Charles III William, Duke of Rothesay Swinney government The Rt Hon John Swinney MSP The Rt Hon John Swinney MSP Kate Forbes MSP Sixth session Alison Johnstone MSP Angela Constance MSP Dorothy Bain KC The Rt Hon Lord Carloway KC PC United Kingdom Parliament elections European Parliament elections Local elections Referendums Starmer ministry The Rt Hon Keir Starmer MP The Rt Hon Ian Murray MP
The Scottish Parliament (Holyrood), created by the Scotland Act 1998, has used a system of constituencies and electoral regions since the first general election in 1999.
The parliament has 73 constituencies, each electing one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the plurality (first-past-the-post) system of voting, and eight additional member regions, each electing seven additional MSPs.
Each region is a group of constituencies, and the D'Hondt method of allocating additional member seats from party lists is used to produce a form of proportional representation for each region.
Until the 2005 general election the first-past-the-post constituencies were the same as for the House of Commons (United Kingdom Parliament, Westminster), except for Orkney and Shetland, which were separate constituencies at Holyrood, but not at Westminster.