Scottish Parliament election count live
We are reporting live from the Shetland election count at the Clickimin
WELCOME to Shetland News’ live coverage as votes for the Shetland constituency in the Scottish Parliament election are counted to decide who will be the isles’ next MSP.
We are reporting from the Clickimin Leisure Complex in Lerwick, with the first ballot box expected to be opened at around 9am before a result is announced in the afternoon.
There are eight candidates vying for the Shetland seat at Holyrood, which was previously held by the outgoing Lib Dem MSP Beatrice Wishart, with the public casting their votes yesterday.
They are, in alphabetical order: Alex Armitage (Greens), Douglas Barnett (Conservatives), Vic Currie (Reform UK), John Erskine (Labour), Hannah Mary Goodlad (SNP), Emma Macdonald (Liberal Democrats), Brian Nugent (Alliance to Liberate Scotland), Peter Tait (independent).
Shetland’s votes for the regional list – the peach ballot paper which featured parties or independents – will also be counted, but identity of the seven elected Highlands and Islands MSPs will only be known at a later time.
That’s the end of our coverage today from the Scottish elections at the Clickimin, where the candidates have long gone and the tables are being packed up around us!
It was a historic day for the SNP and Hannah Mary Goodlad, who has seized control of the Shetland constituency seat for her party for the first ever time.
A seismic result for Goodlad was achieved with a massive vote share – 47 per cent – which will now see her head to Holyrood.
Thank you for joining us and following our live blog today, we hope you have enjoyed our coverage from the count and throughout this election campaign.
The results have been announced in the Shetland regional vote, where Scottish Liberal Democrats have come out on top.
The Lib Dems won 3,508 of the 11,461 valid regional votes, with the SNP trailing in second with 3,099.
The Scottish Greens were third with 1,852 votes, and Reform UK were fourth with 1,310.
Labour earned 620 votes, while the Conservative party had 546 votes.
There were 63 rejected ballots – 57 were rejected because they were unmarked or void for uncertainty, with six rejected because votes were given for more than one candidate.
We won’t know what that result means for the Highlands and Islands region, and what MSPs are voted in on the list, until all of the results are in later.
Hannah Mary Goodlad’s acceptance speech after having been announced Shetland’s new MSP.
Here’s a graph showing the difference in votes between the candidates today, with the SNP charging to what ended up being a comprehensive victory.
They secured 47 per cent of the total votes in the seat, with the Liberal Democrats winning 34 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats lost 1,867 votes between the 2021 Scottish elections in Shetland and today’s vote, while the SNP are up 456 votes.
In second place was the Scottish Greens’ Alex Armitage, followed by Reform UK’s Vic Currie. After that it was Scottish Labour’s John Erskine, the Conservatives’ Douglas Barnett, Alliance to Liberate Scotland’s Brian Nugent and independent Peter Tait.
The full list of results can be found here:
SNP’s Hannah Mary Goodlad wins the Shetland constituency seat with 5,453 votes.
Liberal Democrat Emma Macdonald secured 3,936.
We’re expecting a declaration for Shetland soon – perhaps in ten minutes.
It looks as if there is a historic moment on the cards with the SNP’s Hannah Mary Goodlad expected to be declared winner.
Speaking to BBC Radio Shetland, Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, congratulated the SNP’s candidate, saying it looks as if his party has lost the seat.
The SNP candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad has arrived at the count, and we’re expecting a declaration relatively soon.
A potentially historic moment is on the cards, with the SNP believed to be closing in on victory.
Brian Nugent is standing to represent the Alliance to Liberate Scotland party, and he is predicting an SNP victory here at the Clickimin.
While both he and the SNP advocate for an independent Scotland, he believes the SNP “don’t actually believe in independence”.
In terms of his own performance, Nugent says his “deposit is lost” – but hopes he is not going to finish last in the eight candidate field.
If Hannah Mary Goodlad is to be Shetland’s new MSP, Nugent says “good luck to her”.
But he said she was not getting in because of her party’s record in government, which he said was “terrible” – adding that they had “failed the NHS and failed education”.
The count today will elect Shetland’s new constituency MSP, but it will also inform how the seven regional Highlands and Islands MSPs are elected.
The regional vote uses the additional member system, which was introduced by the founders of the parliament to ensure a more proportional representation in the chamber.
Scotland’s 73 constituency MSPs are being elected by the traditional first past the post system, while the remaining 56 so-called list MSPs, seven MSPs from eight different regions including the Highlands and Islands, are elected via the additional member system.
Generally speaking, the more constituency MSPs a party wins, the less chance it has to gain additional seats via the list.
The election in 2021 saw four Conservative MSPs elected to represent the Highlands and Islands, in addition to one Green, one Labour and one SNP.
To start determining the distribution of seats via the regional list, the number of votes each party has gained is divided by the number of MSPs the party has won in the Highlands and Islands constituencies, plus one – with the plus one so that parties who do not have any constituency seats can take part.
Once the regional MSPs have been elected – which could be tomorrow – then it helps to give a firmer picture nationally as to how the next parliament will look.
Confusing? It certainly has its moments. This video below helps to explain the process.
More from local politics guru James Stewart…
“Historically, women have been very underrepresented in Shetland’s politics. Women were not allowed to stand as council candidates until 1907, and for Parliament until 1918, though it wasn’t until 1933 that the first woman was successfully elected to the council (https://shetlandhistory.com/person/charlotte-nicol/)
“It wasn’t until 1958 until the first Shetland-born woman won an election – Joan McLeod – who would go on to have a remarkable 36 years of service as a local representative for Cunningsburgh.
