The 2007 Scottish local elections were held on 3 May 2007, the same day as Scottish Parliament elections and

local elections In many parts of the world, local elections take place to select office-holders in local government, such as mayors and councillors. Elections to positions within a city or town are often known as "municipal elections". Their form and conduct vary ...

in parts of England. All 32 Scottish

councils A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/ shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or nati ...

had all their seats up for election – all Scottish councils are unitary authorities.

Background

This was the first election for local government in Great Britain to use the Single Transferable Vote (the system is used in Northern Ireland), as implemented by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. The new electoral system resulted in most councils being under no overall control.

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Scanners supplied by DRS Data Services Limited of

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, in partnership with Electoral Reform Services (ERS), the trading arm of the Electoral Reform Society, were used to electronically count the paper ballots in both the Scottish council elections and the Scottish Parliament general election. Because of the

fiasco Fiasco may refer to: * a failure or humiliating situation * Fiasco (bottle), a traditional Italian straw-covered wine bottle often associated with Chianti wine Media * ''Fiasco'' (novel), a 1987 science-fiction novel by Stanisław Lem * ''F ...

in 2007 of holding parliamentary (Holyrood) and local elections simultaneously, the following Scottish local elections were held in

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instead of 2011.

Party performance

The Labour party lost control of all but two of its councils, Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, but received the largest number of votes, while the SNP were the main beneficiaries of the new voting system, picking over 180 new seats. The Scottish Greens elected their first-ever councillors, winning eight seats.

Results

, - !colspan=2 style="text-align:center;" , Parties !style="text-align:center;" , First-Preference
Votes !style="text-align:center;" , Votes % !style="text-align:center;" , +/- !style="text-align:center;" , Councillors !style="text-align:center;" , Net
Gain/Loss , - , , 590,085, , 28.1, , −4.5%, , 348, , −161 , - , , 585,885, , 27.9, , +3.8%, , 363, , +182 , - , , 327,591, , 15.6, , +0.5%, , 143, , +21 , - , , 266,693, , 12.7, , −1.8%, , 166, , −9 , - , , 228,894, , 10.9, , +0.8%, , 192, , −38 , - , style="width: 10px" style="background-color:" , , style="text-align: left;" scope="row" , Other , 102,897, , 4.9, , +1.3%, , 10, , +6 , - !colspan=2, Total!!2,099,945!! !! !! 1,222!!

Councils

The notional results in the following table are based on a document that

John Curtice Sir John Kevin Curtice (born 10 December 1953) is a British political scientist who is currently professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research. He is particularly in ...

and Stephen Herbert (Professors at the University of Strathclyde) produced on 3 June 2005, calculating the effect of the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote on the

2003 Scottish Local Elections The 2003 Scottish local elections were held on 1 May 2003, the same day as Scottish Parliament elections and local elections in parts of England. All 32 Scottish councils had all their seats up for election – all Scottish councils are unitary ...

Notes and references

{{United Kingdom local elections, 2007

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Local elections, Local elections May 2007 events in the United Kingdom