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The smallest party to be elected to Holyrood in 2021, the Lib Dems have been suffering a second era of near-wipeout in their history. The first afflicted one of their predecessor parties, when after the First World War and further accelerating following the Second, the Liberals were almost completely replaced by Labour. It took until the late 20th century, and the split from Labour of the Social Democratic Party, for the merged Liberal Democrats to become a major force once again.
All of that progress was undone by the 2010 UK General Election, when the Lib Dems entered coalition with the Conservatives. That was a shock to a base that at the time included a large proportion of voters who actually considered themselves to the left of New Labour, never mind aspects of the coalition agenda which amounted to capitulation rather than compromise. In Scotland, the backlash was immediate, costing them two-thirds of their MSPs in 2011 and all bar one of their MPs in 2015.
Since then their Holyrood contingent has limped weakly on, being narrowly overtaken by the Greens in 2016 and then winning half their number in 2021. Shortly after the election, I wrote a piece musing about whether the party’s woes were effectively terminal, concluding: “Looking ahead to 2026 the question is will they find themselves celebrating further reinforcement of their leader’s already staggering majority in another otherwise bleak election, or instead have sown the seeds of longer-term revival?”
Five years on, revival may be on the cards.
Holyrood History
Note: For consistency, all current polling average references and projections in the Party Profiles series are based on the last data point by the 1st of April 2026, as it was at time of publication.
Lib Dem Vote Share at Scottish Parliament Elections
Like most major parties, the Lib Dems have gone through Holyrood’s existence with their constituency vote outstripping their support on the list. Notably, the two votes went in opposing directions in 2003 and 2007: the constituency increasing, the list decreasing. Both votes completely collapsed in 2011, following their entry into coalition with the Conservatives at Westminster. Since then, despite some Westminster recovery, they’ve basically flatlined.
The background to all of the above is simple: of all the major parties, the Lib Dems have the greatest tendency to dig in deep to a relatively small number of constituencies. That’s the only way to grow your seat share under First Past the Post, but it’s always been an odd approach to Holyrood, where the bleed of votes on the list even in their strongest constituencies has long been a problem for them. The flat vote since at 2016 and 2021 disguises a gradual death for the party outside its core areas, something my 2021 article investigated.
In 2011 the proportion of their own vote which came from their five strongest constituencies (the four they currently hold, plus Caithness, Sutherland and Ross) was 20% for the constituency vote and 17.6% for the list. In 2021, that had grown to 39.5% and 27.9% respectively. When you consider those seats only account for 5.5% of total votes cast in 2021, that’s an astonishing level of concentration. It’s therefore difficult to make sense of the expected substantial increase in their support. Just how concentrated is that going to be?
I’d expect a widening of their intense campaigning net slightly to include other Highland constituencies as well as Edinburgh Northern and Strathkelvin and Bearsden, which should reduce that concentration. If it’s overly concentrated though, that’ll limit their ability to make key gains like a potential list seats in Mid Scotland and Fife or South Scotland. There’s also the matter of the complete alignment between their two votes in polling: given there’s always been a gap, will we see a higher constituency or lower list vote on the day itself, or will they shock with a genuine convergence?
Lib Dem Seats Won at Scottish Parliament Elections
Given that 1999 followed hot on the heels of the transformational 1997 UK General Election, the Lib Dem starting position was almost identical, winning all the constituencies they held at Westminster plus Aberdeen South. Their handful of list seats then fell in the pattern necessary to fill in some gaps (Glasgow, West and Central) or boost their under-represented regions (Lothian and Mid and Fife), ensuring they were a truly nationwide party. They then jointly formed the first ever Scottish Executive (as the Scottish Government was then termed) with Labour, making the (very recently) late Jim Wallace the most powerful Lib Dem in the UK for decades.
Contrary to the notion that coalition automatically entails backlash, the Lib Dems held steady in 2003. The gain of an additional Edinburgh constituency didn’t do anything to change their overall pattern. Even when the Lab-Lib Executive was defeated in 2007, the Lib Dems only suffered a net loss of one seat, though some of their historic constituencies began to slip: Gordon and Argyll and Bute went to the SNP and the core Borders seat to the Conservatives.
