Scottish independence: polling day - as it happened

Hi, this is Paul Owen taking the reins for the afternoon.

Blair McDougall, campaign director of the no campaign, has tweeted that the turnout is “very high”.

Voting is under way in the Scottish independence referendum, with polling stations opening at 7am BST to – in some places – queues of eager Scots. Voting continues until 10pm and the result will not be known until the early hours of Friday morning, but here’s a rundown of this morning’s highlights:

• A final poll has put the no vote on 53% and yes on 47%, in line with other recent predictions. The poll, by Ipsos Mori for the London Evening Standard, also found that 90% of Scots said they intended to vote today, with 57% saying they based their votes on hope more than fear.
• Campaign leaders have cast their votes at polling stations around Scotland. First minister Alex Salmond said: “We are in the hands of the people of Scotland and there is no safer place to be than in the hands of the Scottish people.”
  
• The yes campaign was given a boost by a tweet from former Wimbledon champion – and Team GB Olympic gold medal-winner – Andy Murray, who said the “no campaign negativity last few days [has] totally swayed my view on it … Let’s do this!”
• Polling stations have been busy all morning, with some reports of queues, but there have been no complaints of intimidation of voters, and the threatened potential “carnage” has not been in evidence. Unconfirmed reports suggest that there has so far been one arrest at a polling station.

View image in fullscreen

I (@Claire_Phipps) am taking a break from the blog for a few hours now; my colleague Paul Owen is here with me in Edinburgh and is stepping in now with ongoing live coverage and reports from our correspondents across Scotland.

I’ll be back around 5pm BST to continue the liveblog through to the close of polls at 10pm. Thanks for reading – stick around!

The final Ipsos Mori poll for the Evening Standard places the no lead at six points, writes data editor Alberto Nardelli.

This is in line with all other figures released in the final 48 hours of the campaign. The Better Together lead has ranged from 2-6 points, finally averaging about four points (poll of polls is here).

Based on these figures a no win remains likely, but not certain. Polls rely on past behaviour to interpret the present. An independence referendum and a vote where turnout is expected to be well in excess of 80% is a one-off event, which makes modelling outcomes significantly more complicated. Those that analyse polls use not just statistical margins of error, but empirical evidence - in other words, how well polls have performed in the past - again, in a one-off event, this option isn’t available.

In short, the polls are consistently saying no will win, and in 15 hours or so we will know if they’re all right, or all wrong.

My colleague Steven Morris, in Dundee, has been chatting to 16-year-old Brandyn Murphy, a student and first-time voter:

When I went into the polling place I didn’t really know what to do because it was my first time voting. My girlfriend helped me. I felt it was a big responsibility but I’ve taken it seriously. I’ve listened to the debates and went to the event at the Hydro [a debate for young voters held in Glasgow].

Once I’d voted I felt happy. It’s good that younger people are allowed to vote. It’s our future we’re talking about here.

View image in fullscreen

The Guardian’s political editor, Patrick Wintour, sends this analysis of the final poll, which gave No a six-point lead:

The final poll of the Scottish referendum campaign shows no on 53 % and yes on 47%, a slight strengthening of the no lead.

The same pollster, Ipsos Mori, in a poll for STV issued on Wednesday night, showed only a two-point lead for no, but this was based on earlier field work. All the leading pollsters have now issued final polls suggesting a no win by 53% to 47%, or 52% to 48%, but Labour officials remain cautious, saying it is still unclear how undecided voters will break, or what could be the impact of a high turnout. As few as 200,000 votes could determine the outcome.

The last Ipsos Mori poll shows 50% say they will vote no, with 45% saying they will vote yes, and 4% still undecided. Excluding those undecided, 53% of certain voters say they intend to vote no, with 47% to vote yes.

Some 95% of Scots say they are certain to vote today, including 90% of those aged 16 to 24. Both sides include supporters for whom this is their first time registered to vote: 13% of yes supporters and 10% of no voters.

