As the 2026 Scottish Parliament election approaches, keep up to date with all the latest polling and analysis on Ballot Box Scotland’s Holyrood Hub page!
This year’s Holyrood campaign has hardly been setting the heather alight as it ambles nonchalantly along to polling day, but yesterday was one of the big milestone moments: close of nominations. Now, you might think it’s rather on the nose to close candidate nominations on April Fool’s Day, but I couldn’t possibly comment. What I will say though, after having gone through all the documents, is that Artemis II wasn’t the only rocket launch yesterday.
I sat myself down last night to work through every Notice of Poll and Statement of Persons Nominated, tallying up all the parties and candidates on offer on the 7th of May. Whilst the major parties typically announce most of their candidates in advance, there’s always a raft of micro-parties and Independents who aren’t easy to track in advance, never mind the spate of last minute deselections and withdrawals.
I’ve pulled all of that data into a spreadsheet available here. I’ll also be updating the relevant regional previews and battlegrounds entries (you can find those via the Holyrood Hub link above) to fully list all candidates, though that may take a day or two for me to finish. For now though, let’s crunch some numbers and get an overview of who is standing where.
National Candidate Totals
Unique Candidates (major parties)
vs 2021 (major parties)
Across all parties and Independents, this year we have a total of 686 unique candidates. That’s a notable decrease from 808 in 2021, even whilst the total number of parties standing increased to 29, up from 25 (note that I am counting composite candidacies as a single party). A good portion of that comes from the major parties largely having reduced slates. Some of this is parties aligning more closely between their constituency and list candidates.
Labour for example have near-complete alignment for the first time, a remarkable turnaround from a party that until their 2011 defeat actually had a ban on such dual candidacies. The only “extra” candidate for the Conservatives is their leader, Russell Findlay, who isn’t standing in a constituency. The SNP meanwhile are standing more of their constituency candidates on the list than in 2021, when a majority of constituency candidates didn’t bother.
There is also a degree to which parties have just found fewer candidates. Staying with the SNP, they’ve also sharply reduced their list candidates in some places: they had a full list of 12 in Highlands and Islands last time, and just 6 this time. The Greens have fallen below the number of candidates they would have needed for a full constituency slate, whereas last time they had enough (albeit not correctly distributed) they could have theoretically done so.
Funnily enough of the major parties, it’s the two smallest in 2021 terms that have increased their numbers: the Lib Dems very marginally and Reform UK more than doubling. For whatever reason, after the SNP the Lib Dems have ended up with the least overlap between constituency and list candidates, in contrast to the (near) perfect alignment of the other three Pro-Union parties.
List Candidates (major parties)
vs 2021 (major parties)
Looking purely at list candidates, there are a total of 588 this year, down from 701 in 2021. That means your average regional ballot is being contested by 73.5 candidates. Notably even the parties that have more unique candidates than there are constituencies haven’t stood all of those candidates on the list. The SNP have (narrowly) the most and are still only coming in a bit below eight candidates per list on average, when there is space for 12. It doesn’t mean anything but I did like the neatness of the Lib Dems: they clearly decided they would have precisely 7 list candidates per region.
Constituency Candidates (major parties)
vs 2021 (major parties)
Over on the constituency ballot, the numbers have gone in the opposite direction. There are a mighty 437 constituency candidates nationwide, compared to 357 last time. When you consider there’s a whole new slate of 73 constituency candidates from Reform though, it’s only really a tiny increase! On average that’s six candidates per constituency, which is a neat little coincidence given that one of the six major parties is only standing in, err, six constituencies.
The busiest constituency, and indeed the only one with a double-digit candidate number, is Edinburgh Central with 11 candidates. For some reason Edinburgh is particular catnip for vanity runs from oddballs, as you see that in for example the City Centre ward in local elections too. Meanwhile, 28 constituencies (just over a third) only have the five parties who are contesting all of them.
