Readers have been enthusiastically taking up the GuardianWitness assignment to map the mood of Scottish voters today.
A reader who goes by the name of silentglow – undaunted by the communications problems that have hampered our own reporter on the northerly Shetland island of Unst – sends us this snap of divided neighbourly opinions:
Even in Scotland's remote reaches of Unst, in the Shetland Islands, opinion is divided although the Shetland flag often waves in place of a Scottish flag
Esther Addley is outside North Unst public hall, the northernmost polling station in Scotland. It took her a while to get there, there is hardly anyone to be seen, the scenery is bleak and beautiful, but the comms means it’s hard to send pictures. She tells us this:
To reach the island of Unst from Shetland’s capital Lerwick, you drive north, passing the huge oil refinery of Sullom Voe, then take a short ferry crossing to Yell and, having crossed that island, on to the most northerly inhabited island in what is still, for now, the United Kingdom.
Unst’s scenery is spectacular – huge, open moorland valleys and rugged coastline, with scattered small settlements and farms. It is grey and drizzly here today, and islanders are wrapped in sensible macs as they head out to vote.
This is overwhelmingly No territory, according to Karen Gray, behind the till at Skibhoul Stores in Baltasound. ‘Here in the shop, because it’s a big topic of conversation, most folk are saying No. That’s the feeling from the community.’ She is still undecided, but is definitely planning to vote when she finishes her shift. Her father has raised a Union Jack outside his home, one of a number on the road between Belmont, where the ferry docks, and Haroldswick in the north of the island.
Several are accompanied the Shetland flag, a navy banner with white upright cross. If there are Scottish saltires flying here, they are markedly less obvious. But customer Michael Malone said he was ‘leaning to yes’, though he wouldn’t make his mind up until he entered the booth. ‘If you don’t take a chance you won’t get anywhere.’
At the North Unst public hall, the most northerly polling station on the island, a steady trickle of voters arrived during the morning to cast their votes. Most preferred not to talk. ‘Why is it important to vote? Are you having a laugh?’ asked one man wearing a blue Scotland cap as he went in to cast his vote. ‘This is the most important vote in our country’s history.’
‘This will still be Britain even if we vote yes,’ said a woman hurrying inside. ‘These are the British isles even if Scotland goes independent.’
The Isle of Unst in the Shetland Islands. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond addresses a Yes Scotland campaign rally in Perth, less than 12 hours before the start of polling Photograph: Ken Jack/Demotix/Corbis
Ewen MacAskill, who has been following pro-independence Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond through the campaign for us, has written this very brilliant reflection on the referendum debate so far.
He was also at the yes rally last night where Salmond gave his final speech. Ewen, who was previously political editor of the Scotsman then the Washington bureau chief for the Guardian, makes the point that much of Salmond’s language is lifted straight out of the Obama textbook. He writes:
The Scottish National Party lifted much of Barack Obama’s election playbook for the referendum campaign. Watching the final rally in Perth on Wednesday night was like a scaled-down version of the early Obama ones.
The most striking comparison was when the hundreds in the Perth hall began chanting ‘Yes We Can’, the slogan chanted the length and breadth of America during Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Another is the little blue and white ‘yes’ cards distributed to the crowd to wave at key points in the speech.
Alex Salmond cannot match Obama’s oratory – few in the world can – but there were echoes in his final campaign speech, especially the line about “hope not fear”, a staple of almost every campaign speech the president made.
The most important import from the Obama campaign is the grassroots mobilisation. The yes campaign has a myriad of groups: Africans for Scottish Independence, Cabbies for Independence, Women for Independence, groups for pensioners, and groups for the young. The Obama campaign began this way, too, building up a formidable network.
I asked a senior SNP official today if the party had sent anyone to the US to check out the campaigning techniques and he said he no memory of anyone doing that. They probably did not have to: it was all on television.
I also asked Salmond on Wednesday if the creation of the grassroots groups had been lifted from the Obama campaign. “Yes and no,” he said. Some of them had just arisen spontaneously, he added.
Salmond: 'We are in the hands of the Scottish people'
Ben Quinn was with first minister Alex Salmond as he cast his vote this morning; you can catch his Vine of that here. Ben writes:
Alex Salmond cast his vote in his home village of Strichen this morning before coming out of the polling station to declare that tennis player Andy Murray “had hit another winner this morning”.
The comments appear to be a reference to a tweet made by Murray late last night in which he said: “Huge day for Scotland today! no campaign negativity last few days totally swayed my view on it. excited to see the outcome. lets do this!”
Scotland’s first minister was accompanied by two first-time voters, Natasha McDonald, 17, and Lia Pirie, who is in her 20s and pregnant.
Salmond told reporers and supporters: “I hear that Andy Murray has hit another winner today, which is great news, and I think the message for Scotland is, let’s do it now… It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I think you can see it already from the number of people voting.”
Asked if he was confident of victory, Salmond said: “Well, 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 who can take their own future into their own hands.
“There is going to be huge enthusiasm all over Scotland,” he said, adding that the level of interest in the small village where he lived was illustrated by the fact that an assembly hall was being used for voting rather than the usual smaller room to the building’s side.
“Oh, I’ll be glad when it’s all over,” said an activist from the yes campaign after he pulled into the car park at the polling station. “It’s been a long campaign.”
The small Aberdeenshire village of Strichen is a compact cluster of monochrome granite cottages and church steeples. Salmond’s constituency home is on the edge of the village, a carefully restored old mill on the wooded slopes of the North Ugie water, where he lives with his wife, Moira.
Gordon Brown – the man who, according to some elements of the press this morning, might have single-handedly saved the union with a speech yesterday – has cast his vote. Not sure what he’s indicating in this picture: perhaps what he thinks will be the gap between yes and no votes…
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown at a polling station at North Queensferry community centre in Fife Photograph: Jeff Mitchell/Getty
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