Scottish local elections, 2012

Scottish local elections, 2012

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All 1,223 seats to 32 Scottish councils
Turnout	39.6% (13.2%)
First party Second party   Leader Alex Salmond Johann Lamont Party SNP Labour Leader since 3 September 2004 17 December 2011 Last election 363 seats, 27.9% 348 seats, 28.1% Seats won 425 394 Seat change 62 46 First preferences 503,233 488,703 First preferences (%) 32.33 31.39 Swing (pp) 4.48 3.26   Third party Fourth party   Leader Ruth Davidson Willie Rennie Party Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 November 2011 17 May 2011 Last election 143 seats, 15.6% 166 seats, 12.7% Seats won 115 71 Seat change 28 95 First preferences 206,599 103,087 First preferences (%) 13.27 6.62 Swing (pp) 2.35 6.05
Colours denote the winning party with outright control
Colours denote the party with the most seats
Colours denote the party with largest share of first preference votes by ward

The 2012 Scottish local elections, were held on 3 May, in all 32 local authorities. The Scottish National Party (SNP) overtook Labour to win the highest share of the vote, and retained and strengthened its position as the party with most councillors. Labour also made gains, while the Liberal Democrats experienced meltdown, falling behind the Conservatives. For the first time since the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote system, the SNP won majority control of 2 councils, from no overall control. Labour also won majority control of 2 councils from no overall control, while retaining majority control over 2 councils.

Independent councillors retained majority control over the 3 island councils. The 23 other councils remained under no overall control.

The election was due to be held on 5 May 2011, but Scottish Ministers heeded the advice of the Gould Report and split the Holyrood and local elections - in order to avoid a repeat of the 2007 fiasco. These local elections were the second since the Single Transferable Vote (STV) was first introduced for the 2007 local government elections. This election was the first since the SNP won a majority in the Scottish Parliament. They were also the first local elections in Scotland since 1995 not to take place at the same time as a Scottish parliamentary election.

In October 2010 a new company - Logica was awarded the contract for the vote counting system for the 2012 council elections, and since January 2011 testing has been under way to sort out many issues. On the 5 August 2011, A Dummy election was set up in Perth to test out new "eCounting" system, as part of robust test, in which 160,000 ballot papers run through the machine. This forms third stage of rigorous testing of the system in partition of these elections.