Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Mayoral, Local Government and PCC elections

[Denzil_DC]

47. Scottish results are in.

The 2011 results are in brackets.

SNP - 63 (69)
Conservative - 31 (15)
Labour - 24 (37)
Greens - 6 (2)
Liberal Democrats - 5 (5)
Independent - 0 (1)


Of the SNP's total of 63 seats, 59 were won at constituency level (out of a total of 73 constituencies). The previous record was 53 constituency seats, won by Labour in 1999 and matched by the SNP in 2011. The SNP won the largest ever popular vote in the history of the Scottish Parliament at 1,059,897, 156,000 votes more than in the last Holyrood election. They polled more than Labour and the Tories' combined total of 1,016,105 votes.

The SNP needed 65 seats for an outright majority, so the full results show the balancing - and highly unpredictable - effect of the D'Hondt system. Although they retain power, an accommodation of some sort with other parties will be necessary - not for the first time, and the way the parliament was originally intended to function. The obvious informal partnership would be with the Greens, but the SNP has governed in the past by seeking support on a case-by-case basis from various parties, including the Tories.

Labour had an atrocious night. Kezia Dugdale was the only party leader other than the Greens' Co-convenor Patrick Harvie to fail to win a constituency seat. Both Dugdale and Harvie won list seats. Combined with having been overtaken resoundingly by the Tories and beaten into third place with a historically poor set of results, Dugdale's hat must be on a shoogly peg at this stage.

Ruth Davidson's Tories had an unarguably good night. There may be some buyers' remorse in coming months as the reality of the sort of party people have voted in as an opposition to the SNP dawns.

The Lib Dems had mixed results. Leader Willie Rennie unexpectedly won a constituency seat, but they didn't increase their number of MSPs, and their constituency vote was the lowest since devolution.

The Greens fared well, solely on regional list seats. Ross Greer, who I expressed my distaste for above, got in on the West of Scotland list. Ho hum. On the brighter side, dogged land reform campaigner Andy Wightman enters Holyrood, where he's likely to be quite an asset.

UKIP didn't win a Highlands & Islands list seat after all, so there must be some shreds of sanity left up there.

At local level, Jackie Baillie squeaked in with a greatly reduced majority of just over a hundred over her SNP challenger. She'd have gotten in on the list if she'd lost her seat anyway, which takes the sting away a little.

So there you have it. A by-election or two could make things even more interesting in due course.