Overall Diversity of Options
It’s also worth looking at how many options there are on each regional ballot: as that’s the proportional ballot, in theory it’s the one where voters have the most capacity to reflect their true views, with more options and less (but not zero) tactical incentive. 2021 was a joint record for options, with a total of 142 separate lists (or Independents) available to vote for across the regions, or nearly 18 on average.
For this year, note that the boundary changes in 2026 have more substantially impacted the Central Belt regions and South of Scotland than the 2011 changes, so individual regional comparisons in those cases are imperfect.
Regional Ballot Options per Election
With a total of 138 options (an average of just over 17) we’re a smidge behind that record, but still the third busiest of Holyrood’s seven elections thus far. If you live in West or South you will have more choices than you’ve ever had before, unless you live in Cardonald which, as it used to be in Glasgow region, had more choice last time. Those in Edinburgh and Lothians East will face the longest regional ballots this year, with the shortest in Mid Scotland and Fife.
Local Diversity of Options
Standing in Every Constituency and Region
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (7)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (7)
- Glasgow (12)
- Highlands & Islands (6)
- Mid & Fife (9)
- North East (7)
- South (12)
- West (10)
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (9)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (8)
- Glasgow (7)
- Highlands & Islands (8)
- Mid & Fife (9)
- North East (9)
- South (9)
- West (10)
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (8)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (9)
- Glasgow (7)
- Highlands & Islands (8)
- Mid & Fife (9)
- North East (9)
- South (10)
- West (9)
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (7)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (7)
- Glasgow (7)
- Highlands & Islands (7)
- Mid & Fife (7)
- North East (7)
- South (7)
- West (7)
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (9)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (9)
- Glasgow (8)
- Highlands & Islands (7)
- Mid & Fife (7)
- North East (9)
- South (10)
- West (6)
Five parties are contesting all 73 constituencies this year: all of the expected Holyrood parties bar the Greens, who are standing in half as many as they did in 2021. Their experiment in contesting constituencies more widely clearly didn’t bear any fruit they felt worth sacrificing tens of thousands of pounds in deposits for. Remember that even if a party gets its deposit back (which, at around 8% on average polling, the Greens could have expected quite a few) it’s still money that they can’t spend during the campaign. As I noted here, the money they saved by not contesting 61 constituencies in 2021 was equivalent to just over one eighth of their entire regulated campaign expenditure.
Until deposits are abolished, something that Labour and the Conservatives have rejected at UK level despite Electoral Commission advice in 2015, there’s not a great deal of legitimacy to complaining about this approach, I’m afraid! You can’t build up a country’s democratic architecture to discourage smaller parties from contesting elections, as you think that is to your benefit, then go all Shocked Pikachu when that’s exactly what happens just because you’ve decided this time around it’d be to your benefit if they did stand.
In the same vein, Reform’s full slate is something that may turn the stomach of the other Pro-Union parties, especially Labour. That’s a major contributor to the fractured state of the Pro-Union vote, which is why the SNP are currently favoured to win such a huge victory even though they’ve lost around a quarter of their support. Don’t assume every single one of those Reform votes would have piled in behind the strongest non-SNP option locally though: not only would a small portion go to the SNP, a fair few voters would simply spoil their ballot in their absence by this point.
Standing in Every Region
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (4)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (12)
- Glasgow (6)
- Highlands & Islands (7)
- Mid & Fife (8)
- North East (8)
- South (9)
- West (5)
Constituencies
- Edinburgh Central
- Edinburgh North Western
- Edinburgh Northern
- Glasgow Kelvin and Maryhill
- Glasgow Southside
- Shetland Islands
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (5)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (5)
- Glasgow (4)
- Highlands & Islands (6)
- Mid & Fife (5)
- North East (5)
- South (5)
- West (5)
Constituencies
- Cumbernauld and Kilsyth
- Motherwell and Wishaw
- Edinburgh Central
- Edinburgh Eastern, Musselburgh and Tranent
- Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
- Na h-Eileanan an Iar
- Moray
- Shetland Islands
- Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
- Clackmannanshire and Dunblane
- Cowdenbeath
- Aberdeen Donside
- Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire
- Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (4)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (5)
- Glasgow (4)
- Highlands & Islands (5)
- Mid & Fife (4)
- North East (4)
- South (4)
- West (4)
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (1)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (1)
- Glasgow (1)
- Highlands & Islands (1)
- Mid & Fife (1)
- North East (1)
- South (1)
- West (1)
Note: Independent Green Voice are a front group for a bunch of Glasgow bampots, led by someone who was expelled from UKIP for alleged Holocaust denial. They are standing purely as a spoiler party in this election, targeting the legitimate Scottish Green Party, and their simple one candidate per region slate is further evidence of this dodgy dealing.
