2007 Scottish Parliament election

• Susan Deacon, Edinburgh East and Musselburgh[8]
• John Home Robertson, East Lothian[9]
• Janis Hughes, Glasgow Rutherglen[10]
• Kate Maclean, Dundee West[11][12]

• Bruce McFee, West of Scotland list[12]
• George Reid, Ochil[12]

• Phil Gallie, South of Scotland list[12]
• James Douglas-Hamilton, Lothians list[12]

• Donald Gorrie, Central Scotland list[10]
• Jim Wallace, Orkney[10]

• Frances Curran, West of Scotland list[13]

• Dennis Canavan, Falkirk West[14]
• Brian Monteith (elected as a Conservative), Mid Scotland and Fife list[15]

• Gordon Jackson, Glasgow Govan
• Sylvia Jackson, Stirling
• Margaret Jamieson, Kilmarnock and Loudoun
• Maureen Macmillan, Highlands and Islands
• Christine May, Fife Central
• Alasdair Morrison, Western Isles
• Bristow Muldoon, Livingston
• Allan Wilson, Cunninghame North

• Andrew Arbuckle, Mid Scotland and Fife
• Nora Radcliffe, Gordon
• Euan Robson, Roxburgh and Berwickshire
• George Lyon, Argyll and Bute

• Dave Petrie, Highlands and Islands
• Murray Tosh, West of Scotland

• Shiona Baird, North East Scotland
• Chris Ballance, South of Scotland
• Mark Ballard, Lothians
• Mark Ruskell, Mid Scotland and Fife
• Eleanor Scott, Highlands and Islands

• Colin Fox, Lothians
• Rosie Kane, Glasgow
• Carolyn Leckie, Central Scotland

• Rosemary Byrne, South of Scotland - originally elected as Scottish Socialist Party
• Tommy Sheridan, Glasgow - originally elected as Scottish Socialist Party

• John Swinburne, Central Scotland

• Campbell Martin, West of Scotland - Former SNP MSP
• Jean Turner, Strathkelvin and Bearsden

Some counts in the Western Isles (Barra & the Uists) were delayed because the chartered helicopter sent to pick up the ballot boxes was delayed by bad weather. The boxes were instead transferred by sea and road to be counted in Stornoway. The votes were announced around 12.00 on Friday 4 May.

A man smashed ballot boxes with a golf club at a polling station at Carrick Knowe in Corstorphine in Edinburgh. About 100 ballots were damaged, some having to be taped back together. The man was arrested on the scene.[20]

The number of 'invalid' ballot papers (residual votes) in this election was significantly higher than usual, with a total of 146,099 ballot papers (regional: 60,455 or 2.88%; constituency: 85,644 or 4.075%) being rejected,[21] with some constituencies such as Glasgow Shettleston having rejection rates as high as 12.1%.[22] For comparison, the rejected ballot paper rate in 2003 was 0.65% for regional ballot papers and 0.66% for constituency ballot papers. In total there were 16 constituencies where the number of rejected ballots exceeded the winning candidate's majority.[23] This led to calls for an independent enquiry into the implementation of the new voting system. The BBC Scotland Chief Political Editor, Brian Taylor, described the situation as "a disgrace" during their Election Night coverage.[24]

There are several reasons for the usually high levels of rejected ballots in the election. One primary reason is that both the regional and constituency ballots were placed on a single sheet of paper. A large-type instruction at the top indicated "you have two votes." Being told that they had two votes, far too many voters used both votes on parties in the regional list.[25] Although a rough template of the ballot was provided to voters by VoteScotland prior to the election, many ballots in reality had subtle yet consequential differences. Taking the ballot from Glasgow Shettleston for example, although its layout is similar to the sample ballot it has many more parties on the regional ballot, giving the illusion that the list continues onto the next side (constituency ballot). Furthermore, instructions provided to voters using these sheets were abbreviated. While the brief written instructions remained, they were presented in a much smaller font size. The column headings moved above the bold lines defining the columns and the visual prompt of the split arrow leading to the two columns is completely missing.[26] This misleading ballot was made more complicated by two additional features of the balloting: several small parties like the Green Party ran one or fewer candidates in the constituency seats and parties were able to choose to put the name of their leader instead of the name of the party in the label for the list seats (For example, the SNP was listed as "Alex Salmond for First Minister", rather than the party name). Such poor ballot design decisions contributed to a similarly higher rate of spoiled ballots in the 2000 United States presidential election in areas of Florida such as Miami-Dade and Duval counties.

Another reason presented was that local elections took place on the same day with a different voting system and different design. Whereas the parliamentary election asked voters to mark a cross, the local council elections asked voters to number/ rank their candidates, as the council elections were under the single transferable vote system. Undercutting this theory, however, was the fact that the invalid rate in the local elections was far lower than the parliamentary elections (although still greater than in previous local elections) despite single transferable vote being a new system for most voters.

A third proposed reason was that this was the first election where electronic counting of papers had taken place. Many blamed e-counting for the increase in rejected papers, in part because the new machine counting system abandoned many counts during the early hours of Friday morning before all results had been counted. Furthermore, the primary reason for the regional and constituency ballots being placed on the same sheet of paper is due to restrictions on the size of paper the machines could accurately scan. The main company concerned was DRS Ltd.[27] Nevertheless, nearly all invalid ballots would have been spoiled no matter how they were counted. However, the last minute redesign of ballot papers that was blamed for the high number of rejections in two electoral regions was done to make electronic voting easier.[28]

On 5 May 2007, the BBC reported that Labour were considering legal action against some results (particularly Cunninghame North, where the SNP beat Labour by just 48 votes) due to the high number of rejected votes.[29] A further challenge was expected from Mike Dailly from the Govan Law Centre, a member of the Labour Party, purportedly on behalf of voters in the Glasgow region. He said that the result should be challenged because there were over 10,000 rejected ballots which could have caused a different result if they had counted. Tommy Sheridan of Solidarity was only 2,215 votes short of beating the Greens for the last place as an MSP.[29]

There were no election petitions raised to challenge the results.

At time of dissolution of the Scottish Parliament at midnight on Monday 2 April 2007, there were five party 'groups' represented on the Parliament's Bureau: Labour (50), SNP (25), Conservative (17), LibDem (17), and the Greens (7). There was also one 'mixed' administrative grouping of 5 independent MSPs and 1 Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party MSP.

Of the major party leaders in the Scottish Parliament, only one, Jack McConnell, of the Scottish Labour Party fought the 2003 Scottish Parliamentary election as leader. Nicol Stephen succeeded Jim Wallace as Deputy First Minister and Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats in June 2005, after the latter announced that he would not be contesting the 2007 election.[33] Alex Salmond was elected leader of the Scottish National Party in 2004, with his deputy Nicola Sturgeon.[34] Salmond previously led the SNP between 1990 and 2000, but stood down and was replaced by his preferred successor John Swinney, who headed the party between 2000 and 2004. Following Swinney's resignation in 2004, Salmond announced that he would, once again contest the leadership and won the ballot of members in June 2004. Annabel Goldie was elected leader of the Scottish Conservatives in November 2005[35] after the resignation of the incumbent David McLetchie on 31 October 2005 after a row surrounding taxi expenses.[36]

Robin Harper and Shiona Baird were elected as Scottish Green Party Co-convenors in 2004, but as the sole Green MSP Robin Harper was effectively party spokesperson from 1999.[37]

Colin Fox was elected as the Scottish Socialist Party Convenor in 2005. In 2006 Tommy Sheridan left the party to form Solidarity.