Page "Scottish Parliament general election, 1999" Paragraph 2

The first general election to the Scottish Parliament overall produced few surprises with the Labour Party still enjoying high popularity following their landslide UK general election win two years earlier as widely expected was the largest party winning 56 seats, mostly in their traditional Central Belt heartlands, which was nine seats short of an overall majority and a coalition was then formed with the Liberal Democrats who won 17 seats.

The Scottish National Party ( SNP ) had done well in opinion polls running up to the election, gaining 40 % in some approval ratings but this level of support was not maintained, and the SNP were the second largest party with 35 seats, but this was at the time their best performance since October 1974.

The Conservative Party, still recovering from their wipeout in 1997 across Scotland, failed to win a single constituency seat but did manage to win 18 seats through the Additional Member System.