VoteScot

How to Vote

Everything you need to know about voting in the Scottish Parliament election on 7 May 2026.

Your Two Ballot Papers

When you arrive at the polling station, you will be handed two ballot papers, not one. The first is your constituency vote. Scotland is divided into 73 constituencies, each electing one MSP. This works on a simple first-past-the-post basis: the candidate with the most votes wins the seat. You pick one name on this ballot.

The second ballot paper is your regional list vote. Scotland has eight regions, and each one elects seven additional MSPs through a proportional system. On this ballot you vote for a party rather than a person. The regional vote is where smaller parties often win seats, because the system is designed to reflect each party's share of the vote more fairly than first-past-the-post alone can.

How the Additional Member System Works

The Scottish Parliament has 129 MSPs in total: 73 from constituencies and 56 from the regional lists. This combination is called the Additional Member System (AMS). The regional list seats exist to correct the disproportionality that first-past-the-post creates. If a party wins fewer constituency seats than its share of the vote would suggest, it picks up extra seats through the regional list to bring things closer to a fair reflection of how people voted.

The regional seats are allocated using a formula called D'Hondt. It works like this: after the constituency results are in, each party's regional vote total is divided by the total number of seats (both constituency and regional) that party has already won in that region, plus one. The party with the highest result after that division gets the next seat, and the calculation repeats until all seven regional seats in that region are filled. The "plus one" is the key part — it means a party that already holds several seats needs a much larger regional vote to win additional list seats, which is how the system balances things out.

Key Dates

Who Can Vote

You can vote if you are aged 16 or over on polling day, registered to vote, and live in Scotland. Unlike UK general elections, Scottish Parliament elections extend the vote to EU citizens and Commonwealth citizens resident in Scotland — you do not need to be a British citizen.

Do I Need ID?

Unlike UK general elections, you do NOT need to show photo ID to vote at the Scottish Parliament election. You do not even need to bring your polling card — you just need to be registered and turn up at your polling station. Photo ID requirements apply only to UK Parliament elections.

How to Register

If you are not yet registered to vote, you can do so online in about five minutes. You will need your National Insurance number (you can find this on payslips, tax letters, or by requesting it from HMRC). The deadline is 20 April 2026, but it is best to register as soon as possible.

Where to Vote

Your polling station is assigned based on your address and will be printed on your polling card, which arrives by post before the election. If you have lost your polling card, do not worry — you can still vote as long as you are registered.

Polling Trends

Opinion polling for the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. Updated daily from the Wikipedia polling tracker.

Data from Wikipedia polling tracker. Polls conducted by BPC-registered polling firms. Last synced: 10 April 2026.

Resources

Three tools cover the full picture: this quiz tells you who aligns with your values, Ballot Box Scotland tells you who's likely to win, and Fraser of Allander tells you whether the promises are funded.

Party Manifestos

Read what each party is promising. Manifestos are typically published 3-4 weeks before polling day.

About VoteScot

VoteScot is an open-source, non-partisan vote compass for the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. It was built as a community project to help voters understand where candidates stand on policy issues. The source code is available on GitHub and contributions are welcome.

How the Quiz Works

The quiz covers 8 policy areas: Scotland's Future, NHS & Health, Housing, Climate & Transport, Tax & Public Spending, Economy & Jobs, Education & Childcare, and Social Issues. Each question has three options scored on a 0–2 scale. When you answer, the tool compares your responses to each candidate's recorded positions and calculates a match percentage based on the difference across all answered questions. The more questions you answer, the more accurate the match. No data is stored — the entire quiz runs in your browser only.

Where the Data Comes From

Candidate details (names, parties, constituencies) are sourced from Democracy Club via their public API. Party policy positions are taken from official party platforms and manifestos. Opinion poll data is aggregated from Wikipedia's polling tracker, which compiles British Polling Council member surveys. Constituency boundaries use data from MapIt by mySociety.

Important Caveat: Party Defaults

For the majority of candidates, policy positions are derived from their party's published platform rather than from the individual candidate's own statements. Where a candidate has an empty "Track Record" section on their profile page, their positions are party defaults and have not been individually verified. Always check the candidate's own website and election leaflets where possible.

How to Report Errors

If you find a mistake, please open an issue on GitHub. You can also submit a pull request — data lives in the data/ directory as YAML files.

Data Sources

Privacy & License

VoteScot does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data. There are no cookies, no analytics, and no tracking. The quiz runs entirely in your browser. VoteScot is released under the MIT licence.