Guidance for Candidates and Agents at Scottish Parliament elections

This guidance aims to provide practical advice for political parties and those who want to stand at Scottish Parliament elections including candidates for Constituency elections, party list candidates and individual candidates for the Regional elections as well as anyone who wants to be an agent.

Standing for election can be complicated, but we hope that our guidance will make it as straightforward as possible. 

We have included relevant factual material as well as links to sources of further information. Each section includes a number of forms and resources, which can be directly accessed via links in the text.

You can find out more in How to use our guidance. 

Election timetable 

We have published a date specific timetable for the Scottish Parliament election below.

If a by-election has been called, you will be able to obtain a copy of the date specific timetable for that election from the relevant Returning Officer.

Data protection

Please note that data protection legislation applies to the processing of all personal data. Please contact the Information Commissioner's Office (Opens in new window) for further information about how the current data protection legislation affects you.

Terms and expressions we use

We use 'must' when we refer to a specific requirement. We use 'should' for items we consider to be minimum good practice, but which are not legal or regulatory requirements.

A constituency candidate stands as an individual in a constituency. They can stand for a party, or as an independent.

An independent regional candidate stands as an independent individual in a region.

We use 'individual candidate' to refer to either a constituency candidate or an independent regional candidate.

A party list candidate stands in a region, on a list of candidates submitted by a party.  

Where the same person stands as a candidate for a party in a constituency and on the party's list in a region, we use 'dual candidate' to refer to these people.

We use 'you' to cover all types of candidates and their agents in this guidance. Where our guidance only applies to a particular type of candidate, this will be specifically stated. 

When we talk about donations, we use 'you' to refer to the person who is responsible at the time for dealing with donations.