Scottish Independence Referendum - 18 September 2014

[ObserverIE]

ICM have it 52-48 no. Yes leads amongst those born in Scotland.

Money & the ethnic vote strikes again

The SNP have enough wit not to go anywhere near that kind of stuff.

[ObserverIE]

Scotland is very different to Quebec. For a start, there's no language issue (and so no really obvious large 95%-No-voting demographic).

You got a Tory 97% No-voting demographic. You could considder them the Anglophones of Scotland (granted they are only 10%, not 20%).

A Scottish PQ analogue would be preoccupied with Catholic- and Celtic supporter-baiting and channeling the Church of Scotland's report on The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality. The SNP have made sure to avoid the paranoid stuff about McGill students taking over Francophone swimming pools that the Marois PQ were so fond of.

[ObserverIE]

I love it when people see conspiracies everywhere. Of course Kate and William thouroughly planned their sex-life to have a new baby on the way just a week before the referendum to make sure that their future United Kingdom stays united. There can be no ther logicall explination, especially considering the fact that Scotland will keep the monarchy no matter what.  

"Lie back and think of England", as the old cliche goes.

[ObserverIE]

So, does "expected declaration time" mean that each council area will be announced all at once, like the constituencies in Parliamentary elections?

Yes.

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Some of these councils cover far-flung areas (Highland alone is bigger than some EU countries) and communications can be quite poor.

There was one general election where the result from one of the island constituencies was severely delayed because the helicopter which had been chartered to bring the ballot boxes in from some of the outlying islands had to be used instead to ferry a heavily pregnant woman to hospital in Inverness.

The Edinburgh counting team faces none of these difficulties, but is still notoriously slow.

Thanks. So they physically take the ballots to be counted centrally, rather than counting at the polling stations and communicating the results to the central constituency office?

Yes. This is always how it's done in Britain (and Ireland).