2022 Scottish local elections

← 2017 5 May 2022 (2022-05-05) 2027 →
All 1,226 seats to 32Scottish councils
Turnout	44.8% (2.1%)[1]
First party Second party Third party   Leader Nicola Sturgeon Anas Sarwar Douglas Ross Party SNP Labour Conservative Last election 431 seats, 32.3% 262 seats, 20.2% 276 seats, 25.3% Seats won 453 282 214 Seat change 22 20 63 First preferences 633,252 403,243 364,824 First preferences (%) 34.1% 21.7% 19.7% Swing (pp) 1.8% 1.6% 5.6%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Ind Leader None Alex Cole-Hamilton Lorna Slater /Patrick Harvie Party Independent Liberal Democrats Green Last election 168 seats, 10.4% 67 seats, 6.8% 19 seats, 4.1% Seats won 152 87 35 Seat change 15 20 16 First preferences 156,815 159,815 110,791 First preferences (%) 8.4% 8.6% 6.0% Swing (pp) 2.0% 1.7% 1.8%
Popular vote by council areas. Council controls post elections

The2022 Scottish local elections were held on 5 May 2022, as part of the2022 United Kingdom local elections. All 1,226 seats across all 32Scottish local authorities were up for election andvoter turnout was 44.8%.^[1]

Compared to theprevious elections of 2017, theScottish National Party (SNP) gained seats and maintained its position as largest party in local government, winning 36.9% of the seats available.Scottish Labour (winning 22.9% of seats) gained seats, whilst theScottish Conservatives (who won 17.5%) lost many seats, being displaced by Scottish Labour as the second-largest party. Independent candidates also lost seats, whilst theScottish Liberal Democrats and theScottish Greens increased their vote share and gained seats across Scotland.

At the 2017 election, no council was won by an overall majority of any party. In the 2022 election, the SNP increased its vote share and secured an overall majority onDundee City Council,^[2] whilst Labour won overall control ofWest Dunbartonshire Council.^[3] Scottish Conservative leaderDouglas Ross blamed his party's bad results on thepartygate scandal.^[4]

TheAlba Party andScottish Family Party ran candidates in around 100 seats each but failed to win any. TheRubbish Party andWest Dunbartonshire Community Party held their singular seats, whilst theBritish Unionist Party gained their first seat from the Conservatives.

The last election was in2017, which was held five years after the 2012 election, instead of four was changed in order to avoid clashing with the2016 Scottish Parliament election.

Boundaries Scotland have conducted a review of electoral arrangements for six councils under the terms of theIslands (Scotland) Act 2018.^[5] TheScottish Parliament's Local Government Committee accepted the new boundaries inNa h-Eileanan an Iar,North Ayrshire,Orkney andShetland, but recommended against approval of the changes inArgyll and Bute andHighland.^[6]

Councillors are elected to represent multi-memberwards using theSingle Transferable Vote (STV) method, which has been used for all elections to local authorities in Scotland sincethe 2007 election. Previous to this election, in all votes since 2007, wards have been sized such that either 3 or 4 councillors are elected per ward. However, this election was different. The Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 and theScottish Elections (Reform) Act 2020 have givenBoundaries Scotland increased flexibility to vary the size of wards. Mainland wards may now have between 2 and 5 councillors, and single councillor wards are permitted where such a ward includes an inhabited island.^[7] For these elections wards represented by one, two or five councillors will only be contested in the four council areas in which ward boundaries have been redrawn after 2017, namely Na h-Eileanan an Iar, North Ayrshire, Orkney and Shetland.

Overall, the 32 local authorities had one one-seat district (Arran), seven two-seat districts and three five-seat districts (North Ayrshire) in addition to the bulk of the members elected in three and four seat districts.

Allregistered electors (British citizens and all other foreign nationals withleave to remain, including refugees)^[8] who are aged 16 or over on polling day are entitled to vote in the local elections.^[9] A person who has two homes (such as a university student who has a term-time address and lives at home during holidays) canregister to vote at both addresses as long as they are not in the same electoral area, and can vote in the local elections for the two different local councils.^[10]

Individuals must have beenregistered to vote by midnight on 18 April 2022. The deadlines to register for apostal vote andproxy vote were 19 and 26 April 2022, respectively.^[11]

Summary of the May 2022Scottish council election results

Party		First-preference votes			Councils		Seats
		Count	Of total (%)	Change	Count	Change	Count	Of total (%)	Change
	SNP	633,251	34.1%	1.8%	1	1	453	37.0%	22
	Labour	403,243	21.7%	1.6%	1	1	282	23.1%	20
	Conservative	364,824	19.6%	5.7%	0		214	17.5%	62
	Independents	156,751	8.4%	2.0%	3		149	12.2%	19
	Liberal Democrats	159,815	8.6%	1.7%	0		87	7.1%	20
	Green	110,791	6.0%	1.9%	0		35	2.9%	16
	West Dunbartonshire Community	1,462	0.1%		0		1	0.1%
	BUP	859	0.1%		0		1	0.1%	1
	Rubbish	787	0.0%		0		1	0.1%
	Alba	12,335	0.7%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Scottish Family	6,857	0.4%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Scottish Socialist	1,058	0.1%	0.1%	0		0	0.0%
	TUSC	1,022	0.1%		0		0	0.0%
	Independence for Scotland	742	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Libertarian	698	0.0%		0		0	0.0%
	Freedom Alliance	555	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Volt UK	421	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Socialist Labour	381	0.0%		0		0	0.0%
	UKIP	372	0.0%	0.2%	0		0	0.0%
	Women's Equality	228	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Social Democratic	222	0.0%		0		0	0.0%
	Sovereignty	154	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Communist	119	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Pensioner's	75	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Vanguard	74	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Workers	61	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Scottish Eco-Federalist	24	0.0%	New	0		0	0.0%	New
	Vacant seats	—N/a					3	0.0%	3
	No overall control	—N/a			27	2	—N/a
Total		1,857,181	100.0		32		1,226	100.00

• 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election
• 2022 United Kingdom local elections
• 2022 Welsh local elections
• Politics of Scotland

• Scotland council elections 2022: A really simple guide.BBC News.

• Council elections in Scotland
• 2022 Scottish local elections
• 2022 United Kingdom local elections

• Articles with short description
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• Use dmy dates from April 2022