A rural constituency, Elgin is the main town, with the rest of the population sprinkled across several small fishing and farming communities.

The seat was bordered by the constituencies of Banff and Buchan, Gordon, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, and West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine.

The constituency followed the southern coastline of the Moray Firth between Cullen to the east and Dyke to the west, on the outskirts of Forres, and extended up towards the northern fringes of the Cairngorms National Park along the River Spey and its tributaries.

On the eastern banks of the River Findhorn, 15 miles south-west of Lossiemouth, is the larger town of Forres, which is the site of Sueno's Stone, Brodie Castle and the Dallas Dhu Distillery.

South and east of Elgin, the River Spey and areas east of the river historically belonged to the former county of Banffshire, while Moray instead incorporated parts of Nairn, which is today included in the Highland council area and in the Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey parliamentary constituency.

The upper reaches of the River Spey stretch down from mountainous terrain in the south to still thinly populated rolling plains.

When the Moray constituency was first established in 1983, it elected Alexander Pollock of the Conservatives as MP with a 1,713 (4.0%) majority, but the SNP's Margaret Ewing won the seat at the following general election in 1987, alongside neighbouring Banff and Buchan as part of a wider breakthrough for the SNP in the north-east of Scotland.

Labour made a breakthrough in the constituency at the 2001 general election when Margaret Ewing retired to be replaced by Angus Robertson: Labour came ahead of the Conservatives for the first time, but the SNP beat them by 1,744 votes (5.2%); however the seat reverted to a SNP-Conservative battle from the 2005 general election onwards.

The party were ahead in all wards in the more densely populated north-west of the council area, an area known as the Laich of Moray, covering the towns of Elgin, Forres, Lossiemouth, Burghead, Hopeman and Lhanbryde; whilst the SNP were ahead in the three electoral wards covering Buckie, Cullen, Keith and Speyside.