Polls closed at 10pm in the referendum which will decide if Scotland remains within the United Kingdom. The final opinion poll of the campaign – YouGov’s, released an hour ago – points to a 54% No, 46% Yes result. Within a few hours we’ll know how accurate that forecast is.
Certainly those involved in the Better Together camp seem confident of victory. After all the tension of the last fortnight, it might all prove to be something of an anti-climax: a narrow but decisive confirmation of the status quo.
Feel free to post your thoughts about the campaign and its denouement below…
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The Joy of Six 1119
Cheers! Gin Palace to open at Ludlow Food Centre
Are Lib Dems really the most opposed to more money being spent on potholes?
The escalating cost of Tory failure on immigration
Victoria Gardens energy efficiency event #dundeewestend
Stephen Glenn
Michael Kilpatrick
Mary Regnier-Wilson
Andrew Hickey
16 Comments
Evening all. Hoping the YouGov poll will prove to be fairly accurate.
I’m watching the results from Elgin in Moray, which could be an interesting result to watch out for – it’s often thought of as a Nat heartland, but the impact of its military bases and the Scotch whisky industry mean that it should have a fairly substantial No vote, so I would put it as too close to call.
Glad the turnout seems to have been fairly massive.
Its going to be intriguing if a No vote leads to the sort of federal uk that the lib dems have long sought
Yes, and it would be great if the LibDems re-learned what the terms liberal and democrat mean. Have had enough already of the Liberal Democratic Unionist Party!
In the aftermath of the result we should create an English parliament with French style regions beneath it. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I am quite jealous the way mainland France has 22 regions and then 96 departments beneath them. It looks quite rational and easy to understand. They have 36,000 communes as a third layer, but we’ll just ignore them for now. In fact it is so rational that I actually understand the French system better than the UK one.
They are in the process of re-drawing their regions, but it seems to be being rationally designed from the centre, with consultation of course, rather than just having a messy devolution on demand system.
Check out the maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departments_of_France
Clackmannanshire is a very good result for No – it’s an area that I was predicting a Yes vote in.
@Eddie, I wouldn’t put the French system as a reference. France is highly centralised (think it got a bit better since I left 18 years ago but it’s still very much Paris and the rest).
Seems to me the German system is better.
That Glasgow result is significant – Yes, but not by enough to dent the current No lead. Look out for Ayrshire results next. Yes were apparently doing well there.
It’s now 5 am. After 23 results, No is 203,000 votes ahead, a margin of 54-46. Four areas have voted Yes so far: Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire, Dundee and North Lanarkshire.
So, it’s now pretty much over. The overall result is likely to be 54-46 or thereabouts. It’s good that the result is definite, decisive and that there has been a huge turnout.
I feel massive relief but it’s clear that unless both Scotland’s governments deliver on both more powers and action to tackle poverty, we will have another referendum within 5 years.The UK has been put on probation, not been given a resounding vote of confidence. There must be no gloating from the No side. A bit of humility and a willingness to listen and be inclusive is called for.
Now mainly waiting for Moray and Highland results – reckon the pattern elsewhere indicates both are likely to be No, but just want confirmation.
Sat and watched whole thing.
A win for No. 55% . The turn out was huge, but a little lower in the Yes voting areas. I suspect this because that some voters felt disenfranchised from Westminster politics but were unwilling to endorse Independence.. Closer than I thought it might be..
Hi Pegasus, I’m broadly aware of that, I just thought I would post their map because I knew of it and it seems easy to navigate around, unlike the UK one. I don’t know much about the German one, but I trust that it good.
Well done, by the way, to everyone involved in either campaign.
Lord Smith of Kelvin and The Long Grass ???
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smith,_Baron_Smith_of_Kelvin
Congratulations to Caron Lindsay who more than anyone has been the face of the NO Campaign in LDV.
She deserves a well earned rest, although I guess she is still buzzing with adrenalin. She also deserves the gratitude of some of the big wigs in the party whose contribution to the NO campaign was at best lame and usually behind the curve.
Well done Caron.
In the long-term, I suggest a good model to follow is that of Benelux. Yes, that does mean Scottish independence, and for the other nations of the UK as well, but with a decent co-ordinating structure. It seemed to me that the referendum for independence with an independence date set for a few months’ time, but with almost all questions about how it actually work left unanswered was daft. The Scottish people deserve a properly worked out plan, most obviously that must include an agreed plan for the currency issue, but it should cover all those other issues brought up in the debate.
I think the SNP needs to work on that, and the other parties should not take the “No” vote as meaning they should dismiss it and not co-operate. A much more meaningful referendum could, and I believe should, take place if there was a concrete plan to vote for or against. I am sure there must have been a significant number of Scots who voted “No” on the grounds there were so many unanswered questions, but would have voted “Yes” if there had been satisfactory answers to those questions. Alternatively, once a more detailed plan of what legal independence would involve is put together, there may be some who voted “Yes” who can than see it wouldn’t work out quite as they supposed and would switch to “No”. I do think the extent to which ordinary English people lose out with the much more generous government spending per head on the Scots has to be raised here as an issue.
We should stop getting too worked up about nation states. The era of the nation state has come and gone, they do not have the overwhelming power they used to have. As Benelux shows, there is not a huge difference between closely co-operating but legally separate nation states and a federation. I don’t think a federation will work for the UK because of the problem of England being so much larger than the other states in terms of population. Some of the stuff coming out from the “No” side was over-done – we in England are not going to instantly regard the Scots as weird foreigners if they do get legal independence. “Britain” and “British” will not disappear as identities because we will inevitably have a lot in common, just as “Irish” does not disappear as an identity despite partition.