2023 Scottish National Party leadership election

2023 Scottish National Party leadership election
← 2014 16 February – 27 March 2023 (2023-02-16 – 2023-03-27) 2024 →
Turnout50,494 (69.97%)
 
Candidate Humza Yousaf Kate Forbes Ash Regan
First round 24,336 (48.2%) 20,559 (40.7%) 5,599 (11.1%)
Second round 26,032 (52.1%) 23,890 (47.9%) Eliminated

Leader before election

Nicola Sturgeon

Elected Leader

Humza Yousaf

The 2023 Scottish National Party leadership election took place in February and March 2023 to choose the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, who announced her resignation on 15 February. Nominations closed on 24 February 2023 with three candidates: Kate Forbes, Ash Regan, and Humza Yousaf being presented to the electorate of party members. Yousaf was elected the new leader on 27 March with 48.2% of first preference votes and 52.1% of the vote after third-placed candidate Regan's second preferences were redistributed. Yousaf was elected as the First Minister of Scotland on 28 March 2023.

This was the first contested leadership election in the SNP in nearly twenty years as Sturgeon was elected unopposed in the previous election held in 2014. During the course of the election, both the party's chief executive, Peter Murrell (also Sturgeon's husband), and MSP group media chief, Murray Foote, resigned from their positions on 18 and 17 March, respectively, over inaccurate party's membership numbers being communicated.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Resignations was invoked but never defined (see the help page).