Argyll, Bute & South Lochaber.

Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber is a sprawling Highland and island seat, taking in mainland peninsulas, the Firth of Clyde and a scatter of inhabited islands. With a Census population of around 91,000 spread thinly over a vast area, it is rural and dispersed rather than dominated by any single town, its wards running from Kintyre and Cowal in the south to the Lomond shore. The median age of 51 sits well above the national figure. A single authority, Argyll and Bute Council, runs local services across its eleven wards.

The ward picture is fragmented rather than settled. Across recent contests the Scottish National Party has taken the largest share of wards, the Conservatives close behind, with a notable bloc of independents and the Liberal Democrats, Labour and Greens further back. No party commands the area outright, and independents carry unusual weight. At Westminster the SNP won the 2024 contest, the first on these boundaries, on a little over a third of the vote, the Conservatives some fourteen points back. Brendan O'Hara, the SNP member since 2015, holds the seat with no whipped dissent in recent months.

On the figures available the seat looks broadly secure for the SNP, though the fragmented ward map suggests local politics here is more fluid than the parliamentary margin implies. Recent local coverage has had a quiet, administrative character, turning on community funding and routine regeneration rather than controversy, and the seat has kept a low national profile. It reads as a settled but unshowy constituency, where the contest plays out ward by ward.