Lothians: Labour suffered a heartlands attack last night as the SNP snatched seats in the former stalwart communities of West Lothian and Musselburgh.

Labour suffered a heartlands attack last night as the SNP snatched seats in the former stalwart communities of West Lothian and Musselburgh. Nationalists gained Livingston from Labour, unseating Bristow Muldoon, who was defending a healthy majority of 3670. Angela Constance cast him into second place, with a majority of 870.

Labour held the neighbouring seat of Linlithgow but with a reduced majority of 1150. Mary Mulligan got 12,715 to Fiona Hyslop of the SNP's 11,565, although Ms Hyslop, SNP education spokeswoman, retained her parliamentary position via the list system.

Labour lost its Edinburgh East and Musselburgh seat to SNP justice spokesman Kenny MacAskill. Mr MacAskill, who got 6497 votes in the same seat in 2003, received 11,209 votes for a majority of 1382.

Norman Murray, former East Lothian Council leader who took over from Susan Deacon as the Labour candidate, was beaten into second place. Ms Deacon, who has taken up a professorship at Queen Margaret University, had a 6157 majority in 2003.

Former Edinburgh City Council leader Donald Anderson failed in his bid to topple Mike Pringle, who had a majority of just 158 in 2003. Mr Pringle ended up 1929 votes ahead this time. He put his success down to a local campaign fought over the past four years but admitted to being taken aback by the scale of his victory.

He added: "We were confident going into this campaign that we had done all that was right to achieve a victory. That has been proved to be correct."

Two party leaders, Colin Fox of the SSP and the Greens' Robin Harper, challenged in the Lothians region but only Mr Harper will be back at Holyrood this session.

One Lord, ex-Hearts chairman George Foulkes, will also make his first appearance in the Scottish Parliament in the next session. Also on the list, former SNP member turned Independent Margo MacDonald won a Holyrood place.

Tory MSP David McLetchie held on to Edinburgh Pentlands following a 62% turnout after 35,905 people cast their votes. During that count 1528 ballot papers were spoiled.

Labour MSP Rhona Brankin won the Midlothian parliamentary seat with 10,671 votes following a 55.29% turnout, with a majority of 1702 and 1649 ballot papers rejected.

Iain Gray, the former Enterprise Minister who lost his Pentlands seat to the Tories in 2003, retained East Lothian after John Home Robertson stood down. Mr Gray received 12,219 votes following a 56.2% turnout.

Margaret Smith held Edinburgh West for the LibDems with 13,677 votes, giving her a majority of 5886, a slightly reduced majority compared to the 2003 lead of 5914. Sheena Cleland for the SNP came second with 7791 votes.

Former Health and Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm retained Edinburgh North and Leith with 11,020, votes, a majority of 2444, around half of his 2003 majority of 5414.

LibDem Mike Crockart came second with 8576, while former Edinburgh City Council Tory group leader Iain Whyte came fourth with 4045 votes.

In 2003, Labour won Edinburgh Central, Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, Edinburgh North and Leith, while LibDems won Edinburgh South and Edinburgh West and the Tories won Edinburgh Pentlands.

Deputy Environment Minister Sarah Boyack held Edinburgh Central for Labour.

In her acceptance speech, she said she would continue to campaign for investment in schools and further and higher education, health service investment, investment in affordable housing and police and public transport. She also said she would press for "investment for our capital city, which continues to drive the Scottish economy and to do it in such a way that addresses environmental global challenges".

She acknowledged the fact her constituency was the only one in the country contested solely by female candidates.

On the wider issue of the technical problems blighting the vote across the country, she said the problem had not been particularly bad in Edinburgh Central, which had around 1000 spoiled ballot papers in 2003. This time there were 1501 rejected papers.

Ms Boyack said: "Clearly, there is more to be done in improving the awareness of how the voting system works."

But concern was such that issues were raised across the parties over perceived inconsistencies regarding decisions made on rejected papers, which totalled 10,394 at the Edinburgh count.

Edinburgh City Council said correct procedures had been followed. Tom Aitchison, returning officer for the city, said: "Our staff have worked extremely hard and have followed the national standards consistently.

"A number of candidates have referred issues to us."

Ken Richie, of the Electoral Reform Society, said the parliamentary ballot paper, containing two lists - regional and constituency candidates - appeared to have caused the most problems.

In Lothians, where 55.29% of the 519,115 electorate turned out, the leaders' battle between Mr Harper and Mr Fox was most significant.