2007 Scottish local elections

New electoral system

This was the first election for local government in Great Britain to use the Single Transferable Vote (the system is used in Northern Ireland), as implemented by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Under the Act, council seats were allocated in ward contests of one, two, three, four or five seats in each. The voter had the right to mark as many or as few preferences as desired.

All in all, 1222 seats were filled using more than 350 separate wards.

The use of Scotland's new electoral system resulted in most councils being under no overall control, a situation in which no single political group achieves a majority of seats.

eCounting fiasco

Scanners supplied by DRS Data Services Limited of Milton Keynes, in partnership with Electoral Reform Services (ERS), the trading arm of the Electoral Reform Society, were used to electronically count the paper ballots in both the Scottish council elections and the Scottish Parliament general election.

Because of the fiasco in 2007 of holding parliamentary (Holyrood) and local elections simultaneously, the following Scottish local elections were held in 2012 instead of 2011.

Party performance

The Labour party lost control of all but two of its councils, Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, but received the largest number of votes, while the SNP were the main beneficiaries of the new voting system, picking up over 180 new seats. The Scottish Greens elected their first-ever councillors, winning eight seats.

Results

|- style="background-color:#E9E9E9; ! scope="col" colspan="2" rowspan=2 | Party ! scope="col" colspan="3" | First-preference votes ! scope="col" colspan="2" | Councils ! scope="col" colspan="2" | 2003 seats ! scope="col" colspan="3" | 2007 seats |- ! scope="col" | Count ! scope="col" | Of total (%) ! scope="col" | Change ! scope="col" | Count ! scope="col" | Change ! scope="col" | Count ! scope="col" | Of total (%) ! scope="col" | Count ! scope="col" | Of total (%) ! scope="col" | Change |-

| | 590,085 | 28.1 | 4.5% | 2 | | 348

| | 585,885 | 27.9 | 3.8% | 1 | | 363

| | 327,591 | 15.6 | 0.5% | 2 | | 143

| | 266,693 | 12.7 | 1.8% | 0 | | 166

| | 228,894 | 10.9 | 0.8% | 0 | | 192 | 15.7%

| | 10 | 0.8%

| | 1,222 | 1,222 | 1,222 | 100.00 | |}

Councils

The notional results in the following table are based on a document that John Curtice and Stephen Herbert (Professors at the University of Strathclyde) produced on 3 June 2005, calculating the effect of the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote on the 2003 Scottish local elections.

Notes

References

References

1. (8 June 2012). "SPICe Briefing: Local government elections 2012". SPICe.
2. Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2004/9#commentary-key-53e67b85f1d842e29cb79d9ad959f7ae accessed December 24, 2025
3. Clark, Alistair. (28 March 2011). "STV in Scotland shows us that voters can adapt to preferential voting systems – but political parties may take longer to fully grasp the new system". [[London School of Economics]].
4. (2008). "Observations of the Scottish elections 2007". Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy.
5. Staff Reporter. (13 September 2007). "DRS 'e-counts' tripled first half profits". Business Weekly.
6. (10 May 2007). "Scottish PR elections herald coalition politics".
7. [https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2007-Scottish-local-elections.pdf 2007 Scottish Local Elections]
8. (3 June 2005). "STV IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS: MODELLING THE 2003 RESULT".