8/6/2019 Scottish Parliamentary Election 5th May 2011

1/2

Scottish Parliamentary Election 5th May 2011 (SG and Higher)

The SNP have achieved a parliamentary majority of 4. This is the first time theScottish Parliament has returned a majority, single-party government (previously theSNP operated as a minority government and before them Labour and the LiberalDemocrats acted together in a coalition).

One of the big advantages of AMS is that it tends to lead to coal ition governments

which are more representative of the voters views, while FPTP usually creates asingle party government, which may be seen as strong, but is also seen as beingunrepresentative. The 2010 General Election and now the 2011 Scottish Electionhas turned these two points on their head. It is still perfectly acceptable to use theseadvantages and disadvantages, but you must say that this is traditionally whathappens and acknowledge that there are current exceptions.

While we dont have a coalition, one of the other strengths of AMS is that the number of votes a party receives more clearly reflects the number of seats it wins, hopefullyending the feeling of the 'wasted vote'. There are two important points here: Theelimination of safe seats and the new majority government s share of the vote.

Prior to the 2011 election, many of the con stituency seats in Scotland wereconsidered to be safe seats (i.e. the winning candidates majority wa s at least 3000).In particular, Labour had held the vast majority of seats in the central belt and wereunlikely to every lose them. HOWEVER, there was a huge swing in manyconstituencies from Labour to SNP, which has resulted in many traditionally safeLabour seats being gained by the SNP.

8/6/2019 Scottish Parliamentary Election 5th May 2011

2/2

Glasgow Anniesland now has an SNP MSP with a majority of just 7 votes. GlasgowKelvin has an SNP MSP with a majority of 882. In fact, out of the 73 constituencies,only 25 are now considered to be safe seats.

In terms of the AMS system helping to deliver representation for smaller parties - 2green MSPs were returned, along with one independent, Margo Macdonald.

AV Referedum (SG and Higher)

Only 10 constituencies across the UK votes in favour of changing to AV - 2 of thesewere in Scotland. Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin (the schools constituency)

The referendum on constitutional reform was one of the issues brough t to the

coalition table by the Liberal Democrats, who believe that the current FPTP systemis unfair and not representative of the whole of the electorates views.

One of the most laudedadvantages ofFPTP is the fact that it is easy to understandand a tried and tested system. So while the system might be unfair, the electoratehave not backed a change to the preferential system of AV. The reasons for thevoters not choosing to back a change to AV are clearly very complex (including thefact that it is not actually the truly proportional system the Lib Dems would havewanted, but a preferential system- an expensive compromise that no-one reallywants), but you could use these results (as Im sure the Conservatives will) to backup the point that the system aint broke, so why fix it.

Media Impact (Higher)

On 19 th April, Scotland's biggest selling daily newspaper The Scottish Sun gave itsbacking to the Scottish National Party. The Sun is bought every day by 330,000Scots and probably read by about three times that number.Four years ago theScottish Sun warned readers that a vote for the SNP would put the country's head ina noose. On Friday night,AlexSalmond said: "Thank you to all readers of TheScottish Sun who backed our record, team and vision."