When the Scottish Parliament was created, it was built to be different to Westminster. A system designed to reflect how all Scots voted, not just who comes first in each area.
Scotland uses what is called the Additional Member System. You get two votes. One for a local MSP, decided by First Past the Post – just like down in Westminster. And one for a party, used to top up the result so Parliament better reflects how people voted. As people can feel forced to vote tactically under First Past the Post, the system tries to get parliament to match how people vote in the second, party ballot.
In total, there are 129 MSPs. But here is the key detail: 73 are elected by first past the post, and only 56 from regional lists.
First Past the Post still distorts Scottish politics
First Past the Post is a crude voting system. Candidates can win a seat even if the majority didn’t vote for them. The same share of the vote can see one MP lose their seat while a neighbour celebrates a victory. And millions of votes can end up making no difference at all.
We already see this clearly at Westminster, where the UK-wide Labour party won a landslide (63.2%) of the seats in 2024, on a third of the vote (33.7%). In Scotland, Scottish Labour won 35.3% of the vote and a whopping 64.9% of Scottish MPs.
Thankfully we would never see a result like this in the Scottish Parliament, as the Additional Member System works to even out results that ignore the will of the Scottish people. But here is where the balance matters, because the more seats decided by First Past the Post, the harder it is for the regional lists to correct unfair results.
The Additional Member System can be designed on a spectrum. Do you have two thirds First Past the Post and one third List? Or closer to half and half? The more First Past the Post seats you have, the less proportional the system becomes. The Scottish Parliament’s 73:56 ratio means the majority of seats are decided with First Past the Post.
When votes and seats don’t quite match
This shows up in real elections like 2011. The SNP won 44% of the list vote and 45% across the constituencies. But this gave them 69 seats in total – 53% of the total. It’s nowhere near a Westminster-style results, but it is still nearly 10 percentage points off.
That is not as wildly disproportionate as First Past the Post alone would have been. The SNP won 53 of the 73 First Past the Post constituencies in this election, nearly three quarters of the available seats on fewer than half the votes.
Smaller parties, meanwhile, rely heavily on the list system to gain representation. And when there are not enough list seats, that representation is squeezed.
In the Lothians, the SNP won eight of the nine constituency seats – and thus half of all the seats in the region – despite winning just over 39% of the list vote. Its proportionate entitlement was seven seats. The ‘extra’ SNP seat would otherwise have been won by the Liberal Democrats who, as a result, failed to secure any representation in the region.
The result is a Parliament that is far better at representing voters than Westminster, but still not fully reflective of Scotland.
A simple fix that would make a big difference
While I’ve previously highlighted the problems with the way seats are allocated, and the impact of regional rather than national top up lists, the solution to too many First Past the Post seats is not complicated.
Increase the number of list seats. Reduce the number of first past the post constituencies.
All you need is to shift the balance to closer to 50:50, to allow the “top-up” part of the system to actually do its job. You reduce the distortions caused by constituency results, but keep the benefit of each area having a single go-to MSP. And you bring seats closer in line with votes.
Other countries using similar systems already do this. In places like Germany and New Zealand, list seats play a much larger role in balancing the outcome. That is why their parliaments tend to reflect how people vote more closely.
Voters in the 1997 devolution referendum were voting on a promise of a parliament that was not like Westminster. That promise was delivered, but we can shift the balance further towards Scottish voters.
Support ERS Scotland
ERS Members support our work in Holyrood and across Scotland’s towns and villages. Making the case, and backing it up for how we can build a more democratic Scotland, and fix the UK’s broken system.
Join the Electoral Reform Society