Scottish Conservatives
Centre-right unionist party at Holyrood; fell to 12 seats in 2026, losing all five constituency seats to the SNP.
On 7 May, the Scottish Conservatives returned 12 Holyrood MSPs, all from regional lists, after losing all five constituency seats. The result left Scotland’s main centre-right unionist party without a constituency mandate.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can the Scottish Conservatives rebuild a constituency presence after losing all five seats to the SNP?
Timeline for Scottish Conservatives
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The Scottish Conservatives are a centre-right unionist party represented in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. Their role is to argue for Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom while competing for voters across Scotland’s centre-right.
The party became the main opposition to the SNP after winning 31 Holyrood seats under Ruth Davidson in 2016. On 7 May 2026, the party returned 12 MSPs, all from regional lists, after losing its five constituency seats.
Russell Findlay, the leader, refused to resign on 14 May after the result, and was the only major party leader at Holyrood to refuse POST-election talks with John Swinney. With no constituency MSPs, every Conservative member of the Scottish Parliament now sits on a regional list, for the first time since 1999.
The party loses its constituencies
On 7 May, the Scottish Conservatives won 12 Holyrood seats, all through regional lists, and lost all five constituencies they had held. That removed the party’s directly elected geographic base at the same election that reshaped the chamber’s right-of-centre representation.
The party had faced that risk before polling day. An Electoral Calculus projection published on 7 April put it on nine seats, all regional, with the SNP projected to take its five constituencies. The final result made the loss of constituency representation the central measure of its recovery task.