Prof Ana Ines Langer
Professor of Political Communication at the University of Glasgow and co-founder of the Scottish Political Communication Network. Her research interests focus on how political actors use different types of media and how this, in turn, shape the democratic process.
Prof Christopher Carman
Stevenson Professor of Citizenship at the University of Glasgow. He has been one of the lead researchers on the Scottish Election Study since 2011 and has written several books and articles on Scottish voting, public opinion and elections. His most recent research examines preferences for compromise in politics.
Prof Ariadne Vromen
Head of the Division of Political and International Studies at the University of Glasgow. A political sociologist with a long-term interest in citizen engagement and elections, she moved to Glasgow from Sydney, Australia in early 2025. She was impressed that non-citizens can vote in Scotland.
Dr Maia Almeida-Amir
Research assistant in politics and international studies at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on young people’s use of social media, particularly YouTube, to engage with political issues and participate in activism.
On the 7th of May 2026, Scottish voters returned a new Scottish Parliament — one that was quickly dubbed a “rainbow parliament,” a legislature of diverse parties. The Scottish National Party, under the leadership of John Swinney, remained the dominant force, securing 58 of the chamber’s 129 seats and forming a fifth consecutive SNP government. This fell short of the majority it had sought. In a dramatic and fragmented result, Reform UK and Labour tied for second place, winning 17 seats each, while the Scottish Greens achieved their best-ever performance, including the party’s first constituency victories. The Conservatives, on 12 seats, saw their vote share slashed and lost 19 seats. The Liberal Democrats secured 10 seats, reclaiming their traditional constituencies in the Highlands and Islands, while also losing Shetland, a seat held since 1950. The overall result — delivered through Scotland’s Additional Member System — proved the most disproportional in the parliament’s history, with the SNP and Greens together winning 57% of seats on 44% of the regional list vote. Turnout, at 53%, returned to the levels seen in the pre-independence referendum era of devolved politics.
The parliament that emerged must do more than simply accommodate a new, complicated partisan arithmetic. A record 64 newly elected MSPs will bring fresh priorities and, in some cases, a distinctly different understanding of what Holyrood is for. For a chamber whose founding principles rested on consensus, openness, accessibility, and a deliberate contrast with the adversarialism of Westminster, incorporating this breadth of outlook — and a genuinely novel form of populist opposition — will be among its most significant tests since devolution began.
The articles collected in this volume offer analysis of the political landscape that produced this result — and of the landscape it has, in turn, created. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly expertise, the contributions are both retrospective and prospective, looking at how we got here and what lies ahead for the new Scottish Parliament and the government it will scrutinise. This is the first edition of what we hope will become an ongoing series dedicated to the analysis of Scottish Parliament elections, and we are delighted by the quality, range, and ambition of contributions from scholars working across the breadth of Scottish politics.
The parties and the campaign section examines how Scotland’s political parties fought the 2026 election across traditional and digital battlegrounds. Contributors analyse how the SNP halted a potential collapse in support, what went wrong for Labour, the Greens’ remarkable breakthrough, and the rise of Reform UK’s appeal to post-industrial Scotland. Articles also explore how parties used online advertising, bored us on TikTok, attacked on X, and drew on their leaders to try to persuade voters. Other contributions analyse the role of artificial intelligence in voter information, how campaign messages framed crisis, identity, and environmental politics, and the changing dynamics of party competition in a more fragmented political landscape.
The media, news and journalism section examines how the 2026 election was covered, consumed, and contested across different media environments. Contributors explore patterns of news consumption in Scotland, the role of algorithmic recommendations on TikTok, and the prevalence of consumption versus active participation in social media among younger audiences. Articles also analyse how legacy broadcasters and the press covered the campaign, gendered media framing, questions of trust, and how a future independent Scotland was presented through media coverage.
The voters, polls and electoral system section examines what the 2026 result tells us about Scottish voters, and the mechanics of an open franchise and distinctive electoral competition. Contributors assess the performance and limitations of the Additional Member System, the rise and electoral geography of Reform UK, and the SNP’s continued dominance despite losing vote share. Other contributions explore changing voting patterns across generational, gender, and constitutional lines, the performance of MRP polls during the campaign, and what the outcome reveals about voter preferences and where power and support really lie in Scottish politics.
The democracy and representation section introduces the idea of a new “rainbow parliament” with more party diversity than ever before, alongside questions of increasing descriptive representation. The new parliament includes Scotland’s first non-binary and trans woman MSPs, both representing the Scottish Greens. Contributors assess the parliament’s progress on gender sensitivity and note that, while women remain well represented, significant turnover of women MSPs occurred at this election, with ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and those from working-class backgrounds continuing to be under-represented.
Policy implications is a distinctive element of this Report, focusing on a wide range of policy questions facing the new parliament. These range from the independence question — and what new alliances between nationalist governments in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland might mean — to significant economic and fiscal challenges affecting Scotland’s revenue base, public sector, and delivery of services. Contributors highlight distinct policy challenges across poverty reduction, the NHS, the energy sector, local government, urban regeneration, education, climate policy, foreign policy, and immigration.
Taken together, the contributions gathered here make clear that the 2026 Scottish Parliament election is more than a one-off electoral event — it may well be a moment of genuine political transition. Whether Scotland’s new rainbow parliament proves a durable feature of devolved democracy, or a transitional moment on the path to something else, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the political landscape is changing, and the analysis collected in this volume provides an essential starting point for understanding what that change means.
