Everything You Need To Know About The Scottish Elections But Were Afraid To Ask.

Now I was supposed to be in the garden but here in the hills it's so windy that I was let off the hook by the Head Gardener. What to do thought I, a little bit of political anoraking never goes amiss. When my wife came in and saw what I was doing I was foolhardy to tell her about what another bloggers wife had said about him blogging.
"It's beneath even Morris dancing."
"Intelligent woman that." Was my wife's response.

God knows what she'll make of this? She'll probably make me sell my Steeleye Span albums!

Anyway, here's some things about the election that I bet you're absolutey bursting to know. And if you're not......

• Share of Total Constituency votes
SNP 657,148 – 32.7%
Labour 648,406 – 32.3%
Conservatives 334,742 – 16.7%
Lib Dems 326,229 – 16.2%
Others 42,317 – 2.1%

• The Conservatives out polled the Lib Dems in 39 (53%) out of 73 Constituencies

• Labour out polled the SNP in 41 (56%) out of 73 Constituencies

• The Conservative polling the most votes was Jackson Carlew in Eastwood (14,186)

• Andy Kerr polled the most Labour votes in any constituency (15,334)

• In Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine Mike Rumbles polled the most votes of any Liberal Democrat (14,314)

• John Swinney not only polled the most votes of any SNP MSP at 18,281, but he polled more than any other MSP

• The SNP had the top four polling MSPs. Besides Swinney, there was Fergus Ewing (16443), Stewart Stevenson (16,031) & Andrew Welsh (15,686)

• In all 73 constituencies the SNP polled 8,742 more votes than Labour, but if you take away those top four seats where the SNP annihilated Labour in the remaining 69 seats Labour polled 629,438 votes to the SNPs 590,707.

• Of the party leaders Alex Salmond got the most votes in their constituency, which conclusively proves that the Alex Salmond for First Minister worked!
Alex Salmond - 14,560
Jack McConnall - 12,574
Nicol Stephen - 10,843
Annabel Goldie - 8,289

• Of the main parties the worst performing in terms of number of votes were.
Conservative Western Isles 752
Labour in the Shetlands 670
LibDem Western Isles 852
SNP in Ayr 873

• In only 9 out of the 73 constituency did a candidate trounce their opponents by getting more than 50% of the votes. Tavish Scott in the Shetlands was the most overwhelming where he got almost 67% of the votes cast (but that hardly counts!). Elsewhere Stewart Stevenson (SNP) in Banff & Buchan got almost 59%.The most trouncing of Tories was John Lamont who got 54% in Roxburgh & Berwickshire and Paul Martin (Labour) in Glasgow Springburn took nearly 57%. Bizarrely Wendy Alexander who the BBC were predicting might be under threat took over 52%.