THE Scottish National Party has won the Aberdeen Donside by-election, but with a greatly reduced majority.

Mark McDonald won the seat after polling 9814 votes, just over 2000 more than the Labour candidate who was his nearest rival in the contest.

However the SNP's majority fell by more than 5000 votes from the result in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election.

The by-election was held following the death in April of Nationalist MSP Brian Adam, who had been suffering from cancer.

In the last Holyrood election he won the seat with 14,790 votes, giving him a majority of 7175 over Labour.

That was reduced to 2025, with Labour candidate Willie Young polling 7789 votes in the by-election.

There was a swing of just over 9% from the SNP to Labour, with Mr Young delighted to have taken more than 5000 out of the Nationalist majority.

"It's an absolutely huge reduction in the majority," he said. "I'm absolutely delighted with that. I'm very happy."

Mr Young, a councillor in Aberdeen, said the result showed his party could win the seat in the 2016 Holyrood elections and added: "All over Scotland people will be seeing the Labour Party has put in a strong performance and other seats are there for the taking."

That was dismissed by Mr McDonald, who stood down as an MSP for the North East region of Scotland to contest the by-election.

"I didn't have a majority in this seat, Brian Adam had a majority in this seat.," he said. "Brian worked over many years, 25 years as a councillor and an MSP to build that kind of majority. I'm delighted to have won this by-election with a majority of just over 2000."

The Liberal Democrats, who were fourth in the seat in 2011, overtook the Conservatives to take third place with Christine Jardine polling 1940 votes.

Conservative Ross Thomson, who took 1791 votes, insisted he was pleased with the result.He said the Tory share of the vote "held up remarkably well", adding that in 2011 the UK Independence Party did not contest the seat.

Ukip candidate Otto Inglis took 1128 votes - 4.83% of votes cast - meaning his party lost its deposit.

A total of 23,396 votes were cast, putting the turnout at 38.8% The by-election result means the SNP still has an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament with 65 of the 129 MSPs there.