Results view: Andrew Palmer

PANEL MEMBER Name: Andrew Palmer Age: 24 Lives: Western Isles Job: IT worker for local company Voting intention: Scottish Labour Party Actual vote: Scottish Labour Party

The local results are just in (midday Friday), the Western Isles seat is a gain for the SNP, following the national trend.

I guess there could be a recount as it's a small majority and possibly a significant proportion of spoilt papers as seen in other constituencies.

I suppose I should be disappointed, but the local MP or MSP's party has never really had much of an effect on me personally, the overall make-up of the parliament is much more important.

The result was expected very early on Friday morning, the delay has resulted from transport problems, in previous elections there have been returning officers in some of the separate islands to avoid that, I don't know why it wasn't done that way this time around.

It may be that a single set of electronic counting equipment was provided, so another problem down to the technology?

At least we didn't have electronic voting machines too, I don't trust them at all after fiascos in the US.

I voted for Labour in both the constituency and region, I thought about voting LibDem on the list (voted for them before, free tuition at university) but they get so many constituency MSPs in the Highlands and Islands region it would be a wasted vote.

They also had an election promise about a devolved matter (road tax) in the local candidate's leaflet which I found strange.

My list vote for Labour should hopefully count and make up for the constituency loss.

The overall campaign I found a bit flat, didn't meet any of the local candidates and none of the policies really grabbed me except a ferry discount scheme, and the promises of that were too vague.

It's my first election when I've been working full time though, so I've been out when the few home visits occurred - which were mostly the council candidates anyway, I think.

Nationally it's mostly been a campaign of "we're not Labour", shouted loudest by the SNP, though Labour didn't have many constructive things to say either.

Regarding the large number of spoilt papers I'm surprised, I thought there would be some, but form filling is so prevalent in today's society that a particularly simple one shouldn't be that much of a problem, surely.