Talk:Elections in Scotland

Terminology
I note use of "regional vote". "Party list vote" would be better. Constituency votes are also 'regional', because, indirectly, via constituency results, they are taken into account when determining additional member results. Laurel Bush 11:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC).


 * I do not understand what you mean by "Constituency votes are also 'regional', because, indirectly, via constituency results, they are taken into account when determining additional member results". The constituency votes have nothing to do with "determining additional member results": they are 2 completely separate, distinct votes.


 * As far as I am aware "regional vote" is in very common usage to refer to the 2nd vote. --Mais oui! 11:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The election system is designed to produce PR for the region as a whole. Therefore a party with constituency MSPs elected is less liely to get party-list MSPs elected. See "Mixed member proportional representation" to see how the calculation is done. There is a sense in which constituency MSPs are also regional MSPs. It is the sum of constituency and party-list MSPs, for each party, which is supposed to be proportional. Laurel Bush 15:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC).


 * Ah, OK. I see what you mean! However, I am not sure that "party list vote" is in more widespread use in the media and popular usage than "regional vote". In fact I cannot recall the 2nd vote ever being referred to as the "party list vote" (it seems to be a neologism). We really have to use the "correct" term as commonly used by our verifiable sources, and as most easily understood by the Wikipedia readers. It is no biggie though :) --Mais oui! 17:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * "I cannot recall the 2nd vote ever being referred to as the "party list vote"" - I can, and that is certainly what it is! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.56.195 (talk • contribs) 19:09, 9 October 2006


 * The above comment is by a sockpuppet of User:Mallimak. --Mais oui! 20:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Use of 'regional vote' where 'party list vote' would be more appropriate is common, and it is also misleading, perhaps representing common lack of knowledge of how the system actually works. And, now I have found "Mixed member proportional representation", I am thinking a lot of links in articles about constituencies and regions need updating. (Content of "Additional Member System" has changed since the links were created). Laurel Bush 09:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC).

"The electoral system used is the PR Voting System where voters have two votes under two PR Voting Systems and is better known as such in the United Kingdom. Under the system, voters are given two votes: one for a specific candidate AMS and one for a political party" - my understanding is that the entire system is called AMS. AMS gives each voter two votes; one for a constituency MSP, who they choose from a list of candidates (as per FPTP), and one for a party. The party votes are then used to select 'top up' MSPs using PR from closed party lists. My understanding is that the number of top up MSPs in the Scottish Parliament is just under half. As not all MSPs are selected using PR, the system can only be described as partially PR, or hybrid (though it is certainly more proportional that simple FPTP). The number of seats each party wins will not necessarily accurately reflect the proportion of the popular vote secured by each party. Coatgal (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Electronic voting?
Just what is electronic counting? I hope it is way better than Diebold. 58.28.134.109 06:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Threshold for Scottish Parliament
Is there any threshold that a party must cross before it qualifies for list seats in a region? Timrollpickering 10:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

How often?
The article seems not to state what the term is for the Scottish Parliament, and whether or not the First Minister can go to the country at a time of his choosing. Guy (talk) 20:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * From the three questions above, it looks like there is a need for a link to an article on the electoral system used for the Scottish parliament. Is there one already that can be linked to?
 * Update:There is an outline of the electoral system here.
 * Spartakan (talk) 16:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Improving length and structure
Hi - I started working on this page because I was looking for a summary of the results for the 2007 local government election

While getting the missing figures together as best I could, I've noticed that this article is getting very long, and there are considerable overlaps with other pages: I wonder if it would be a good time to do some restructuring work?

For instance, would it be better to use this page to cover:
 * History of elections in Scotland (changing electorate etc)
 * Quick summary of levels, dates, frequency, electoral systems

Currently, the situation seems to be as follows:
 * There also needs to be space for other elections such as the two devolution referendums, the General Assembly, Hereditary Peers for the House of Lords (?) etc)

Other thoughts:
 * Maybe this page should act as an index page with links to the pages which hold substantial content?
 * It should focus on elections since the devolution settlement in 1999 and local government reorganisation in 1994 (at least to start with!)
 * It would be best to split description of the institution from election results
 * The page could merge with Electoral systems in Scotland
 * There could be more crosslinks with and other items in the Politics of Scotland series

I'm not in a position to take this all on (and don't have the specialist knowledge), but I'd be happy to help with restructuring these pages (if a consensus could be found)

Any thoughts?

--Spartakan (talk) 21:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

It's been 12 years since Spartakan's wise suggestions above - and with all the elections there have been since then, this page has become much more unwieldy and so the need for change is greater. The case for 'Elections in Scotland' being a category - so producing an index page - would seem a sensible way forwards.

It's also worth pointing out that WP:SIZERULE says that pages over 100kb should 'almost certainly be split' - this page is currently 126kb, so well over that.

I'll start to build something in the coming weeks and months unless there's a huge outcry here.

Jpmaytum (talk) 09:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

anachronistic falsification
The election pages have been tampered with during the last couple of years to rewrite hitory -- and in a non-trivial way.

In several election results of the 1950s, two parties which were rivals at the time, plus several independent candidates - all of whom stood against one another - have been retrospectively conflated as "Conservative Party" (aka Tory): this is a gross falsification for these reasons:

1. Before the 1960s, no such parliamentary party as "Conservative" stood in parliamentary elections in Scotland. Yet it has been made to appear that several parties were (upper-case-C) Conservatives because they have been retrospectively lumped with them.

2. Today's Liberal Democrats actually shared a coalition government with the Conservatives -- by this absurd standard, they too must be lumped with the conservatives since 2010. which is of course absurd: no less so than what's been done.

3. The Unionist parties of 1910-c1960 Scotland were splinter groups of the Liberal Party (ie Whigs, not Tories). They had no formal connection with the Conservatives: this came in the decade AFTER these elections when some Unionist parties of Scotland merged with the Conservative party of England to become the Conservative & UNionist party.

4. The policy that the Unionists (Liberal Unionist & National Unionist, plus some independent individuals) had split on in 1910 was Home Rule for Scotland (and pre-independence Ireland). This was not a fundamental policy for either the Conservatives or the Liberals at UK level.

5. This falsification has serious consequences: BBC pundit, following the recent 2016 election, have been misrepresenting events within living memory - patently because they have relied on the misinformation in these pages.

6. Elsewhere in wikipedia is the more detailed and genuine history: unless that too has been tampered with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.146.18 (talk) 19:13, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

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By Election results
First time on this article and notice there is no by election results for Westminster elections, obviously to create one huge list going back nearly 200 hundred years would not be helpful but was wondering if we should have a subsection for current session to record by election results? After this years GE we would start a similar subsection for 2024 result Any input welcome Soosider3 (talk) 12:47, 21 February 2024 (UTC)