Reform UK have a candidate standing in all 73 constituencies in Scotland for the 2026 Holyrood elections on the 7th of May. To help Scottish voters navigate the proportional representation voting system used in Holyrood elections, each candidate profile comes with a guide – except, it explains the wrong PR voting system for this election.
Scottish elections use a proportional representation system called the Additional Members System (AMS), where you vote for a local candidate in your constituency, and then you’re given a second vote for a party. For example, if you think your local Scottish Labour candidate would best represent your interests, but you agree with the political principles of another party such as the Scottish Greens, you can vote for the Labour candidate for your constituency vote, and the Scottish Greens for your regional vote.
Reform explains the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, used in local councils (or student elections such as Stirling’s). The STV system involves ranking candidates in order of preference. Again, a guide to this system appears on all 73 candidate pages, whilst none of them are currently standing for elections that use this system.
Additionally, the document is particularly partisan and explicitly anti-SNP, with one subsection of it called “Using Your 2nd, 3rd, 4th Preferences to Prevent the SNP from Winning”.
It also advises potential Reform voters in Scotland to rank the Conservatives and Labour above the SNP, posing to readers that Reform voters “see [these parties] as better choices than the SNP”.
Reform’s candidate for Stirling, Rachael Wright, was not present at today’s local hustings, hosted by Stirling’s Debating Society, telling the society that she’d no longer be attending as she’d be in Aberdeen. Reform UK leaders Richard Tice and Malcom Offard visited Aberdeen for a press conference today.
Featured Image Credit: https://reformuk.scot/scottish-constituencies/