Scottish election exit poll: Will there be an exit poll in Scotland tonight?
Nicola Sturgeon says 'the BBC should be accurate'
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Scots are voting to elect MSP’s to the Scottish Parliament, and the vote is being regarded by many as a proxy for Scottish Independence, with Nicola Sturgeon confident she will take a majority and return as First Minister. The result of Thursday’s election is likely to put the country on its road to breaking away from its 314-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
A record number of voters have already cast their ballots – with more than a million Scots having registered to vote by post.
The counting of votes will not start until Friday morning for most of Scotland’s 73 constituencies.
About 60 percent of them are expected to declare a winner that day.
Scotland’s Electoral Management Board have released provisional data, which suggests 44 constituency MSPs will be confirmed by the end of the day on Friday, with the remaining 29 expected to be declared on Saturday.
Will there be an exit poll?
No. Due to coronavirus, there will be no exit poll tonight.
Exit polls are used in elections across the world to help news outlets predict winners of an election.
They do this by surveying voters as they leave polling stations.
Pollsters usually note the choices in replica ballot paper, put it into a box and open it once the vote has closed.
In normal times, exit polls are expected to be released tonight shortly after the polls close at 10pm.
Votes in this election will not be counted overnight due to coronavirus.
Counting will begin on Friday morning, with full results expected by Saturday evening.
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How does voting in Scotland work?
People have two votes – one for a constituency MSP, and another for a regional ballot.
There are 73 Constituency MSPs in Scotland, each elected on a first-past-the-post system similar to the UK general election.
The winner is the candidate who receives the most votes in each constituency.
In the regional ballot, voters vote for a party.
The parties are then allocated a number of MSPs depending on how many votes they receive, once the number of constituencies already won in that region is taken into account.
This makes the overall result more proportional.
There are eight electoral regions, each with seven regional MSPs.
This means Scotland’s residents are each represented by eight MSPs – one representing their constituency, and the other seven representing their region.
The Scottish Government is formed from the party that hold the most seats in the parliament, or a dominant party propped up in a coalition.
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