The result of the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections highlighted again – but ever more so this time – that it’s not quite all peachy for the so‑called ‘second’ (list) vote.

The ballot papers for constituency seats, using the first‑past‑the‑post system where a named candidate is voted for, are lilac coloured. Meantime, those for the regional or list seats, where a party is voted for, are peach coloured.

The use of the Additional (or Mixed) Member System, where there is the ‘second’ vote, was meant to build a new consensus by stopping any one party from gaining overall control of the Parliament. As we know this has not exactly happened with the Scottish National Party (SNP) since 2007.

But the other problem of the ‘second’ vote is more subterranean than that aforementioned one.

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The SNP gained 625,949 votes across the eight list regions but this provided for just one MSP. Those 625,949 votes represented 27% of all the votes cast across the eight list regions. Meanwhile, the SNP gains 57 MSPs with 877,077 votes, representing 38% of the vote across all the 73 constituency seats.

This was a significant step‑on from the situation for the SNP in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections. Just two list MSP seats were gained with........

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