Scotland's Democracy Isn't Working
"If the governing party can lose a third of its voters but barely suffer any loss of seats, it is not being incentivised to govern in the public interest." https://t.co/6h50OyfnJc
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 27, 2025
No wonder Scots are increasingly attracted to 'insurgents' - if voters truly believe the electoral system is rigged and stacked against them, why would they not try to wreck the system?
Interesting article from Mark McGeoghegan in The Herald.
"The reality is that a disproportionate parliament is unhealthy for democracy and militates against good government and compromise in politics."
MARK McGEOGHEGAN
We're set for a pro-indy parliament despite a pro-Union vote
There is likely to be a majority pro-independence parliament after next year's Scottish election (Image: PA)
Last year’s General Election was the most disproportionate in British electoral history. Labour won 63% of MPs on just 34% of the vote. On one measure of disproportionality, the Gallagher Index, which measures the gap between the vote shares and seat shares of all the parties in an election, the 2024 election scored 23.6. The previous high was 20.6 in 1983; the highest current Gallagher Index score globally is 29 in Saint Lucia.
The disproportionality of the Westminster electoral system results from two factors: First past the post voting and the fragmentation of the British party system, with up to six competitive parties depending on which part of the UK we examine. Labour’s majority in the Commons is built on many narrow wins with a minority of the vote, with the opposition to Labour split across multiple parties. As a result, according to the Electoral Reform Society, 16.6 million voters are now "unrepresented", a majority of voters.
Under more proportional electoral systems, the Commons would much more closely reflect how Britain actually voted in July. The single transferable vote system used in Scottish local elections would have seen Labour win 35% of seats, much closer to their actual vote share. An Additional Member System, like the one we use at Holyrood, would have had Labour winning 43% of seats.
But it’s not just the Westminster electoral system that’s creaking under the strain of our fragmented party system. With the rise of Reform UK north of the Border as well as south of it, we are poised to have the most disproportionate Holyrood election ever next year.
Currently, the SNP is on course to win around 60 of the Scottish Parliament’s 129 seats, a 47% seat share on a constituency vote share of around 35% and a list vote share of around 30%. Reform, Labour and the Conservatives are set to win around 15 seats each, with the Liberal Democrats and Greens on course for around 10 seats each. Every party except the SNP is set to win a lower proportion of seats than its vote share, particularly Reform and Labour. The result would be a majority pro-independence parliament despite the majority of Scots voting for a unionist party.
Read more by Mark McGeoghegan
- •Confidence in UK hits new low while Starmer goes in wrong direction
- •Is indy inevitable? The signs are looking good for Yessers
The Gallagher Index for the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections is currently set to be 9.3 if we use the constituency vote and 13 if we use the regional list vote – 11.2 on average. That doesn’t sound too bad compared to the 2024 UK General Election, but it’s higher than 77% of recent national elections globally. It blows the average Gallagher Index of 7.1 at the 2011 election, considered by many to have "broken" the Holyrood electoral system by handing the SNP a majority, out of the water.
This disproportionality is almost entirely a result of the first past the post component of Holyrood’s electoral system. Seventy-three of the 129 MSPs are elected by first past the post to represent constituencies, and the SNP is set to win just short of 60 of them – 82% of the seats on a 35% vote share. If we just look at the constituency vote and seat shares, the 2026 election would have a Gallagher Index of 27.3, the third highest in the world.
If the SNP remains in power after next May, which it is likely to do, it will be thanks to the constituency vote. It is set to lose just four seats compared to the 2021 election, despite their vote share falling by around a third.
There’s something grimly ironic about this. Like much of how the parliament functions, Holyrood’s electoral system is a creature of Labour’s creation. The lopsided Additional Member System, skewed towards constituency MSPs, was a compromise intended to keep power in Labour’s hands. But with the constitutional cleavage still so prominent in Scottish politics, and the unionist vote split between four parties up against a single pro-independence party in most constituencies, it now functions to keep power in the SNP’s hands instead.
Barring another seismic realignment in Scottish politics – and we’ve seen enough of them in the devolution era not to rule one out in the near future – the electoral system now functions to keep the SNP in government and dominant in the parliament despite record low levels of satisfaction with the Scottish Government. It further functions to all but ensure a pro-independence majority in parliament, whether that reflects how the country votes or not.
Supporters of independence or the SNP might wonder what the big deal is. Isn’t this just an argument for shifting the goalposts? The reality is that a disproportionate parliament is unhealthy for democracy and militates against good government and compromise in politics.
A parliament in which one party is dominant and almost embedded in government encourages complacency among governing politicians and discourages responsiveness to the concerns of voters. If the governing party can lose a third of its voters but barely suffer any loss of seats, it is not being incentivised to govern in the public interest. That isn’t to say that the SNP Government necessarily is ignoring voters’ concerns or failing to respond to the public’s priorities, but a system that fails to incentivise responsiveness and good governance is doomed to end in a complacent and unresponsive government.
Keir Starmer's Labour Party won 63% of MPs on just 34% of the vote in last year's General Election (Image: PA)Of course, I doubt any of our parties will champion electoral reform to correct these issues on the basis of the merit of such reform. Electoral reform is hardly a rallying cry for voters and is, itself, not one of those public priorities. But I do wonder if the way in which disproportionality in the Scottish Parliament systematically advantages the SNP might lead to some opposition parties taking up the cause of electoral reform in their own interests.Fourteen years after the Alternative Vote referendum, electoral reform is back on the agenda. The Welsh Senedd elections next year will use a new voting system, and support for reform at Westminster is growing both among the public and among political party members across parties. There is a broad acknowledgement that our electoral systems are failing to keep up with our politics and no longer serve voters as they should.
Disproportionality at Holyrood is nowhere near as bad as it is at Westminster, but is still a deepening problem, and electoral reform in Edinburgh should be part of the wider discussion of how we improve our politics in general.
Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social
