This is the first part of a two part blog on the system used to decide who is elected to the Scottish Parliament. Here I will try to detail in as simple terms as possible how the election works.

Here is part two looking at tactical votes.

What is AMS?

Most democratic countries have, broadly speaking, one of three types of voting system:

Some have a majoritarian system, where the country is divided into constituencies and the public vote for the person who they think would best represent their constituency. Other countries have proportional systems, where the number of representatives each political party has is closely related to the share of the national vote the party received. Scotland uses the third type of system which is a hybrid of the two. The name of this system is the Additional Members System (AMS).

The system is designed in order to give you the best of both worlds. It means that the parliament should broadly reflect the spread of the vote while at the same time giving each citizen one MP whose job it is to represent them.

So, how does it actually work?

Well, the first thing to note is that there are 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. Scotland is divided into 8 regions. Each of those regions is divided into smaller areas called constituencies.

There are two parts to the ballot. In one part we are asked to vote on a Member Of The Scottish Parliament (MSP) to represent our constituency. As there are 73 constituencies this part of the vote gives us 73 of the 129 MSPs.

The remaining 56 members come from the regional part of the ballot. There are 7 additional MSPs elected from each of the 8 regions.

Here is a rather large table showing the 8 regions and the 73 constituencies.

The Ballot Paper

There are two separate ballot papers. The regional paper is coloured peach and the constituency paper is violet. The regional vote has a list of political parties whereas the constituency vote has a list of individuals who may represent a political party. Your job is to put an X beside one party in the regional list and an X beside an individual on the constituency list.

The Constituency Vote

One thing to remember is the constituency votes are counted first. As we will see later the number of constituency seats won by each party is used to help work out the regional seats.

This part of the ballot is simple and is done by First Past The Post, the same system used in UK General Elections. In each of the 73 constituencies, individuals either representing a political party or standing independently put themselves up for election. Their names appear on the ballot paper in the constituencies they are standing for. Voters put an X in a box next to the person who they think will best represent their constituency. The person with the most votes represents that seat.

For example, in 2011, in the Airdrie and Shotts constituency, Alex Neil got more votes than Karen Whitefield, Robert Crozier or John Love. So Alex Neil won one of the 73 constituency seats.

The Regional Vote

Unlike the constituency vote, there are no names on the Regional part of the ballot. Here you are voting for a party. Behind the scenes, in advance, each party provides a list of candidates. The higher up the list a candidate is the more likely they are to be elected on the regional vote.

The Green Party list for the Glasgow region for 2016 is below. So, If the Greens win three Glasgow regional seats then Patrick Harvie, Zara Kitson and Sean Templeton will become MSPs.

1. Patrick Harvie

2. Zara Kitson

3. Sean Templeton

4. Martha Wardrop

5. Patrick McAleer

6. Anni Pues

7. Lee Wallace

8. Kim Long

9. Anna Crow

In some circumstances someone at the top of the list may have already won a constituency seat. If this is the case the next person down would get a seat in this case Martha Wardrop.

D’Hondt Method

The complicated part is how the system calculates how many of the seven seats in each region each party gets. This is called the D’Hondt Method. To help explain lets look at the Glasgow results in 2011.

Glasgow Region 2011 Raw Votes:

Party Votes SNP 83,109 Lab 73,031 Cons 12,749 Green 12,454 Lib Dem 5,312

The SNP got the most votes in the region. However, you may be surprised to learn that Labour actually got one more seat than the SNP.

The next two sentences are the key to understanding the how this works:

There are seven rounds of vote counting in each region, one for each seat. In each round the number of votes each party receives is divided by (1 plus the number of seats they already have).

It might be worth reading that part again.

Lets go through the seven rounds in turn from Glasgow 2011 in order to make sense of it.

Round 1

Remember that the constituency votes are counted first. Therefore we know how many constituency seats each party has won in each region before working out the regional seats.

There are nine constituencies in the Glasgow Region.

Of the nine Glasgow constituency seats, in 2011 the SNP won 5 while Labour won 4. So, to determine who won the first round in the Glasgow region we first need to divide each party’s total votes by the seats they have won already plus 1.

So, despite getting fewer votes Labour won the first round as their raw total was only divided by 5(4 constituency seats plus 1).

Whereas the SNP raw total was divided by 6(5 constituency seats plus 1).

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) Lab win 73,031 4 Constituency seats. 14606.2 SNP 83,109 5 Constituency seats. 13851.5 Cons 12,749 0 Constituency seats. 12749 Green 12,454 0 Constituency seats. 12454 Lib Dem 5,312 0 Constituency seats. 5312

Note the votes for the other parties were only divided by 1 as they do not have any seats yet.

Round 2

Labour and the SNP now have five seats each so we do the calculation again using the original raw vote amounts.

The SNP win the second regional seat taking their total to 6 for round three.

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) SNP win 83,109 5 13851.5 Cons 12,749 0 12749 Green 12,454 0 12454 Lab 73,031 5(+1 from last round) 12171.83333 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

Lets continue through all seven rounds to see what happens.

Round 3

The Conservatives win a seat.

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) Cons win 12,749 0 12749 Green 12,454 0 12454 Lab 73,031 5 12171.83333 SNP 83,109 6(+1 from last round) 11872.71429 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

Round 4

The Green party win one seat.

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) Green win 12,454 0 12454 Lab 73,031 5 12171.83333 SNP 83,109 6 11872.71429 Cons 12,749 1(+1 from last round) 6374.5 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

Round 5

Labour win a second regional seat

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) Lab win 73,031 5 12171.83333 SNP 83,109 6 11872.71429 Cons 12,749 1 6374.5 Green 12,454 1(+1 from last round) 6227 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

Round 6

SNP win a Second Regional Seat.

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) SNP win 83,109 6 11872.71429 Lab 73,031 6(+1 from last round) 10433 Cons 12,749 1 6374.5 Green 12,454 1 6227 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

Round 7

Labour win the last round and their third seat.

Party Raw Votes Number of Seats before calculation, Raw Votes divided by (Seats +1) Lab win 73,031 6 10433 SNP 83,109 7(+1 from last round) 10388.625 Cons 12,749 1 6374.5 Green 12,454 1 6227 Lib Dem 5,312 0 5312

So, after the seven rounds of counting, three of the seven Glasgow Regional seats were won by Labour, two by the SNP, and one each by the Greens and Conservatives.

This 7 step process is repeated in each of the 8 regions to calculate the 56 seats to be added to the 73 constituency seats in order to make up the 129 members of the Scottish Parliament.

I hope this blog has made things clearer.

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If you are still confused by the regional calculation using the D’Hondt method. Here is a video in which Jeremy Vine explains D’Hondt with regards to the EU elections.

