The final poll to be published this March suggests the SNP are on track to coming close to winning a majority of seats — on a vote share that doesn’t reflect their projected seat share at all.
The new Survation poll (data collected 16 – 23 March) gives the SNP 35% (constituency) and 32% (list) of the vote. Projections, including from Ballot Box Scotland, suggest this would give the SNP 62 seats. That’s three seats short of a majority and 48% of seats.
That mismatch of seats and votes is shocking, and doesn’t reflect the founding principle of proportionality underpinning the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
The next Scottish Parliament must address this broken link between seats and votes.
This divergence of seats and votes is driven by the imbalance of constituency and list seats in the Scottish Parliament. 73 out of the 129 seats are elected via First Past the Post, meaning that a party can do well winning lots of these even if their vote share doesn’t reflect their success in winning seats. This is compounded by the limited number of list seats available, meaning other parties can’t be compensated for the SNP winning more seats via constituencies than they would be entitled to if all seats were allocated proportionality.
With the election campaign now underway, there’s a very real chance the polls could change. But as things stand, Holyrood is on track for the most unrepresentative Parliament in its history.
The next Scottish Parliament must review its voting system and commit to reform in order to improve proportionality and voter power over candidates. This poll highlights another reason to address the Additional Member System’s flaws and upgrade Scottish democracy.
The Scottish Parliament’s Additional Member System is significantly more representative than Westminster’s First Past the Post electoral system. But AMS has significant flaws that need to be addressed.
Recent polls suggest that the SNP could win close to a majority of seats – or possibly a majority – on far less than a majority of votes.
This is largely down to the imbalance of constituency seats to list seats alongside one party, in this case the SNP, doing significantly better than other parties across Scottish constituencies.
Since the advent of devolution in 1999, there have been 73 constituency seats to 56 list seats. This means that one party could theoretically win a majority of seats on constituency seats only.
Such an outcome is possible in 7 May 2026, according to recent polling.
Modifying the Additional Member System
One way to address this would be to reform AMS (although it’s worth noting the system has wider flaws that would still persist).
This could involve the introduction of levelling seats if seats don’t match votes. Or else adding two MSPs to each region, creating a more 50-50 sit of constituency and list MSPs.
Alternatively, the number of constituency seats could be cut and replaced by list MSPs. This is an option if decision-makers are wedded to 129 MSPs.
Alternatively, it is worth considering other voting systems. Introducing the Single Transferable Vote, if designed well, could improve proportionality while also empowering voters and giving them the option to vote across different parties.
A more radical alternative would be to introduce an Open List system Proportional Representation with levelling seats to maximise proportionality.
The seventh Scottish Parliament must fix the voting system
So far, Holyrood election results have been broadly proportional. But the 2026 election risks exposes a major problem with the Additional Member System, namely the First Past the Post element.
Reform UK is the first of Scotland’s six main parties to launch a manifesto ahead of the Scottish Parliament election on 7 May.
Its recently appointed leader Malcolm Offord, who defected from the Conservatives earlier this year, unveiled the document on Thursday 19 May. The party also revealed its candidates for the election.
The manifesto includes a series of pledges relating to democracy and the constitution. While there are some welcome ideas, notably a recall rule for MSPs, overall the party’s pledges are not right for improving Scottish democracy — and in some cases deeply troubling. Not to mention, there is a considerable lack of detail on numerous pledges and what they will mean in practice.
Here’s what Nigel Farage’s party wants to see on the issue of democracy in Scotland.
1. Reducing the number of MSPs
The manifesto includes a proposal to reduce the number of MSPs by linking Holyrood constituency boundaries with Westminster, which would cut the number of constituency MSPs from 73 to 57 seats. This would leave a total of 113 MSPs if list MSPs were all retained.
While this could arguably increase proportionality at Holyrood by addressing the imbalance of constituency seats to list seats, that is clearly not the purpose here.
Instead, it appears that the intent of this is to weaken Holyrood; the Scottish Parliament has gained significant powers in recent years, and if anything, it should increase its number of MSPs alongside electoral reform to improve proportionality.
The party proposes a recall rule for MSPs, something that has existed in Westminster now for over a decade under a very specific set of circumstances.
A similar process is being established in Wales.
If designed well, a recall rule is welcome. But there is no detail on how such a rule would operate in Malcolm Offord’s manifesto.
3. Cutting Quangos
The manifesto puts the party’s support behind cutting Quangos, with the intention of returning “powers to democratically elected ministers supported by the civl service”.
While there is possibly some potential for valid savings and spending money better elsewhere, the detail of what this would mean is far from clear.
