Scottish Parliament election, 2011

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This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Scotland

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The 2011 Scottish Parliament election will be held on Thursday 5 May 2011 to elect members to the Scottish Parliament. It will be the fourth general election.

Local council elections are due to take place on the same day, but are likely to be moved, perhaps to 2012, following the publication of the Gould Report.

Date

Under the Scotland Act 1998, ordinary general elections to the Scottish Parliament are held on the first Thursday in May every four years (1999, 2003, 2007 and so on).^[1] The date of the poll may be varied by up to one month either way by the monarch, on the proposal of the Presiding Officer.^[1]

If the Parliament itself resolves that it should be dissolved, with at least two-thirds of the Members (ie. 86 Members) voting in favour, the Presiding Officer proposes a date for an extraordinary general election and the Parliament is dissolved by the monarch by royal proclamation. In the current Parliament, elected in 2007, this is unlikely because the Scottish National Party has more than one-third of the Members (47 out of 129 Members equals 36.4%) and can therefore block a dissolution resolution. It would require the support of the SNP group, or at least 4 of its Members, to pass a dissolution resolution. However, it does not necessarily require a two-thirds majority to precipitate an extraordinary general election, because under the Scotland Act Parliament is also dissolved if it fails to nominate one of its members to be First Minister within certain time limits, irrespective of whether at the beginning or in the middle of a four year term. Therefore, if the First Minister lost a vote of confidence by a simple majority (ie. more than 50%), he must then resign (Scotland Act 1998 s45(2)). Parliament would then have 28 days to elect a successor (s46(2)b and s46(3)a). If no new First Minister is elected then the Presiding Officer would ask for Parliament to be dissolved under s3(1)a. Although this mechanism is open to the opposition parties, to date the Parliament has never held a confidence vote on a First Minister. Under current parliamentary arithmetic it would require at least 3 opposition parties to support such a no confidence motion for it to pass.

No extraordinary general elections have been held to date. Any extraordinary general elections would be in addition to ordinary general elections, unless held less than six months before the due date of an ordinary general election, in which case they supplant it. The subsequent ordinary general election reverts to the first Thursday in May, a multiple of four years after 1999 (i.e., 5 May 2011, 7 May 2015, etc).^[2]

Election system

The total number of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) elected to the Parliament is 129.

The First Periodical Review of the Scottish Parliament's constituencies and regions, to be conducted by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, was announced on 3 July 2007. The Commission aims to publish its provisional proposals for the regional boundaries by the summer of 2009. It is due to submit its final report to the Secretary of State for Scotland by 30 June 2010.^[3]

There are 73 constituencies, each electing one (MSP) by the plurality (first past the post) system of election; and 8 additional member regions, each electing 7 additional member MSPs. The D'Hondt method is used to calculate which additional member MSPs the regions elect. Each constituency is a sub-division of a region; the additional members system is designed to produce approximate proportional representation for each region.

The Scottish Parliament constituencies have not been coterminous with Scottish Westminster constituencies since the 2005 UK general election, when the 72 former Westminster constituencies were replaced with a new set of 59, generally larger, constituencies (see Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004).

Top target seats of the main parties

Below are listed all the constituencies which required a swing of less than 5% from the 2007 result to change hands.

SNP targets

Labour targets

Conservative targets

Liberal Democrat targets

References

See also

• Arbuthnott Commission

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