Scottish independence: polling day - as it happened

A very brief round-up here, as I’m merely handing readers on to our vote night liveblog – find it here.

Voting has closed in the referendum on Scottish independence.

• First results are due between 1.30am and 2am BST on Friday 19 September. Remote Orkney – which has the smallest electorate, with 17,515 registered voters – is expected to be the first to declare. Most of the results should come through between 3am and 5am.
• Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen – home to about 25% of registered voters – will be the last three councils to announce results, between 5am and 6am.
• The councils will report results to Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer, at the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston, near Edinburgh.Pitcaithly is expected to announce the final result between 6.30am and 7.30am.
• British prime minister David Cameron will make a televised address shortly after the results are declared to try to calm the atmosphere whatever the result.

Thank you for reading and for all your contributions. Do stay with us through the night as we liveblog all the results as they are announced, leading up to the final declaration: will Scotland be an independent country or remain part of the United Kingdom?

Here’s the scene inside the Edinburgh counting centre – in around five minutes’ time the polls will close, the ballot boxes will be zoomed through, and counting will start.

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My colleague Esther Addley scoops the prize for most appealingly sited vote count:

(Check the link. It’s really rather lovely.)

Ahead of the ballot boxes arriving – which is SOON; there are only 20 minutes left to vote – Guardian reporters are settling in at counting centres for a long, exciting night:

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The polling stations will not close until 10pm BST but some – presumably full – ballot boxes are making their way to counting centres.

I can report from the shouts and singing heard through the window of the Guardian’s Edinburgh base that Yes supporters are out in force and enjoying their evening. My colleagues Severin Carrell and Josh Halliday are out among the pipers and the flag-wavers:

It’s been a huge, momentous day, with millions of voters streaming to polling stations to take part in a vote that will decide the future of their country. A bit tricky to distill into a single news report, but our correspondents have only gone and done it. Read it here.

My colleague Josh Halliday joins us for the Edinburgh night shift; he’s planning to spend the evening in the pub (for work reasons, OK?), but first popped down to the Scottish parliament building at Holyrood to chat to voters:

At 10pm BST, when polls close, our correspondents will spring into action from counts across Scotland. Click on our names to see our Twitter updates, or here for a handy list of us all bundled together.

In Edinburgh, alongside me, Claire Phipps, is my colleague Andrew Sparrow, who’ll be heading the results liveblog from 10pm, alongside Polly Curtis and Paul Owen.

At the Edinburgh count we have Severin Carrell, Nicholas Watt, Ewen MacAskill, Frances Perraudin, John Crace and Michael White. Martin Kettle is also on hand for instant analysis of the voting. And Josh Halliday is spending the night in an Edinburgh pub as voters raise their glasses, drown their sorrows and eat crisps.

Tom Clark and Phil Maynard will also be staking out the Edinburgh count, with video analysis and a podcast for those wanting to know how the land lies on Friday.

Libby Brooks is in Glasgow, and other reporters are stationed at counts right across Scotland: Esther Addley is in Shetland, Helen Pidd at Kelso for the Borders count, Ben Quinn is on hand in Aberdeen, and Steven Morris is in Dundee.

The Guardian’s data editor, Alberto Nardelli, will also be providing instant results analysis and data, doing swift sums as the counts take place about how much each side needs to win (and when one side really can’t win).

In Westminster, Rowena Mason will be reporting as the UK party leaders wait anxiously for results; our political editor Patrick Wintour will be first with political analysis on Friday morning.

Nicky Woolf is hanging out in St Andrew’s bar, a Scottish bar in New York’s Times Square that’s throwing a referendum party tonight (actually, is it pub time in New York yet?).

My print colleagues in London will also be extending normal deadlines for the newspaper into the small hours to produce late editions that will hope to capture the result when it comes.

So, really, stick around. And try Felicity Cloake’s vote night recipes to get you through the wee small hours.

When polls close, usually, we then get an exit poll that gives us at least an indication of how people have voted. Not this time. My colleague James Ball explains why: neither the BBC nor any other media outlet has paid to get one done:

Why no exit poll for such a momentous and consequential vote? The first possibility is that no one thought the vote would be close, and so deemed it as not interesting enough to be worthy of the spend.

More likely, hopefully, is that the broadcasters were afraid of the consequences of a poll being wrong: if the BBC spends four hours discussing a poll that’s 51-49 in favour of yes, and when the final votes come in the result is no, deputy heads may roll amid the backlash.

In reality broadcasters may have been too cautious: campaigns are very familiar with arguing against exit polls they don’t like. The exit polls for the 2010 general election were very accurate, but disagreed with regular polls suggesting a Lib Dem surge. Early in the evening, many suggested the polls might be wrong and we should wait for the results – which in time confirmed the exits.

While the story in the 1992 general election was very different – the exit polls suggested a Labour win, which did not pan out – the experience has taught everyone caution in how they are handled. Even though a referendum, unlike elections, is without precedent, making weighting a poll tricky, more information is better than less.

Looks as if the BBC’s Jeremy Vine will have to fill a lot of airtime with his swingometer predictions: