Scottish independence: polling day - as it happened

Matchbook.com writes to reveal that the odds on Scotland leaving the union have moved from 7/2 to 5/1, suggesting a yes outcome is much less likely. The odds for no are 2/11.

Americans haven’t taken much interest in the Scottish independence vote because – as one American explained it to me – they assumed that it already was independent based on viewings of Braveheart.

But that has changed recently as the polls tightened, and so our colleagues at Guardian US have written a rough guide to comparing US and Scottish independence:

Stop an American on the street and ask them what they think of Scottish independence, and you will likely be greeted with a smiling confession of ignorance, before dislodging a general statement of support, along the lines of “Freedom! Good!” If it’s ditching Britain we’re talking about, all the better.

The sentiment may be superficial, but underlying it is a real historical sympathy, rooted in America’s own revolutionary tradition.

View image in fullscreen

And on that note, here is John Crace’s digested referendum campaign:

You could begin in 1707 with the Act of Union. You could begin with the 1997 referendum that led to the creation of the Scottish parliament. To keep it simple, though, it’s easiest to start with the 2011 Scottish elections in which the Scottish Nationalist party (SNP) won an overall majority for the first time: as a referendum on Scottish independence had been one of the key points in the SNP’s manifesto, the coalition government in Westminster was rather obliged to grant one.

This was, in many ways, as awkward for Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister and leader of the SNP, as it was for David Cameron, who, along with the rest of Westminster, preferred to ignore the noisy northern neighbours. Salmond had built a career on being the underdog, the permanent outsider; being ignored only increased his popularity in Scotland. Now he was being taken seriously, it was time to put up or shut up. If he lost the referendum, he would lose a large part of his political raison d’etre. Independence would be off the menu for decades.

All of a sudden independence wasn’t the only game in town. “How about we have three questions on the referendum?” he suggested to Cameron. “Yes, No and Devo Max.” George Osborne advised Cameron to play hardball. The polls indicated that given a simple choice of yes or no, the Scots would vote no. So why give Salmond a get out of jail card? They’d never liked him anyway. The only concession Salmond was able to get was a lowering of the voting age to 16, which he reckoned would increase the yes vote by a small margin.

Whereupon everyone but the Scots forgot about the referendum for a couple of years as everyone south of the border – and most of those north – assumed a no vote was a formality and that come September 19 it would be business as usual. What got discounted in the calculation was the Scottish dislike of the Tories, the dislike of the Westminster establishment in general and the belief that Scotland had always been given a raw deal. Little by little, the polls moved towards yes and, as they did so, the no campaign began to bring out the big guns, with Gordon Brown bussed in to take over from Alistair Darling as leader.

Panic properly set in less than two weeks before the election when an opinion poll indicated the yes campaign was ahead for the first time. The three parties in Westminster – along with every broadcaster and newspaper – realised there was a turn-up on the cards and sent every available hand on deck up north to save the Union. Cameron, Miliband, President Obama, the EU, the Queen, Bob Geldof and JK Rowling all pleaded for the Scots to see sense. “You’ll be broke. You’ll rot in prisons abroad. You’ll never get out of Scotland alive.” Cameron even promised the Devo Max option he’d refused three years before. The Scots could have anything. Love. Money. Holidays. Blue skies. Anything but independence.

Too late for many Scots, including many traditional Labour voters. They had been given a glimpse of a promised land; of a fairer, more equal society where the sun would shine and Andy Murray would win Wimbledon again. Nor were they much bothered if it all went pear-shaped. So what if they had no jobs, if their health service collapsed, if they were left with Fred the Shred to run what was left of their financial services industry. At least they would have been bankrupted by their own rather than England. Better to be a poor man than a slave.

And so it went down to the wire.

This video for non-Brits explaining how we got to this point is pretty useful for Brits too, to be honest.

And here Solareye of the group Stanley Odd gives his own history of the union as a spoken-word poem.

Why would the English bother with a union of inequality

Was this a decision based on the spirit of generosity?

The Green party of England and Wales gets in touch to point out that it is “the only party with an English MP who have actively campaigned for a yes vote”.

Green party leader Natalie Bennett says:

The Green Yes campaign, part of a broader, radical independence drive, has been an inspiration, great to watch. When I visited Edinburgh this month the excitement was evident, the possibilities broad. For all of us the idea that you can vote for change and get it is a powerful message for the future of the stale, failed politics of England and Wales.

Bennett also says: “I’m not going to tell them how to vote, but I hope they do vote yes.”

More contributions from readers taking up the GuardianWitness assignment to map the mood of Scottish voters today:

Esther Addley reports from Yell, Shetland’s second-largest island.

It’s to the north of the main island, and home to 1,000 people, but its main settlement, Mid Yell, was quiet today, thanks in part, perhaps, to a low, drizzling cloud which hugged the island.

View image in fullscreen

If most of the political symbols on Unst favour a yes vote, some in Mid Yell declared their support for yes, with a large sign on a house going into the village and another on a nearby bus stop. ‘I would say everybody on Yell has an idea how they will vote,’ said Stephen Saunders, who was working with three others to divide the flock sheep he jointly owns into ewes, set for ‘drenching’, and lambs to be sold.

View image in fullscreen

Had the island been caught up in the excitement seen elsewhere in Scotland? ‘There’s been a lot of debating going on; I don’t know about excitement.’

He was ‘clear’ how he intended to vote later, though preferred not to specify. ‘I have listened to all the debates but I’ve always been fairly positive on what way I would go.’

Shirley Nicolson, dismantling cardboard boxes in Linkshouse Stores, said today didn’t feel like any other election day. ‘More people are certainly going to participate. It’s not just half a dozen politicians trying to get your vote. It’s two sides, yes or no. You either believe yes or you believe no.’

She had already sent her postal vote, but she didn’t think the drizzly weather would put others off turning out to vote. ‘I wouldn’t say this is normal weather but we are used to it.’

Foreign exchange dealers seem to have woken up and decided that the independence vote might not affect sterling as much as they thought, according to the FT:

Sterling is strengthening markedly against the US dollar on rising expectations that Scots will reject a vote for independence at today’s referendum.

Of the 16 biggest currencies in the world the pound and the Norwegian krone are the only ones to climb against the resurgent dollar today, with sterling climbing 0.5 per cent against the greenback – the most in a week.

Or as Business Insider puts it rather more pithily:

Labour leader Ed Miliband has been out and about in Glasgow drumming up support for a no vote today.

View image in fullscreen

One for Game of Thrones fans: