2015 United Kingdom general election

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All59 Scottish seats to theHouse of Commons
Turnout	71.1% (7.3%)
First party Second party   Leader Nicola Sturgeon Ed Miliband Party SNP Labour Leader since 14 November 2014 25 September 2010 Last election 6 seats, 19.9% 41 seats, 42.0% Seats won 56 1 Seat change 50 40 Popular vote 1,454,436 707,147 Percentage 50.0% 24.3% Swing 30.1% 17.7%   Third party Fourth party   Leader David Cameron Nick Clegg Party Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 6 December 2005 18 December 2007 Last election 1 seat, 16.7% 11 seats, 18.9% Seats won 1 1 Seat change 10 Popular vote 434,097 219,675 Percentage 14.9% 7.6% Swing 1.8% 11.4%
Coloured according to the winning party's vote share in each constituency

A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2015 and all 59 seats inScotland were contested under thefirst-past-the-post,single-member district electoral system. Unlike the2010 general election, where no seats changed party, theScottish National Party (SNP) won all but three seats inScotland, gaining a total of 56 seats.^[1][2] The SNP received what remains the largest number of votes gained by a single political party in a United Kingdom general election in Scotland in British history, breaking the previous record set by the Labour Party in1964 and taking the largest share of the Scottish vote in sixty years, at approximately 50 per cent.^[3]

TheLabour Party suffered its worst ever election defeat in Scotland, losing 40 of the 41 seats it was defending, including the seats ofScottish Labour leaderJim Murphy and the thenShadow Foreign SecretaryDouglas Alexander. TheLiberal Democrats lost ten of the eleven seats they were defending, with the thenChief Secretary to the TreasuryDanny Alexander and former leaderCharles Kennedy losing their seats. The election also saw the worst performance by theScottish Conservative Party, which received its lowest share of the vote since its creation in 1965, although it retained the one seat that it previously held.^[4] In all, 50 of the 59 seats changed party, 49 of them being won by first-time MPs.

The general election in Scotland was fought in the aftermath of the2014 Scottish independence referendum, in which 1,617,989 voters (44.7%) backed independence while 2,001,926 (55.3%) did not. The referendum saw a record turnout of 84.59%, the "highest turnout in any nationwide ballot in Scotland since the advent of the mass franchise after the First World War". There was speculation as to whether this would significantly affect the turnout in the general election.^[5][6] An immediate consequence of the referendum was a massive rise in the membership of the pro-independence parties, with the SNP in particular adding 60,000 to its membership to reach over 85,000 within two months of the referendum.^[7]

Since 2005, theScottish National Party had come first in the2007 Scottish Parliament election as well as the2009 European Parliament election. In Westminster, however, it was a different story: although in 2008 the party won theGlasgow East by-election, in what was one of the safestLabour seats in the UK, by the time of the2010 UK general election and even with an increase of 2.3% in the vote, it only managed to retain the seats it had won in the 2005 general election. A year later, in the2011 Scottish Parliament election, the SNP became the first majority government since the opening of Holyrood – a remarkable feat, for themixed-member proportional representation system used to electMSPs makes the acquisition of a single-party majority challenging. The SNP gained 32 constituencies, 22 of which came fromScottish Labour, nine from theScottish Liberal Democrats and one from theScottish Conservatives. Such was the scale of their gains that, of the 73 constituencies in Scotland, only 20 were represented byMSPs of other political parties in 2011.

The SNP's majority in the Scottish Parliament allowed it to legislate for areferendum on Scottish independence. This was held in 2014, and the proposal for independence was defeated by 10.6 percentage points. In spite of this, the campaign in favour of independence made a set of significant inroads across theCentral Belt of Scotland, a region which has traditionally had a strong affiliation with the Labour Party. The Yes campaign took 44.7% of the vote in Scotland on a high turnout of 84.6%: well beyond the SNP's 19.9% vote share at the 2010 UK general election. This took form at the 2015 UK general election with a saturation of the SNP vote in areas which had a higher "Yes" vote at the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

Scottish Labour had held the majority of seats in Scotland in every general election since the 1960s, and many prominent government officials represented Scottish constituencies, such as the Prime MinisterGordon Brown and theChancellorAlistair Darling. In the 2010 election, the Labour Party in Scotland increased its share of the vote by 2.5% and re-gained the Glasgow East and Dunfermline and West Fife constituencies giving them 41 out of 59 seats in Scotland. At the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Labour lost out to the SNP across much of the central belt of Scotland, holding on to 15 out of 73 constituency seats in Scotland.

In 2015 Labour lost 40 of its 41 Scottish constituencies at the UK Parliament, withEdinburgh South becoming the only constituency in Scotland to have a Labour MP after the election. The party lost out heavily to the SNP in working-class areas around central Scotland, with Scottish Labour's safest constituency (Glasgow North East) returning the largest swing in the election at 39.3% from Labour to SNP. The party performed best in its more affluent constituencies, with Scottish Labour's leader Jim Murphy missing out in his former constituency ofEast Renfrewshire by just 6.6% of the vote. Labour's next closest constituency result came inEdinburgh North and Leith, where the missed out to they SNP by 9.6% of the vote, and inEast Lothian, where the SNP polled ahead of Labour by 11.5% of the vote.

In the context of a broader collapse in the party's support across Great Britain at the end five years as part of acoalition UK Government with the conservatives, the Scottish Liberal Democrats lost 10 of its 11 Westminster constituencies from 2010, with its safest constituency in Great Britain -Orkney and Shetland - becoming the only Liberal Democrat constituency in Scotland. They marginally lost out to the SNP inEast Dunbartonshire, where former Lib Dem MPJo Swinson lost out to the SNP by 4% of the vote. Among those to lose their constituency at the election were former Liberal Democrat leaderCharles Kennedy and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury,Danny Alexander. The Liberal Democrats came third inBerwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk andWest Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, constituencies which they had held in the previous election.

The Scottish Conservatives have not held a majority of Scottish seats in a general election since1955 and it lost all eleven of its seats in the election of1997. From 2001 until 2017, the party only held one Westminster seat in Scotland. In 2005, following the re-organisation of Scottish constituencies, that seat wasDumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, a mostly rural constituency near the Scottish borders. In 2010 its share of the vote in Scotland increased by roughly 0.9% and it retained theDumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, as its only Scottish constituency. It had been reported the party could gainBerwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk,^[8] a seat which they lost out on to the SNP by 0.6% of the vote.

Minor parties such as theUKIP and theScottish Greens announced that they would contest more Scottish seats than they did in the 2010 election. UKIP targeted the sole Conservative seat in Scotland, as well as standing candidates in several others. TheBritish National Party also announced its intention to contest more seats than in 2010, though in the event did not stand a single candidate in a Scottish constituency.^[9][10] TheScottish Socialist Party stood in four constituencies.^[11]

The prospect of anelectoral alliance between pro-independence parties—specifically the SNP, the Greens, and theScottish Socialist Party—was raised after the referendum and supported by elected SNP politicians,^[12] but played down by Green co-convenorPatrick Harvie, who said party members did not want their "distinctive Green perspective" to be lost.^[13] The SSP supported negotiations for a formal alliance until late in 2014.^[14][15]

• 31 March – The first official day of the election campaign got under way, with the Scottish Greens becoming the first party to launch their manifesto.^[16][17]
• 7 April – First TV debate was broadcast on STV^[18]
• 8 April – Second TV debate was broadcast on BBC Scotland, with UKIP and the Scottish Greens included.
• 10 April – Ed Miliband visits Edinburgh, claiming the SNP's aim to have full control of tax in Scotland would create a £7.6bn financial "black hole".^[19][20]
• 12 April – Third TV debate was broadcast on BBC Scotland, between the four main parties. The debate was criticised, with many of the public claiming it was a "Rammy".^[21][22]
• 21 April –John Major entered into the row, and repeated claims by David Cameron that an Labour-SNP government would be a "recipe for mayhem" and entering blackmail.^[23] A number of former Conservative ministers entered into the debate claiming deep unease about the rhetoric.Lord Tebbit described Cameron's repeated warnings about the SNP as "puzzling" and "pointless", and might even push Scots to vote tactically for Labour.^[24]Lord Forsyth claimed it was playing a "short term and dangerous game" which could further threaten the union.^[25][26][27] Ed Miliband rejected the claims, while Nicola Sturgeon labelled Sir John's comments as "Silly over the top and an affront to democracy".^[28]
• 4 May – Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy and comedian Eddie Izzard were heckled by opponents while campaigning in Glasgow city centre, with the scene descending into scuffles. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon condemned the scenes but said they had "nothing to do with the SNP".^{[29][30][31][32]} The following day the SNP placed two members under "administrative suspension".^[33][34]

As in 2010, there were televised debates ahead of the election, featuring the leaders of the four main Scottish parties.^[35] The first debate was broadcast onSTV on 7 April. The second debate was held onBBC One Scotland on 8 April with additional representatives from the Scottish Greens and UKIP. A follow-up date a few days later took place onSunday Politics Scotland, The debate was criticised, with many of the public claiming it was a "shambles".^[21][22] The last debate took place on 3 May.^[36][37][38]

The leaders from each of the main parties are:

• Scottish Labour –Jim Murphy
• Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party –Ruth Davidson
• Scottish Liberal Democrats –Willie Rennie
• Scottish National Party –Nicola Sturgeon

Party[39]		Seats					Aggregate votes
		Total	Gains	Losses	Net +/-	Of all (%)	Total	of all (%)	Difference
	SNP	56	50	0	50	94.9	1,454,436	50.0	30.1
	Labour	1	0	40	40	1.7	707,147	24.3	17.7
	Conservative	1	0	0		1.7	434,097	14.9	1.8
	Liberal Democrats	1	0	10	10	1.7	219,675	7.5	11.3
	UKIP	0	0	0		0.0	47,078	1.6	0.9
	Green	0	0	0		0.0	39,205	1.3	0.7
	Independent	0	0	0		0.0	2,455	0.1	N/A
	CISTA	0	0	0		0.0	1,807	0.1	New
	TUSC	0	0	0		0.0	1,720	0.1
	Scottish Christian	0	0	0		0.0	1,467	0.1
	Others	0	0	0		0.0	1,378	0.0	N/A
Total		59					2,910,465	71.1	7.3

• 
  2015 map of Scottish Constituencies - Results

Of the 59 sitting MPs from Scotland at the dissolution of Parliament, 52 stood for re-election, but only 9 were successful:

• Alex Salmond (SNP) wonGordon, making him the only former Scottish MP in this election to return to Parliament following a break. He previously served as MP forBanff and Buchan from 1987 to 2010, and therefore had the longest total service of any Scottish MP returned at the 2015 election.
• Mhairi Black (SNP) wonPaisley and Renfrewshire South at the age of 20, making her the youngest MP since theReform Act 1832.

• 2015 United Kingdom general election in England
• 2015 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland
• 2015 United Kingdom general election in Wales

• 2015 United Kingdom general election
• 2015 in Scotland
• 2010s elections in Scotland
• General elections in Scotland to the Parliament of the United Kingdom

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