And with the results in, I'm going to call it a night. The No campaign got a few early victories with the smaller electorates. The Yes campaign won a few, managing to close the gap to as little as a thousand votes, but never managed to gain the lead, and as the night progressed the wins for Yes were few and narrow, while the wins for No were many and large. The voting patterns from the first few electorates held strongly for the later ones, with the areas expected to vote Yes either voting No or only narrowly Yes, the areas expected to be split mostly voting no, and the areas expected to vote No doing so by large margins.
The vote itself went very well, with only a couple minor wrinkles. Turnout was at an amazingly high level, often reaching into the 80s and in a couple cases the 90s. There were reports of voter fraud at Glasgow, but these were minor, affecting at most a handful of votes. There was also some disruption when counting the Dundee votes, which was a very significant area when it was announced. The number of people registering to vote was also extremely large, reaching record levels.
The result of No am I not surprised with, as a Scottish person. Many polls and surveys have been taken of whether Scotland should remain be independent over the past several decades, and the sentiment over these polls has been a resounding no. It is only in the last few months that the polls indicated that Yes was approaching 50%, and they only reached that level briefly.
The Yes campaign and its supporters have received a lot of media attention, and while the Yes supporters are definitely numerous, I feel that their numbers were over-represented. Scottish independence has certainly been romanticized, especially when compared to the unpopularity of the coalition government, but I feel that it was never going to be the best option for Scotland. Furthermore, I feel that the No supporters were less likely to identify as such in the run-up to the referendum.
In summary, I feel that it was a good implementation of democratic process, which has determined that although there exist a number of people in Scotland who would prefer independence, the majority do not. It has been a groundbreaking moment in the history of both the United Kingdom and of democratic governments.
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Topic: Scotland Decides, 18th September, 2014 (Read 32829 times)