In 2011, their mainland support melted away in the face of the SNP’s shock majority, losing every constituency they held bar the Northern Isles and only holding on to a single list MSP in each of Mid and Fife, the North East and South. I mentioned in the vote section that a flat vote disguised a slow death outside their strongest areas. That’s also partly hidden by the fact the one seat that went wrong versus the AMS ideal outcome in 2011 should have went to the Lib Dems, but they haven’t been so affected in the past two elections. In other words, the Lib Dems went from being due 6 MSPs albeit only winning 5, to being due and winning 5, to being due and winning 4, all without a change in their overall list vote share.
Their currently projected tally of 10 MSPs would therefore represent a significant revival, squeaking back into double figures for the first time. They are not however expected to recover enough to win an MSP in every region, as their two weakest regions continue to appear beyond their grasp. It’s also possible the balance tilts more towards constituencies than this even split, not to mention a potential Highlands and Islands over-performance could lead to them becoming a mini-SNP in that region, with more constituencies than their fair share.
Lib Dem List Vote Distribution by Region in 2021 (Notional)
Given they only just scraped above 5% nationwide, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see that the Lib Dems were clearly below that value in half of regions. In fact they are also below it in the North East, where they actually won 4.995% of the vote: 17 votes short of the deposit saving mark. Of these, Highlands and Islands remains the only region where they were in double digits, and even then not by a huge amount. In the Fife and Edinburgh centric regions meanwhile they are sat about halfway between being due one and two seats… at least, in an election where AMS was working flawlessly, which will not be this year.
Although quite far, in relative terms, from an MSP in 2021, both South and West benefit from having a Lib Dem heartland, either past or present, within them. In both regions there is one particular council area, split between two constituencies, which provided the only portions of those regions where they polled above 5%. Those may therefore be a springboard from which to regrow some support.
Bottom of the list are Glasgow and Central Scotland and Lothians West, where rather than having a remaining council area of moderate strength, there are instead a couple of individual council wards where they do okay. Where my model struggles with the Lib Dems is because it’s a middle ground between proportional and uniform swing, it’s pushing them towards seat-eligible territory in both regions. Put frankly, I don’t think they’ve got a hope in hell of an MSP in either region, especially not Glasgow. “The Lib Dems have a very concentrated vote” has already been said several times throughout this piece, but I’m saying it again, and it is not concentrated in those two regions.
Key Areas
For brevity, I’ve picked out five of the most important places for the Lib Dems in this election. Not being included in this list doesn’t meant a constituency or region isn’t important, or that the Lib Dems aren’t in with a chance of winning it. You can find more detail about other interesting seats in the Ballot Box Battlegrounds series, and information about every constituency in region via the Regional Preview series.
Caithness, Sutherland and Ross (Constituency)
2021 Constituency Vote
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
This was the nearest-miss for the Lib Dems constituency wise in 2021, even though they’d won the (unusually) slightly smaller UK equivalent in both 2017 and 2019. At just 7% behind the SNP, an improved polling position versus the SNP’s massive slump, and surely having been working it hard, Caithness, Sutherland and Ross is one I am pretty confident in saying is going to change hands.
Edinburgh Northern (Constituency)
2021 Constituency Vote
Note: the Green vote is based solely on where they stood in 2021 and does not reflect a “true” share for this constituency.
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
Due to the scale of the SNP’s 2021 victory and the tendency of opposition party voters to have sorted themselves geographically into “best placed to beat the SNP”, very few of the substantial boundary changes this year are particularly meaningful. Glasgow’s map for example was torn to shreds but since the SNP were miles ahead and Labour second (bar Kelvin) everywhere, it barely mattered.
Edinburgh is a different story. A highly diverse patchwork of local strongholds combined with similarly dramatic changes has shaken things up a lot more, with this seat being one of the two most interesting. In 2021 terms there’s a near even split between the three major Pro-Union parties, with the SNP comfortably out in front. Since then, almost everyone else’s stock has fallen bar the Lib Dems’. At the local elections in 2022 they were the most popular party in this area, and they were thrilled with this new seat when it was first proposed.
Something else that’s likely to benefit the Lib Dems is another party who are on the up: the Greens. They are contesting very few constituencies nationwide, but this is one of them. Given we would expect most of their support to come at the SNP’s expense, their presence will further help the Lib Dems to close the gap. I’m more confident than my model that they will win this seat, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s in the bag.
