Scottish election 2021: First result announced as counting continues

 

Scottish election 2021: First result announced as counting continues

Published 26 minutes ago

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-57014885

 

The first results are being declared in the Scottish Parliament election as counting continues across the country.

 

The SNP have held five seats so far - with the party's share of the vote down in three of them compared to 2016, and up in two.

 

The Liberal Democrats held Orkney, which was the first to declare.

 

Results from 48 constituencies are due to be declared on Friday, with the final constituency and regional list results on Saturday.

 

Turnout is said to have been much higher than anticipated in many areas.

 

The usual overnight count was postponed because of Covid restrictions.

 

A record number of people had already cast their ballots by post before the polls opened on Thursday morning - with more than a million having registered for postal ballots.

 

The election is seen as being crucial to the future of the UK as the result could impact on whether or not there is a second referendum on Scottish independence.

 

The SNP - which has formed the devolved Scottish government since 2007 - is expected to once again finish as the largest party, but is seeking to win an overall majority to strengthen the case for indyref2.

 

The Scottish government has considerable powers over areas such as health, education and income tax, but the SNP wants the country to become independent from the rest of the UK.

 

Scottish Labour won 24 seats, the Scottish Greens six seats and the Scottish Liberal Democrats won five seats.

 

The constituencies that are expected to be declared on Friday include eight of the SNP's top 10 target seats.

 

These include the Labour defences of Dumbarton, Edinburgh Southern and East Lothian, none of which have a majority exceeding 3%, and the Conservative seats in Ayr, Edinburgh Central, Dumfriesshire and Eastwood.

 

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Analysis box by Philip Sim, political correspondent, Scotland

The early results have come chiefly in safe seats, and it is hard to read much of a trend in terms of what is happening across Scotland from them.

 

The SNP vote share has gone down in the seats they have held, although it was up in Orkney, where they closed the gap somewhat on the still-dominant Lib Dems.

 

In terms of who the chief challenger to the SNP is on their own turf, again the picture is muddy.

 

Labour will be encouraged by the result in Clydebank and Milgavie, where there was a decent swing to them from the SNP - while the Conservatives lost vote share.

 

But the picture in Aberdeen Donside was the opposite, with the swing going from the SNP to the Conservatives, and Labour losing vote share back in third place.

 

And just to complete the set, in Na h-Eileanan an Iar the shares of all the opposition parties went up, although the SNP majority was barely dented.

 

Short of a seat changing hands, that's about every type of swing we could have seen. The morning's mantra still holds for now - it's too soon to get a really clear picture of what is happening.

 

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There have been no exit polls in this election, and none of the parties have made predictions about the final result.

 

Polling expert Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme there was a 50:50 chance the SNP would secure a majority

 

He said: "It's probably going to turn on the outcome in nine really marginal opposition-held seats - some held by Conservative, some held by Labour, but all of them with majorities of less than five points.

 

"If the national polls are roughly right, it's going to be a question of how many of those seats the SNP manage to pick up and that's the one thing you really cannot tell from polls."

 

SCOTLAND'S ELECTION: THE BASICS

 

What's happening? On 6 May, people across Scotland voted to elect 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). The party that wins the most seats will form the government. Find out more here.

 

What powers do they have? MSPs pass laws on aspects of life in Scotland such as health, education and transport - and have some powers over tax and welfare benefits.

Voter turnout has been described as high, with 89.2% postal vote turnout in Edinburgh - the highest ever turnout for postal voting in the area, according to a source.

 

Labour's deputy leader Jackie Baillie also said she believed turnout was "certainly up across the board".

 

At some polling stations people were still queuing to vote at 22:00 on Thursday. People already waiting in line were allowed to vote after the official closing time.

 

Two voters in Glasgow North West, Nadeem and Joanna Basharat, said they were temporarily turned away from the Jordanhill Parish Church polling station because ballot box 52 was "too full".

 

When they went back to vote, they said the box still looked very full and the papers inside had just been "pushed down".

 

A spokesman for Glasgow's Returning Officer said they were "confident" that all voters who were asked to wait were ultimately able to vote.

 

Other elections also took place across the UK on Thursday, including for the Welsh Parliament.

 

There were also elections for seats on 143 English councils and for 13 local mayors, as well as a by-election for the Westminster seat of Hartlepool in the north east of England - which was won by the Conservatives from Labour.

 

About 48 million people across the UK were eligible to take part in the elections - many of them postponed from last year because of the pandemic.