The Conservatives capped off their national power grab with a major win in the north-east.
There were 307,524 votes cast, with turnout at 53.06%.
Despite the long night, there were no signs of exhaustion from the Tory party, who erupted with cheers of jubilation when Angela Scott announced the party had secured 85,848 votes.
The party now has four MSPs representing the region after the results of the peach ballot paper were returned yesterday morning.
Alex Johnstone retained his seat, and he is now joined by Ross Thomson, Liam Kerr and Peter Chapman, who were all voted into Holyrood for the first time.
They join Alexander Burnett, who stormed to victory in the Aberdeenshire West constituency just hours before.
Meanwhile, Labour’s Jenny Marra and Lewis Macdonald both held their seats.
And Lib Dem Mike Rumbles will also represent the region.
Meanwhile, the SNP’s Christian Allard lost out on his seat, meaning, despite winning 137,086 votes, the SNP no longer have a regional list MSP in the north-east.
Ross Thomson described his party’s result as “extraordinary”.
He said: “We knew things were looking good but we didn’t think we were going to get this kind of result.
“We’d been ambitious because we wanted to return three MSPs because we wanted to go back to what we had before in the
North East region but Ruth (Davidson) had said ‘no, we’re going to be ambitious, we’ll aim for four’, but to actually get five, I mean it’s been a really extraordinary night.”
