The 2011 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2011 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament. The election delivered the first majority government since the opening of Holyrood, a remarkable feat as the Additional Member System used to elect MSPs was allegedly originally implemented to prevent any party achieving an overall parliamentary majority. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won a landslide of 69 seats, the most the party has ever held at either a Holyrood or Westminster election, allowing leader Alex Salmond to remain as First Minister of Scotland for a second term. The SNP gained 32 constituencies, twenty two from Scottish Labour, nine from the Scottish Liberal Democrats and one from the Scottish Conservatives. Such was the scale of their gains that, of th