Severin Carrell, Ben Quinn, Rowena Mason and Jill Treanor
theguardian.com, Friday 19 September 2014
Yes campaign claws back some support with 57% in Dundee voting for independence
Scottish referendum results – live coverage
Counting under way in Aberdeen. Photograph: Robert Perry/EPA
Pro-UK campaigners were cheered early on Friday by the first results from the Scottish referendum, reporting figures in line with or better than a poll released on a day that showed the no side was ahead.
The pro-union Better Together camp won the contest in the first council to declare: the small council of Clackmannanshire in central Scotland recorded 19,036 votes for no to 16,350 to yes, amounting to a split of 54% to 46%. Turnout was 88.6% at the council, which comprises 1% of Scotland's total electorate.
The yes campaign clawed back some support with a vote in its favour in Dundee, a centre of pro-independence backing: 57% in the city voted for yes, a margin of more than 13,000. In West Dunbartonshire, an area which was expected to back independence, 33,720 (54%) voted yes, while the no camp garnered 28,776 (46%).
However a number of areas fell to the pro-UK camp early on Friday morning, with a number of big wins for the no campaign particularly towards the border areas. Midlothian, which had been seen as something of a bellwether region for the referendum, saw a victory for the no campaign, with the vote going against independence by 56% to 44%. East Lothian also saw a sizeable no vote, with 44,281 voting no against 27,467 voting yes.
In Renfrewshire, 52% voted no to independence. Stirling also voted no, as did Falkirk – the home of Dennis Canavan, the chairman of the yes campaign.
In Orkney, which had been expected to vote no, the Better Together camp saw an overwhelming win, with 10,004 votes to just 4,883 for yes.
Like its neighbouring islands to the south, Shetland also voted strongly against leaving the union. With a turnout of 84%, there were 9,951 no votes and 5,669 yes votes – making it 64% against and 36% for independence.
Eilean Siar – formerly the Western Isles – voted no despite expectations it would back independence. The vote was split 53% – 10,544 votes – to no and 47% – 9,195 votes – for yes, with 86% turnout.
An extremely tight vote in Inverclyde saw 50.1% vote against independence no and 49.9% vote yes, against on with a turnout of 87%. It had been seen as a good prospect for the yes camp.
Earlier a YouGov poll released just after the ballot boxes had closed suggested that the no camp would secure 54% of the vote, with the yes camp on 46%.
Turnouts continued to hit record heights across Scotland: Inverclyde was at 87.4%, West Dunbartonshire reached 87.9%, Renfrewshire hit 87.3%, while Orkney reached 83.7%. However, turnout was lower in Dundee – expected to lean toward yes – at 78.8% and there was an even lower turnout in Glasgow of 75%.
Sources in both the yes and no camps also confirmed that sampling of the 780,000 postal votes issued for the poll were two to one in favour of Better Together, with yes campaigners confirming they expected Edinburgh to vote no.
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat Scotland secretary, told the Guardian he was pleased with the YouGov poll: "If that is decision at the end of the night, then that ticks all the boxes that we identified at the start of this process: a fair, legal and decisive decision.
"Assuming no does win, the question Alex Salmond has to answer is 'will you now put your independence obsession to one side, and work for the first time in your political life with other parties, with business, the trade unions and churches, and be part of the consensus, building instead of dividing Scottish politics?'".
Salmond, the Scottish first minister who has hailed the two-year referendum campaign as a positive celebration of democracy, changed plans last night and decided not to go to the count for his Aberdeenshire East constituency.
Salmond will reside overnight at his home in north-east Aberdeenshire, prompting some observers to suggest he expected the yes side to lose the referendum prompting him to limit his exposure overnight. Labour sources told the Guardian that it was looking like the yes campaign will lose in Salmond's backyard of Aberdeenshire.
The first minister is expected to go to Edinburgh early on Friday morning, according to SNP sources. The Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, where the count is taking place for the Aberdeenshire area, was the venue for David Cameron's final plea on Monday to voters to stick with the union.
A Yes Scotland spokesman insisted the YouGov findings were similar to other recent polls but those were failing to capture the tens of thousands of Scots who had only recently registered to vote – part of the "missing million" of irregular and non-voters, suggesting they were failing to capture the true level of independence support.
"The thing is with the turnout at over 80%, which it will be, that invalidates all the polls we've had," he said.
"With that turnout, there's a huge part of the missing millions who have only just registered to vote and a large part of those have therefore been out of reach of the pollsters."
Jim Wallace, the advocate general for Scotland in the UK government, told the Guardian: "This is a referendum of his choosing, his timing, his question. He has had the whole of the Scottish civil service behind the case he has made – and I qualify this with the fact we don't yet know the outcome, but if he doesn't win, there are serious questions about why? He has had a following wind and he has not done it [won]. We will get on and do what we said we would do: deliver more powers to the Scottish parliament."
With the final opinion polls suggesting that the Better Together campaign had nudged ahead of the yes side to take a narrow lead in the last week, the two camps mounted massive ground operations to ensure their supporters made it to the polling stations.
The huge turnout, which saw voters queue up outside polling stations as 16- and 17-year-olds voted for the first time, raised the prospect that the referendum could break the 83.9% turnout in the 1950 UK general election – the post-war high. That was slightly ahead of the 81.1% who turned out in Northern Ireland to vote on the 1998 Good Friday agreement – the highest in a UK referendum.
Voting passed off in a mainly friendly atmosphere. But there were isolated incidents of strife at some polling stations. Alistair Darling, the leader of Better Together, was greeted with boos and cheers as he arrived to vote in Edinburgh with his wife, Maggie.
The currency markets trade for 24 hours and some traders worked overnight to deal with clients in Asia as results start to come in. Shares were due to start trading formally at 8am.
A record 97% of adult Scottish residents – total 4,285,323 – registered to take part. The figure includes 789,024 postal voters.