In what is often a good predictor of the result, just under half (46%) of Scottish voters believe the Better Together campaign will win the referendum, compared with 30% who think the Yes campaign will win – while a quarter (24%) say they don’t know.

Just under six in 10 (58%) of no voters say their fear for the future if the no side loses was more important in deciding their vote than hope if their side wins (at 36%). This compares with 80% of yes voters who said they voted because they were hopeful for the future if their side wins; just 16% of yes voters did so more out of fear than hope. Overall, 57% of Scots based their votes on hope more than fear, with 38% basing their vote on fear if they lose more than hope if they win.

In contrast, majorities on both sides say they based their vote more on practical consequences than feelings of national identity. Seven in 10 (70%) of yes supporters based their vote more on practical consequences, with 78% saying the same from the no campaign. Overall, 74% said they based their vote on practical consequences, with 19% basing theirs more on national identity.

My colleague Philip Oltermann spots that it’s not just Scotland facing a big decision today:

Lots of readers of this liveblog will know very well how we got here. For others, the imminent possible break-up of the United Kingdom has come out of the blue. For those people, here’s a quick rundown of several hundred years of Scottish history (with apologies for the inevitable gaps). So, how did it come to this?

Some would say it all began with the Battle of Bannockburn, or even William Wallace (Braveheart), but the landslide victory of the Scottish National party (SNP) in the Scottish government elections in 2011 was the moment when the referendum was placed firmly on the political map.

The SNP’s surprise win – no party had won a majority at the Holyrood parliament in Edinburgh since Scots voted to set it up in 1997 – gave it, as first minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond put it, the “moral authority” to deliver a referendum on full independence. At the time, the British prime minister, David Cameron, said: “If they want to hold a referendum I will campaign to keep our United Kingdom together with every single fibre I have.”

The date was set for 18 September 2014, with four million voters asked a single question: “Should Scotland become an independent country?”

View image in fullscreen

Even after the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland had continued to do many things differently from the rest of Britain: its education system, law and justice systems, church and sports teams. But until the vote to set up a devolved government for Scotland in 1997, all major decisions were made in by the Westminster parliament in London. A referendum in 1979 on a devolved Scottish assembly garnered 51.6% of votes in favour, but the vote was defeated on a technicality: the the low turnout meant those voting in favour constituted only 32.9% of the electorate, below the 40% needed. Many Yes supporters felt cheated. (There is no turnout requirement this time.)

Voters in Scotland have tended to eschew rightwing parties: there is only one Scottish Conservative in the current Westminster parliament. This imbalance became particularly acute with a run of Conservative governments in the late 20th century, particularly that of Margaret Thatcher, which determined policy from (and, some critics levelled, for) England. Thatcher’s decision to trial a deeply unpopular poll tax in Scotland led to riots and – in 2006 – an apology from one of her successors as Tory leader, David Cameron.

The election of Tony Blair’s New Labour party in 1997 sparked change. A referendum for devolution was won in September of that year, with the prime minister confidently predicting the result would cement the union, not encourage further cracks. But calls for more powers have grown and following an electoral wipeout for the centrist Liberal Democrats in Scotland’s 2011 parliamentary elections – casualties of their unpopular coalition with the Conservatives in Westminster – the stage was set for an SNP government committed to a referendum on a decisive break with the United Kingdom.

View image in fullscreen

If you’d like to know even more, do take a look at our reading list (see here), which aims to answer just about any question you might have about why now, why here and which way the vote might go.

John Curtice, elections expert and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, tweets this final verdict from the poll of polls: yes 48%, no 52%.

Want to watch the campaign leaders heading into their polling stations and take a bet on which way they voted? Here you go:

More fabulous pictures arrive of voters making the most of their chance to decide the future of their country:

Let’s face it, we’d all be disappointed if this blog contained no bagpipes:

View image in fullscreen

Same goes for kilts, obviously:

View image in fullscreen