The party says it would focus parliamentary time on devolved rather than reserved matters. While it’s difficult to calculate the exact figures, the vast majority of time spent in the Chamber at Holyrood is certainly focused on devolved matters, and rightly so.
But there’s also a place for focusing some time on reserved issues. It would be an odd spectacle for ministers and MSPs not to address matters of UK-wide and worldwide importance on some level.
The party supports having committee Conveners elected by MSPs rather than appointed by parties and reducing committee sizes to seven.
Ensuring Conveners are elected could strengthen accountability. As for reducing committee sizes, there could be practical benefits of this, however, this would reduce diversity of parties represented on committees. Not to mention this is probably a consequence of the party’s pledge to cut MSP numbers.
The party also pledges to review devolved powers every ten years. This is deeply worrying and adds to concerns from Reform’s plans to cut MSP numbers.
Devolution must be protected and promoted against these threats. The Scottish Parliament has its faults, yes, but those should be fixed to strengthen its foundations rather than exploited to undermine it.
7. No to independence
Lastly, the party has reaffirmed its commitment to the union, stating firm opposition to independence.
What about the other parties?
The SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Greens and Scottish Liberal Democrats are expected to publish their respective manifestos in the coming weeks.
Upgrade Holyrood will publish similar articles in the coming weeks — outlining each party’s stance on democracy.
Concern is growing ahead of the 2026 election that the result after 7 May will be the most unrepresentative Scottish Parliament vote ever.
Proportionality was one of the founding principles of the design of Scotland’s Additional Member System. It’s not perfect, but since 1999 seats have broadly matched votes. Now, due to a combination of the imbalance of constituency to list seats (73 to 56) and one party expected to do well in constituencies despite falling well short of a majority of the constituency vote, the next Scottish Parliament is likely to fall well short of the proportional standards expected.
Are MSPs able to abolish the Additional Member System?
If election projections come true, the next parliament must seize the moment and find consensus to fix Holyrood’s creaking voting system.
The way to do this is through a Bill passed with a supermajority in Holyrood. That’s two-thirds of MSPs. Therefore any change requires broad consensus from multiple parties to meet the magic number of 86 MSPs.
The possibility of electoral reform in Scotland depends on what happens after the election. The bigger the disproportionality, the more pressure there will be on MSPs and ministers to act.
The SNP, Lib Dems and Scottish Greens all support Proportional Representation. And together, they are likely to have a two-thirds majority, but finding agreement on the type of reform will be the challenge – not to mention conflicts in the SNP about maintaining the status-quo for their own advantage versus their commendable party stance on the issue.
There are certainly issues needing ironed out. But there is precedent for this in the devolution era. In Wales, Labour and Plaid Cymru came together to abolish the Additional Member System ahead of their own 2026 vote, and in Scotland, the Lib Dems convinced their coalition partners Labour to introduce STV for Scottish local government.
Holyrood is turning 30 in the next parliament. It’s time to review Scotland’s democratic foundations and reform the voting system once and for all.
A new poll suggests that the Scottish Parliament is on track for a highly unrepresentative election despite Holyrood’s supposedly proportional voting system.
The Ipsos Scotland Political Pulse poll for STV puts the SNP first in terms of list votes, constituency votes and projected seats.
Party
Constituency %
List vote %
SNP
36%
26%
Labour
20%
19%
Green
7%
16%
Reform UK
19%
14%
Conservatives
9%
11%
Lib Dems
10%
10%
In a properly proportional system, seats should broadly match votes cast. But seat projections for this poll indicate a staggering mismatch between seats and votes.
Party
Seat count
Seat %
SNP
60
46.5%
Labour
20
15.5%
Green
16
12.4%
Reform
13
10.1%
Conservatives
10
7.8%
Lib Dems
10
7.8%
The biggest divergence between seats and votes here is with the SNP. Support for the party has fallen dramatically to 26% of list votes and 36% of seats. But projections indicate they are on track for 60 seats – almost half of those available.
The main driver behind this mismatch is driven by the dominance of First Past the Post seats used in Scotland’s Additional Member System, an imbalanced ratio of 73 to 56. This makes it theoretically possible for a party to win a majority on constituency seats alone.
The SNP is doing better than other competitive parties on the constituency ballot, and due to their success, they are on track to win the vast majority of constituency seats and close to a majority of seats overall.
The SNP is set to win more seats than they are entitled to if Holyrood had a mechanism to address parties winning more seats than they proportionally should on the constituency vote. In fact, Ballot Box Scotland estimates that the poll puts them on a staggering 22 seats more than what they should win if seats were determined by the proportional ballot alone in different Scottish regions.
The latest poll from Ipsos shows why it’s time to ditch the Additional Member System used to elect MSPs.
The company’s latest survey grabbed the headlines for placing Reform second, behind the SNP, on the constituency vote. Neither Nigel Farage’s rising party, nor UKIP before it, have even won seats at Holyrood so this result would be a seismic shift in voter behaviour.
However, beneath the headlines of Reform’s surge, the polling numbers alongside seat projections tell a different story. One of a creaking electoral system past its best.
The poll puts the SNP on 35% and 28% for constituency and list vote shares respectively. According to projections by Ballot Box Scotland, that is estimated to give the party 60 seats. That’s almost 47% of seats available.
The difference is staggering. Under AMS where seats are meant to match list vote share, BBS projects that the party would likely win around 40 seats. That’s still above the 28% of seats they would be entitled to under a fully proportional system (usual caveats about different voting systems impacting voting intention).
The biggest difference here is with the SNP. The party has lost significant support since 2021 but benefits from a fragmented unionist vote, with four parties competing for anti-independence voters – namely the Lib Dems, Labour, Conservatives and Reform.
BBS projects Scottish Labour would win 19 seats if Scotland voted like this. That’s 4 fewer than if a more proportional AMS was used (23).
Reform lose out the most, projected to win 6 short of the 23 they would win in a “better AMS”.
The Greens are projected to win 17 seats (AMS ideal: 21), the Conservatives 11 (AMS ideal: 14) and the Lib Dems 5 (compared to 8 under AMS ideal).
This result would mark a major shift in Scottish party politics, and a major decline in support for the Westminster duopoly. But that change risks not being fully shown in terms of seats.
Next year marks 27 years of devolution and the seventh Scottish election. Wales has reviewed and changed its fairly disproportional voting system for something somewhat better. Scotland’s seventh parliament should legislate to do the same.
The risk of 2021 was Alex Salmond’s Alba gaming the system to win a disproportionate independence supermajority. As we know, that outcome never emerged. This time, the threat of a seriously disproportionate election result comes from something much more likely. If the results in May look something like this, let’s hope they’re a wake-up call to our new legislators.
Before the return of Donald Trump, Canada’s Conservative looked set to sail to power in 2025, ending a decade of Liberal rule. But a maverick president and his trade war have shifted the dial dramatically, resulting in Liberal Mark Carney returning as Prime Minister, having called an early election just weeks into the job. The Conservative leader even lost his seat.
There are of course significant geopolitical implications flowing from this development as the world grapple with an emboldened President Trump, but it’s important to examine Canada’s election through the lens of electoral reform.
The flaws of First Past the Post exposed once again
Like the UK, Canada uses the unrepresentative First Past the Post system to elect MPs. As in 2024’s UK General Election, Canada has been given a parliament that doesn’t fairly reflect how people vote.
The Liberals have likely won just shy of a majority of seats on around 43% of the vote (although with some places still counting a majority government is still technically possible). Their vote share is the party’s largest in decades but that doesn’t legitimise the country’s unfair voting system and shouldn’t lead them to winning almost half the seats available.
The Conservatives have in fact won a vote share roughly proportional to the number of seats they won, but that is a rarity in FPTP politics and doesn’t mitigate the fact that millions of Canadians voted Conservative but are without direct Conservative representation.
Then there’s the NDP. The party have suffered at the hands of their former voters turning on them and backing Carney to oppose Poilievre and Trump. The party has been reduced to just 2% of seats on 6% of the vote, significantly fewer than if seats matched votes.
Of course, while the NDP stand across Canada and Bloc Québécois in only one province, the parties won similar vote shares but notably different numbers of seats (the Bloc doing better by winning over 20 seats).
Carney’s win follows two elections (2019 and 2021) where the Liberals under Justin Trudeau won the most seats, forming minority governments, but on fewer votes than the Conservatives.
While Canadians have avoided a third wrong-winner election in a row, seats overall still don’t match votes and voters are stuck with single-member ridings where MPs can’t fairly represent all their constituents.
Canada’s missed opportunity for Proportional Representation
Most campaigners for electoral reform across the English speaking world will know that Trudeau famously promised to abolish First Past the Post ahead of the 2015.
His party leapfrogged from third to first-place, forming a government with a majority of seats, then U-turned, making no effort to reform the voting system despite a decade in power.
Frustratingly, as in the UK, First Past the Post remains in place to this day. Voting reform didn’t even get a mention in Carney’s 2025 manifesto.
Canada, like the UK, has a strong case to give FPTP the boot and embrace Proportional Representation.
The Scottish Conservatives are using the Alternative Vote to elect their new leader, following the departure of Douglas Ross from the top job. The Alternative Vote is a preferential system for single-seat positions, allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference to ensure the winner receives a broad base of support.
