Results and turnout at the 2011 Scottish Parliament election

The elections were fought on the basis of revised constituency and electoral region boundaries. As a consequence, constituency electorates were more equal in size than previously.

The number of constituency candidates declined to 321 – the smallest number in a Scottish Parliament election to date.

Twenty-one parties or groups were represented in the regional lists together with 11 individuals.

The SNP won 53 of the 73 constituency seats with 45.4 per cent of the votes. Labour was second (15 seats, 31.7 per cent of votes) followed by the Conservatives (3 seats and 13.9 per cent of votes) and the Liberal Democrats (2 seats and 7.9 per cent of votes).

When the list seats were added, the SNP had an overall majority of 69 out of 129 seats. Labour had 37, the Conservatives 15, Liberal Democrats 5, Green Party 2 and an Independent 1.

Turnout at 50.6 per cent was slightly down on the 2007 figure (53.9 per cent).

In the 2007 election a single ballot sheet was used for both constituency and list elections and large numbers of votes were consequently rejected. In 2011, two separate ballot papers were re-introduced and rejected votes returned to minuscule proportions - 0.42 per cent of constituency ballots and 0.34 per cent of list ballots.

Across Scotland, 558,202 postal ballots were issued amounting to 14.1 per cent of the electorate. This is the largest proportion to date.

Almost 77 per cent of postal ballots issued were returned. Of these, 5.8 per cent were excluded from the counts because of failures relating to personal identifiers or non-inclusion of either a ballot or statement in the envelope.