Regions
- Central & Lothians West (3)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (3)
- Glasgow (3)
- Highlands & Islands (2)
- Mid & Fife (2)
- North East (2)
- South (3)
- West (3)
There are another five parties which are contesting every region, giving us a total of 10 truly nationwide options. That’s down from 13 in 2021, which also helps explain the overall reduction in number of candidates even as the overall number of options has barely reduced. The Greens are the only mainstream party out of this lot, though the SSP won MSPs in 1999 and 2003 before Tommy Sheridan blew the entire project to smithereens. They failed to even stand in 2021, but they are back this time.
Beyond the big parties, the Scottish Family Party are the only other party that had a nationwide presence last time to retain that status. They are joined by the Alliance to Liberate Scotland which you could think of as substituting for the now de-registered Alba Party, and indeed exceeding their candidate tally: they’ve got a total of 40, versus Alba’s 32 in 2021. I would however be absolutely gobsmacked if they even matched Alba’s 1.7%, though the residual Alba vote could still make them one of the better performing micro-parties.
The other side of the scandal that is regulating ballot access via deposits is evident here, and again it’s the Greens bearing the consequences. “Independent Green Voice” are standing a single candidate in every region. In reality this is merely a front group for a bunch of Glasgow bampots, led by someone who was expelled from UKIP for alleged Holocaust denial. They are standing purely as a spoiler party in this election, targeting the legitimate Scottish Green Party, and their simple one candidate per region slate is further evidence of this dodgy dealing.
As a fake party with no real presence, they have paid the relatively paltry sum of £4,000 to confuse voters and disrupt our democracy. Like the Greens or not, this is an absolute outrage, and the risk of it happening to other parties down the line should be taken seriously. The solution to this is a signatures and entitlements approach to ballot access: you require candidates to demonstrate a very modest amount of public support. Parties that won seats at the last election have already shown that support so don’t need to gum up our electoral administrators by needlessly re-proving it another way, and new parties can submit signatures.
Standing in Some of Both
- Regions
- Central & Lothians West (1)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (1)
- Highlands & Islands (2)
- Mid & Fife (2)
- North East (1)
- Constituencies
- Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
- Inverness and Nairn
- Moray
- Regions
- South (2)
- West (2)
- Constituencies
- Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse
- Cunninghame North
- Renfrewshire West and Levern Valley
- Region
- Central Scotland & Lothians West
- Constituencies
- Airdrie
- Bathgate
- Regions
- Glasgow (4)
- South (2)
- West (1)
- Constituencies
- Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok
- Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn
- Glasgow Kelvin and Maryhill
- Glasgow Southside
- Ayr
- Dumfriesshire
- Clydebank and Milngavie
- Region
- Edinburgh & Lothians East
- Constituency
- Edinburgh Southern
- Regions
- Central & Lothians West (1)
- Edinburgh & Lothians (2)
- Highland & Islands (1)
- Mid & Fife (1)
- South (1)
- West (2)
- Constituency
- Edinburgh Central
- Regions
- Central & Lothians West (1)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East (2)
- Glasgow (4)
- Highlands & Islands (1)
- North East (1)
- Constituencies
- Edinburgh Northern Western
- Edinburgh Northern
- Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok
- Dundee City East
A further seven parties are contesting a mix of regions and constituencies without appearing nationwide. The most widespread of these are the Libertarians, who are present in most regions, though they’d had a full spread last time. That was also the case for the Abolish the Scottish Parliament Party, effectively another head on a British Unionist Party Hydra. That linkage has been made explicit now on the ballot, though they are down to a single region and two constituencies within it.
