Elections - who will be the happiest?

So the votes are all counted (except Northern Ireland) and there were some predictable features - the failure of the referendum, the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. Others were more surprising - the SNP gaining an outright majority, the conservatives making gains in the English local elections. Who will be the happiest?

1. SNP A no brainer really. Watching the seats fall was the closest to the experience of the '97 landslide there's been since. An outright majority at Holyrood is a remarkable achievement. Of the four big parties, the SNP are the best to govern at the moment. My main concern is that large majorities (of whatever party) without an effective opposition tend to produce bad governments - the SNP need an effective opposition to sharpen and balance them. Labour are clearly in no position to provide that, so its going to be down to the Tories, but with only 15 seats that's going to be tough.

2. Conservatives Their vote held up reasonably well in Scotland, they progressed in Wales and finished the second largest party and they won the referendum. They gained seats and councils in England - far fewer than Labour, but this was an election where they were supposed to lose seats by the hundreds, so their achievement is more remarkable.

3. Labour Overall, it will have been a slightly disappointing night - they obliterated the Lib Dems in the English metropolitans, but failed to take the number of seats that they would have hoped for overall. They made progress in Wales, but missed the outright majority. They won the Leicester South by-election, but without the huge bounce they enjoyed in Barnsley. But the major fly in the ointment was an absolute disaster in Scotland, losing seats that they previously thought they owned by right.


4. Greens Will be disappointed by their failure to gain extra seats at Holyrood, despite promising pre-elections polls. Also failed to gain their first Welsh Assembly member, but in both cases increased their vote. They also did better than expected in the English locals, where they were expected to struggle against a resugent Labour, they held most of their seats and made gains elsewhere to finish 13 seats up overall and the largest party in Brighton (the first time ever they've been in this position).

5. UKIP Failed to build on promising by-election performances. Missed out on gaining a Welsh AM. Disappointing result in Leicester and finished with only 7 councillors elected across England - exactly the number of seats they were defending. Treading water.


6. Plaid Cymru Totally failed to emulate the SNP's success - finished down 4 seats in Wales and in 3rd place. Disappointing.


7. BNP  Defending 13 council seats in England - won just 2. Vote in Wales almost halved. In almost terminal decline, but probably thankful they aren't the... 


8. Lib Dems Surprisingly, what looked like being their worst result at the start of the years - Wales - actually turned out to be their best - they only lost 1 seat. In Scotland, their vote collapsed and they were reduced from 16 seats to just 5, with Orkney and Shetland being the only constituencies held and with no representation at all in 4 out of 8 regions (remarkably including Lothians). In England, they lost over a third of their councillors up for election and lost countrol of 9 out 19 councils. Their best result was arguably in Leicester South where they held on to second and only had a 4% drop in their vote.