SNP beat Labour by one seat in Scottish election

THE Scottish Nationalists have become the largest party in the Scottish parliament, beating Labour by one seat, but the process of counting the votes was dogged by chaos.

The Electoral Commission announced it will conduct a full inquiry into problems with the new electronic counting system that resulted in several counts being suspended. As many as 100,000 ballots were also rejected because they were classed as spoilt papers.

When the last results finally came in, just before 6pm, the SNP had 47 seats and Labour 46. The Conservatives won 17 seats, the Liberal Democrats 16. The Green Party earned two seats and the independent Margo MacDonald won re-election on the Lothians list. The SSP and Solidarity were completely wiped out.

The SNP grabbed several seats from Labour, including hotly contested Edinburgh East (a 13.3 per cent swing from Labour's 2003 victory), Dundee West and Stirling. Notably, the Nationalists took away the Cunninghame North seat held by Allan Wilson, the Labour deputy enterprise and lifelong learning minister. Kenneth Gibson squeeked out a 48-vote advantage over Mr Wilson for the Ayrshire seat.

And whilst the SNP made gains, Labour too held on in a number of key SNP target seats.

Labour recaptured Strathkelvin & Bearsden from Independent Dr Jean Turner. David Whitton defeated Robin Easton of the SNP by more than 3,000 votes and Ms Turner finished third.

The overriding story of the election however was the uncertainty surrounding the counting.

The Scotland Office agreed that the election failures must be investigated by DRS, the company behind the vote-counting technology, and relevant returning officers against the timing targets set in the contract.

SNP leader Alex Salmond easily held back Liberal Democrat candidate Nora Radcliffe for the Gordon seat. In his victory speech, Mr Salmond said: "There is a wind of change blowing through Scottish politics."

Labour lost seats to the Lib Dems in Dunfermline West and to the Conservatives in Roxburgh & Berwickshire.

Tommy Sheridan, of Solidarity, and Rosie Kane, of the Scottish Socialists Party, both lost their Glasgow list seats. Bashir Ahmad became the first Asian MSP, elected for the SNP on the Glasgow list.

Check the state of the parties

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