Shetland Islands (Constituency)
2021 Constituency Vote
2026 Constituency Vote (Projected)
It’s very odd indeed that Shetland has made it onto this list, as you’d generally expect the Northern Isles together to be clearly Lib Dem. You might also look at the projected constituency vote and wonder how this is anywhere near contention. The answer lies in the bane of election models worldwide: “local factors.”
I’ve heard on the grapevine the Lib Dems are a little bit uneasy in Shetland. Despite the largely non-partisan nature of Shetland Islands Council, both the previous Lib Dem MSP and the new candidate were drawn from amongst its members. The current council is not very popular, I’m told, and Lib Dem candidate Emma Macdonald is the council leader. Presumably, then, it would be the SNP who would be set to unseat them if that candidate choice were to prove fatal.
I still can’t quite see it myself though, I have to admit. Similar to the previous seat, they are also likely to be impacted by the presence of a Green candidate in the form of local councillor Alex Armitage. Unlike Macdonald he stood and was elected under a party banner at that level too, and he did well in the joint Orkney and Shetland Westminster seat in 2024. I expect most of his vote to come from the SNP, though more from the Lib Dems than other Green constituency candidates given the more personal nature of support in the islands.
North East Scotland (Region)
2021 Regional Vote
2026 Regional Vote (Projected)
The North East is going to appear in three party profiles in a row, so rather than repeat myself exhaustively in them all, let me summarise the situation: the SNP are probably proportionally due 5 MSPs. They could win all 10 constituencies. That means up to 5 MSPs from other parties who should be fairly due a seat are going to be blocked, the worst such disproportionality nationwide.
In 2021, it wasn’t a disproportionality that did the Lib Dems in, but their own loss of support. This had been their last regional MSP left in 2016 and as part of the aforementioned drawback into their mightiest bastions, they let the North East wither and paid the price for it. That does however make it the first region they can expect to regain an MSP in, assuming they can overcome the proportional challenge.
West Scotland (Region)
Notional 2021 Regional Vote
2026 Regional Vote (Projected)
The next closest region to an MSP after the North East, the Lib Dems fell much shorter in West. Though they’ve got a smidge of residual support in other patches, I recently described this region as effectively “Greater East Dunbartonshire” from the Lib Dem perspective. They have a long history of holding the primary Westminster constituency in the area, the only constituencies in the region they won more than 5% of the vote were the East Dunbartonshire-inclusive ones, and they are apparently trying hard to win Strathkelvin and Bearsden.
The latter may be what helps pull them up to an MSP-justifying share region-wide, as I doubt they’ll be seeing a huge increase in the likes of the Cunninghames or Renfrewshire West and Levern Valley. It’s not actually impossible, though I view it as unlikely, that they win that constituency. If they do, they won’t get a list seat unless my modelling of the regional vote is miles off. Assuming they have the votes for an MSP it almost doesn’t matter to them how they get it, as it’s the same candidate either way.
What to Watch for in 2026
Note: Obviously, your personal perception of a good or bad result will depend on how much you like a given party. For the purposes of this piece, good and bad relate to how an impartial observer might view the result, taking into account other elections and the general situation facing that party. They are not a commentary on whether such results would be good or bad for the country.
Good Result
After a period of stagnation in votes and steady decline in seats at Holyrood, any gains at all naturally qualify as a good result for the Lib Dems. A notably good result would be to come out with at least 8 MSPs, i.e. double their numbers compared to 2021. As that would entail gaining CSR, the North East list seat, and an additional seat in some form in both Edinburgh and Lothians East and in West, they’d also return to having some representation in most Holyrood regions.
An exceptionally good result would see them bounce back enough to entire double-digits, which would likely entail a South MSP, a list MSP in Mid and Fife, plus potentially gaining other Highland constituencies or at least enough votes to pick up a list MSP there too.
Bad Result
On the assumption that a net loss in seats isn’t on the cards, a bad result for the Lib Dems comes down to a combination of constituency and polling misfires. Losing Shetland for the first time would be chastening, or if their list share is being overestimated by polling and perhaps they were only to gain a couple of additional MSPs. Whilst a half-dozen MSPs would be growth and you’d expect the party to publicly crow about it, it would be an underperformance against what they are clearly hoping for.
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