“When retiring MSP Beatrice Wishart was elected in 2019, she became the first woman elected to represent Shetland in either Holyrood or Westminster
“Throughout the lifetime of Shetland’s various elections, only 6% of winning candidates have been women. SIC Chief Executive Maggie Sandison has facilitated efforts to try to increase the numbers of women through initiatives such as GatHER and Elect Her.
“These initiatives seek to challenge the stark reality that women face disproportionate online abuse online when standing for office.
“SNP candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad, for example, faced nonsensical criticism about her outfits in a way that none of the male candidates have.
“The winner of this election will almost certainly be Emma Macdonald or Goodlad, but there is still much to do to ensure that women feel able to put themselves forward for future elections.”
This table shows the number of women who have been elected over the years in Shetland, from council to parliament.
Green candidate Alex Armitage says he feels that “many ways we’ve kind of won this election before the votes got counted” – pointing to the longer term.
He said the Greens’ objections were to get a good regional list vote, to grow their membership, to train their activists and gain experience of fighting elections.
Armitage said the Greens said they wanted to lead on election issues. “I think we did really on that front, standing up to the far right, defending human rights, speaking about the contest between Shetland communities and corporations”.
He also said he thinks a lot of Green supporters voted tactically in the constituency vote, with growing talk here being that the SNP is doing well.
Pete Bevington’s letter below spells out what our journalists have experienced throughout this election campaign, and not just from Lib Dem candidate Emma Macdonald.
There appears to be an increasing reluctance among some candidates to respond to media enquiries, let alone make themselves available to questioning and scrutiny. The prime examples here were Reform candidate Vic Currie who could not be traced for weeks after the announcement of his candidacy and Conservative Douglas Barnett who only very late in the day agreed to be interviewed.
Instead we have seen a deluge of video clips on social media. This may well appear be the easier way of campaigning, but is local democracy being served by this?
Scottish Conservative candidate Douglas Barnett says his constituency votes look to be “about what I was expecting” as the count continues.
He is more hopeful about his party’s chances on the orange ballot papers, the regional list, which is being counted at the far end of the Clickimin hall.
Barnett said that was where his party has really been pushing for results, and he is confident that they will secure some regional MSPs for the Highlands and Islands.
In terms of the Shetland seat itself, Barnett thinks the result “looks pretty close” between Emma Macdonald (Lib Dems) and Hannah Mary Goodlad (SNP).
Barnett said his party’s main priority was to stop an SNP majority in Scotland, which the party has said would give it a mandate to call for a new independence referendum.
He said it was “on a knife edge” whether the SNP secured that – and added he would “see that as a win” if they failed to secure an overall majority at Holyrood.
We’ve caught a word with Labour candidate John Erskine, who said he has “thoroughly enjoyed the campaign”.
But as the count progresses he said “it’s looking like the SNP have potentially won” in Shetland, which would be a major political shift here if it came to fruition.
His hope is that Labour can still pick up success in the regional list vote.
In terms of the wider picture, it has not been a great story for Labour in the English council elections which are also taking place.
“The message we need to take from this is the that people are frustrated with the pace of change” in areas like the cost of living.
Taking a closer look at the turnout figures for the constituency vote, the highest turnout was Uyeasound in Unst with 71.8 per cent.
Uyeasound also had the lowest number of ballot papers accepted as verified, with 61.
The lowest turnout figure was Mossbank at 48.1 per cent.
The turnout figure for election in Shetland has been announced as 64.16 per cent for the constituency vote.
The turnout figure for the regional vote was 64.09 per cent.
At the last Scottish Parliament election in Shetland the turnout figure was 66 per cent.
The talk for much of the campaign has been around whether the result could be a close call between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.
Local politics historian James Stewart has offered this insight into voting in Shetland.
“Shetland has voted Liberal (Democrat) in every election since 1832 except 1835-1837 and 1935-1950, and for years it has been considered a very safe seat. Tavish Scott in 2007 even won a super majority with 66.7% while Alistair Carmichael took 62% in 2010.
“The SNP have emerged in the last 10 years as the main challenger to the orthodoxy. In 2015, the late Danus Skene came within 817 votes of unseating Alistair Carmichael. Tom Wills was only 806 votes short of winning against Beatrice Wishart in 2021.
“The 2026 campaign has been one of the more active in living memory, and as a result, it really has been too close to call. At least five elections in Shetland have been settled by a single vote. Could we see that today?”
During the election campaign, which essentially started last year when candidates began to be confirmed, Shetland News run a series of features on each candidate – joining them on the campaign trial where possible.
If you’re still needing an election fix, the pieces can be read here:
In case you haven’t seen, over on our Facebook page we’ve shared this video of the count beginning.
The first box was from the Aith Public Hall, and as you can see it was the lilac ballots – the constituency vote – which is being counted on the tables closest to us.
The tables furthest away from us are counting the orange ballot papers, the regional list votes.
Good morning everyone, we’re here at the Clickimin Leisure Complex for the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election count.
Returning officer Jan Riise has just given his opening statement, with a result expected at around 2.30pm.
Riise thanked all the candidates for standing for the Shetland seat, joking that without them we would not have been in the Clickimin at this time of morning.
Candidates will be allowed to go and observe the election count as it takes place, but journalists and guests can only watch from a short distance away – and no photography or videos of the count papers are allowed.
With that said, we will shortly have a video of the first ballot box being emptied onto the count table as the counting begins.
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