Other reasonably spread parties are Advance UK (an offshoot from Reform UK), George Galloway’s Worker’s Party (though Galloway himself ultimately did not stand in Glasgow Southside constituency), and the Scottish Common Party, kind of an Alba offshoot in the sense one of its leaders was Alba’s best performing candidate in the 2022 local elections, before rejoining the SNP then ultimately setting this up.
Much less present are the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy, only appearing in a couple of regions and constituencies. That leaves the solo candidate for “Edinburgh & East Lothian People’s Party” which doesn’t seem to be an actual party so much as it seems to be a vanity project for Marc Wilkinson. He’s a perennial Independent who last year stood in both an Edinburgh council by-election and the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Holyrood election, which had overlapping nomination periods but obviously not geography.
Standing in Regions Only
- Edinburgh and Lothians East
- Edinburgh and Lothians East
- Glasgow (1)
- Highlands & Islands (1)
- Edinburgh & Lothians East
- Every region except South
- Highlands & Islands
- Central & Lothians West (3)
- Glasgow (4)
- South (5)
- West (3)
10 more parties are to be found solely on the regional ballot, of which seven are only contesting a single region. Several of these match up to where you’d expect. The Animal Welfare Party and the Equality Party (a rump survivor of the disbanded Women’s Equality Party) are obviously standing in Edinburgh. The Rural Party is in Highlands and Islands. The others are probably just where their only actual members live, though on that basis perhaps we should applaud the Heritage and Socialist Labour parties for finding as many candidates in one region as they did. The Liberals are worth a wee note as believe it or not they aren’t a spoiler for the Lib Dems: a tiny rump Liberal Party has limped on ever since the Liberal-SDP merger!
The three standing in multiple regions are a bit quirky. That the Christian Party has picked Glasgow and Highlands & Islands perhaps makes sense: the former will have a relatively large population of socially conservative Christians due to migration patterns, and the latter due to historic local factors particularly in the Western Isles. Meanwhile the fact that UKIP still exist at all is bizarre when you consider how Reform UK was effectively a recreation of UKIP, right down to having Farage as leader. Their slow death continues, having stood in every region last time and just half of them now.
Lastly, the Independence for Scotland Party are in many respects the original Independence Fundamentalist outfit, splitting off from the SNP before Alba did then being derailed when the latter was formed. They were meant to be part of the Alliance to Liberate Scotland but pulled out at the last minute, and missed out on a full regional presence by one candidate and region.
Standing in Constituencies Only
- Rutherglen and Cambuslang
- Dundee City East
- Dundee City West
- Dumbarton
- Paisley
- Renfrewshire North and Cardonald
- Paisley
There are only two constituency-only parties. One is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), weel-kent amongst election nerds for being a frequent micro-party option and are standing some regular stalwarts. One of them was actually a Modern Studies teacher at my high school, though (believe it or not) I didn’t take that subject, who is a regular face for the party. They stood in three regions last time, but have scaled their presence back from 13 unique candidates then.
The other is the Freedom Alliance, which had stood 36 list candidates spread across every region in 2021, plus four in constituencies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the market for dedicated anti-Lockdown, anti-Vaccine conspiracists doesn’t really exist this time.
