United Kingdom general election, 2005

Seats in Scotland

Several years after the Scottish Parliament had been established by the Scotland Act 1998, the target size of Westminster Parliamentary seats in Scotland was adjusted to become the same as that for England. This removed the deliberately smaller constituencies which had been intended to compensate Scotland for its status as a nation, its lower population density which causes very large constituencies geographically, and its distance from the seat of Parliament in Westminster. These problems were perceived to have been largely overcome with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Related Topics:
Scottish Parliament - Scotland Act 1998 - Scotland - England - 1999

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The Boundary Commission for Scotland therefore started work on redrawing the boundaries, and in 2003 produced a scheme in which there were 59 constituencies, reduced from 72. In 2004, the Government passed the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 which instituted these changes and broke the link between British- and Scottish-Parliamentary constituencies.

Related Topics:
Boundary Commission - 2003 - 2004 - Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004

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Three constituencies were left unchanged - the island seats of Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles, though the latter changed its official name to the Gaelic "Na h-Eileanan an Iar", and Eastwood, which changed its name to "East Renfrewshire". Several other constituency names were carried forward, however in all cases the new seats had altered boundaries.

Related Topics:
Orkney and Shetland - Western Isles - Gaelic - Eastwood

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Predicted result of redrawn boundaries

Although it was impossible to guarantee a wholly accurate prediction of the strength of the parties within the 59 new constituencies, as this was be the first election in which they were used, estimates had been made prior to the poll on May 5th on the basis of a ward-by-ward breakdown of local council election results. An agreed set used by all media reports and most political commentators indicated that, had the new boundaries been used in the 2001 election, Labour would have won 46 seats, with the Liberal Democrats on 9 seats, the Scottish National Party on 4, and the Conservatives on zero. This represented a loss of 10 seats to Labour and one each for the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and the Conservatives. The arithmetic was however complicated by the fact that the boundary revision had produced some seats that were notionally highly marginal.

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The results of the 2005 election showed some of the highest changes of the share of the vote for particular parties occurring in Scottish seats, leading some commentators to speculate that either the notional results were in error and/or they were unable to take into account factors such as personal votes, tactical voting and parties having stong support in local government but historically failing to convert that into a general election vote.

Related Topics:
Personal vote - Tactical voting

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Actual result of redrawn boundaries

Labour in fact only won 41 seats (5 fewer than attributed to them by the breakdown of 2001 results detailed above), the Liberal Democrats won 11 (2 more than attributed to them by the breakdown of 2001 results), the SNP won 6 seats (2 more than attributed to them by the breakdown of 2001 results) and in Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale the Conservatives won their only seat (breakdown of 2001 election results had indicated no Conservative constituencies)http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/region_7.stm. Compared to the actual results of 2001 this then represented a loss of 14 seats for Labour, a gain of 1 seat for the SNP and Liberal Democrats, and no change for the Conservatives. http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2001/rp01-054.pdf

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See also the list of parties standing in Scotland.

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