There’s no denying this system is fairer and more representative than First Past the Post. Indeed with at least six candidates standing to replace Douglas Ross, under FPTP the winner could in theory have been elected with less than 17% of the total vote. However, AV negates this possibility.
The Scottish Conservatives ultimately recognise the absurdity of FPTP hence their use of AV to elect their leaders. Furthermore, the party benefits significantly from the broadly proportional Additional Member System used to elect MSPs. If the Scottish Parliament used, First Past the, the SNP would likely have completely dominated at the 2021 election.
Yet the Conservatives continue to back First Past the Post for Westminster elections. If preferential voting is good enough for internal elections, it begs the question why not support the Single Transferable Vote for Westminster votes?
Of course, the way we elect representatives isn’t going to take centre stage in this election. But it’s worth flagging the mismatch between Conservative support for First Past the Post at Westminster with their rejection of it to elect their own leaders.
Conservatives should consider that when ranking candidates one to six in the coming weeks rather than marking an “x” in the box.
The 2024 UK General Election has exposed the flaws of Westminster’s First Past the Post once again.
The 4 July vote shows just how much the voting system used to elect MPs distorts how people vote at the ballot box. While Labour did well, Keir Starmer’s party won 63% of seats on just 34% of the vote.
This is a staggering mismatch between seats and votes, exposing the absurd unfairness of our electoral system once again.
Meanwhile, Reform secured 14% of the vote. Under a proportional voting system they would have roughly 14% seats but in the end they only scraped five seats. Similarly, the Greens only managed four seats on 7% of the vote.
The Lib Dems won 72 seats (11% of those available) on 12% vote, by coincidence broadly in line with their share of the vote. While the Conservatives – champions of our regressive system – suffered at its hands by winning 19% of seats on 24% of the vote.
The election has been called the most unrepresentative in British political history. In fact, the Gallagher index (a measure of electoral proportionality) was 24 (the highest ever in a UK election), backing these claims.
Some discussion of the Gallagher Index in the last few days, but the alternative Sainte-Laguë index paints an even worse picture – giving a disproportionality score of 48.8, a solid 49% more skewed than the second least proportional election (2015). pic.twitter.com/yoUHGrIEls
Of course, anti-Consevative tactical voting likely widened the disparity between seats and votes – with Lib Dem votes piling up in areas they could win and Labour in areas they could take. But that’s no excuse for the reality where we have a system in which, forgetting all motivations for why people vote a particular way, the total number of votes per party doesn’t result in result in matching seat shares. Tactical voting is a symptom of First Past the Post, showing the need for electoral reform. And at the end of the day, people deserve to vote for their favoured candidates without the fear that their vote won’t count. You should be able to vote for something, rather than forced into voting against something else.
First Past the Post has once again been exposed as a failed system. But with this comes opportunity for change.
While Labour’s leadership oppose a change in voting system, the massive mismatch is cutting through to citizens. There’s an opportunity here to stress this mismatch and make the case for Proportional Representation and continue the fight for reform.
It’s time to redouble our efforts to secure electoral reform. It’s time for Proportional Representation.
On 18 September 2023, Mick Antoniw MS, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, laid the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill before the Senedd. The Bill outlines a series of reforms, as part of the Welsh Labour and Plaid Cyrmu cooperation agreement, the Welsh democracy.
The headline changes are the switch from the Additional Member System (AMS) to a Closed List Proportional voting system and an increase to 96 Members of the Senedd.
One important change which hasn’t received much attention is a return to four-year terms. This means that, if the Bill becomes law, after the planned 2026 election the next Welsh election will be 2030 – not 2031.
This switch to four-year terms will improve accountability and strengthen the link between voters and their representatives. There’s no right answer as to how often elections should be, but five-year terms lead to zombie governments (just look at Westminster right now) and limited accountability. They also mean voters going to the polls just twice a decade. Two-year terms on the other hand lead to constant electioneering as seen in the states. And there’s definitely an element of this in Australia and New Zealand, which have three year terms, as well as limited ability to take long-term actions. Four-year terms however, strike a sensible balance between accountability and stable governance. The Welsh Government’s reform is the right move.
Unfortunately, like Wales, Scotland moved to five-year terms in the Scottish Elections (Reform) Act in 2020 to accommodate the UK’s now repealed Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. The next planned election after 2026 will be 2031, one year after Wales’ next vote after 2026. There’s nothing wrong with devolved elections being out of sync but the accountability deficit in Scotland will be larger than in Wales. Holyrood can do better. To empower voters, and hold MSPs to account, that should change.
The Scottish Parliament needs a democratic upgrade – Holyrood should follow the Senedd and return to four-year terms. Parties should consider this ahead of the 2026 election.
Upgrade Holyrood 
