. For example, in the 1997 General election, Tony Blair's Labour Party won 43.2% of the vote, but 63.4% of seats in parliament.
Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which the candidate in an electoral district who poll more than any other are elected.
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone – not just a bare plurality or (exclusively) the majority – and that the system produces mixed, balanced representation reflecting how votes are cast.
The single transferable vote (STV), sometimes mistakenly conflated with proportional ranked choice voting (P-RCV), is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes, so that their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running. STV aims to approach proportional representation based on votes cast in the district where it is used, so that each vote is worth about the same as another.
Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is an electoral system used to elect multiple winners. It is a generalization of first-past-the-post, applied to multi-member districts with each voter casting just one vote. Unlike FPTP, which is a single-winner system, in SNTV multiple winners are elected, typically in electoral districts; additionally, unlike FPTP, SNTV produces mixed representation and makes it unlikely for a single party to take all the seats in a city or a set area, which can happen under FPTP.
The additional-member system (AMS) is a mixed electoral system under which most representatives are elected in single-member districts (SMDs), and the other "additional members" are elected to make the seat distribution in the chamber more proportional to the way votes are cast for party lists. It is distinct from parallel voting in that the "additional member" seats are awarded to parties taking into account seats won in SMDs, which is not done under parallel voting.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system which combines local majoritarian elections with a compensatory tier of party list votes, which are used to allocate additional members in a way that aims to produce proportional representation overall. In most MMP systems, voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Some countries use single vote variants of MMP, although this article focuses primarily on dual vote versions of MMP.
First-past-the-post voting is a plurality voting system wherein voters cast a vote for a single candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election. Analogous systems for multi-winner contests are known as plurality block voting or "block voting" systems; both FPTP and block voting are "plurality" systems in that the winner needs only a plurality of the votes and not an absolute majority.
Parallel voting is a type of mixed electoral system in which representatives are voted into a single chamber using two or more different systems, most often first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) with party-list proportional representation (PR). It is the most common form of mixed member majoritarian representation (MMM), which is why these terms are often used synonymously with each other. In some countries, parallel voting is known as the supplementary member (SM) system, while in academic literature it is sometimes called the superposition method within mixed systems.
The alternative vote plus (AV+), or alternative vote top-up, is a semi-proportional voting system. AV+ was devised by the 1998 Jenkins Commission which first proposed the idea as a system that could be used for elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Historically, the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system has seen a series of relatively modest periods of usage and disusage throughout the world; however, today it is seeing increasing popularity and proposed implementation as a method of proportional representation and a goal of electoral reform. STV has been used in many different local, regional and national electoral systems, as well as in various other types of bodies, around the world.
Scotland has elections to several bodies: the Scottish Parliament, the United Kingdom Parliament, local councils and community councils. Before the United Kingdom left the European Union, Scotland elected members to the European Parliament.
The 2011 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2011 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament.
The 2007 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday 3 May 2007 to elect members to the Scottish Parliament. It was the third general election to the devolved Scottish Parliament since it was created in 1999. Local elections in Scotland fell on the same day.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections, and police and crime commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday, and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the prime minister during any five-year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality, the single transferable vote, the additional member system, and the supplementary vote.
The United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, also known as the UK-wide referendum on the Parliamentary voting system was held on Thursday 5 May 2011 in the United Kingdom to choose the method of electing MPs at subsequent general elections. It occurred as a provision of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement drawn up in 2010 and also indirectly in the aftermath of the 2009 expenses scandal. It operated under the provisions of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and was the first national referendum to be held under provisions laid out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Many local elections were also held on this day.
Semi-proportional representation characterizes multi-winner electoral systems which allow representation of minorities, but are not intended to reflect the strength of the competing political forces in close proportion to the votes they receive. Semi-proportional voting systems are generally used as a compromise between complex and expensive but more-proportional systems and simple winner-take-all systems. Examples of semi-proportional systems include the single non-transferable vote, limited voting, and parallel voting.
A mixed electoral system or mixed-member electoral system combines methods of majoritarian and proportional representation (PR). The majoritarian component is usually first-past-the-post voting (FPTP/SMP), whereas the proportional component is most often based on party-list PR. The results of the combination may be mixed-member proportional (MMP), where the overall results of the elections are proportional, or mixed-member majoritarian, in which case the overall results are semi-proportional, retaining disproportionalities from the majoritarian component.
The Italian electoral law of 2017, colloquially known by the nickname Rosatellum bis or simply Rosatellum after Ettore Rosato, the Democratic Party (PD) leader in the Chamber of Deputies who first proposed the new law, is a parallel voting system, which acts as a mixed electoral system, with 37% of seats allocated using a first-past-the-post electoral system and 63% using a proportional method, with one round of voting. The Chamber and Senate of the Republic did not differ in the way they allocated the proportional seats, both using the largest remainder method of allocating seats.
Rural–urban proportional representation (RUP), also called flexible district PR, is a mixed electoral system which combines the use of single- and multi-member constituencies in a lower tier and top-up seats in an upper tier to meet the different needs of both rural and urban areas, while protecting the objective of proportionality. The term was coined by Fair Vote Canada, which devised a rural–urban system with the intention of meeting the special challenges of Canada's geography, which includes wide-flung, sparsely populated areas.