Independent Candidates
Constituencies
- Aidrie (Brendan O’Donnell)
- Falkirk East and Linlithgow (Ian Wallace El-Paget)
- Falkirk West (Stuart McArthur)
- Motherwell and Wishaw (Dominic Alderson)
Region
- Jeremy Balfour
- “Bonnie Prince Bob”
- Morgwn Davies
- Ash Regan
Constituencies
- Edinburgh Central (“Bonnie Prince Bob”, Chris Creighton, Robert Pownall)
- East Lothian Coast and Lammermuirs (Morgwn Davies)
Region
- Craig Houston
- Elspeth Kerr
Constituency
- Glasgow Southside (Arzoo Waqqar Abdhullah)
Region
- Duncan MacPherson
- Mick Rice
Constituencies
- Argyll and Bute (Tommy MacPherson, Mick Rice)
- Inverness and Nairn (Fergus Ewing)
- Shetland Islands (Peter Tait)
Constituency
- Clackmannanshire and Dunblane (Luca Scacchi)
Region
- Marie Boulton
- Iris Leask
Constituencies
- Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine (Iris Leask)
- Angus North and Mearns (David Allen Neill)
- Banffshire and Buchan Coast (N D R McLennan)
Region
- Sean Davis
- Denise Sommerville
Constituencies
- Ayr (Denise Sommerville)
- Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Sean Davis, Alison Hewett)
- East Kilbride (Kristofer Keane)
- Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire (James Anderson)
Region
- Paul Mack
- Paddy McCarthy
- William Wallace
Constituencies
- Dumbarton (Andrew Muir)
- Paisley (William Wallace)
Independents are well distributed across the country, with a total of 35 spread across all 8 regions, of which only 7 are contesting both ballots. That’s quite a significant increase on the 25 that stood in 2021. Just one of these 35, Inverness and Nairn’s sitting MSP Fergus Ewing, has even a snowball’s chance in hell at being elected. The other two sitting MSPs standing in this field are both in Edinburgh & Lothians East: former Conservative Jeremy Balfour, and former SNP-then-Alba Ash Regan. They are both as good as gone.
Absent Parties
It’s also worth briefly talking about notable absences from the ballot. I had been thinking of this election as Alba’s death rattle, the last moment of anything resembling relevance. Given their failure to cut through even whilst Salmond was alive and the SNP’s support was collapsing, they were at best doomed to be a kind of Solidarity 2.0, a practically invisible vestige of something bigger.
They didn’t even survive until the election. Already falling to bits with infighting, apparent financial mismanagement did such a number on the party it ended up dissolving. A last ditch effort to keep it alive by some desperate egotists failed, and some of those fled to another Independence hardliner fringe outfit. Legally de-registered on the 26th of March, Alba lived for precisely one election cycle and not one ballot more.
Speaking of falling to bits with infighting: Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s fratricidal Your Party. Bounced by Sultana into launching a party that, if left to his own devices, Corbyn would have gone to his grave without but having set it up he must now have control of, the two immediately fell into a bitter factional conflict that has almost certainly sunk the party already. As a mere sideshow to this drama, the Scottish arm tried and failed to get approval to stand candidates for Holyrood, and are therefore missing the first electoral opportunity of their existence.
In all honesty I’m not sure what these people expected. You sit and wait for two English MPs to launch a new party. You join up and encourage others to do so too. You then hold a Scotland branch conference and vote to establish an independent party, effectively saying “thanks very much for setting up a new party and getting media attention, now we’ll be having that, cheerio!” Then you complain when the UK party you want to split from doesn’t view Scotland as a priority and wouldn’t facilitate your candidate nominations
The similarities between these parties doesn’t end with their failure to stand candidates this year. Both attracted notable defectors from other parties (the SNP in Alba’s case, and the Scottish Greens for Your Party), and to a significant degree those defections represented unserious and disruptive elements that their former parties likely can’t believe their luck in being shot of.
Ready for Launch
With the final candidates now set in legal stone, the Holyrood campaign is well and truly underway. Hopefully we’ll see a few more polls – from a few more pollsters – over the last few weeks to help give a clearer sense of what’s happening amongst the voting public.
The pre-election content cycle here on BBS continues next week with a Party Profile piece for each of the six major parties. Later I’ll also have findings from a BBS exclusive poll which should be headed into the field quite soon, plus my usual final prediction call on the day of the election. Remember you can keep tabs on all my coverage via the Holyrood Hub page here, and if you appreciate my work, please consider a wee donation via the link below.
If you find this or other Ballot Box Scotland output useful and/or interesting, and you can afford to do so, please consider donating to support my work. I love doing this, but it’s a one-man project and takes a lot of time and effort. All donations, no matter how small, are greatly appreciated and extremely helpful.
(About Donations)
