Scotland has voted against independence in a historic referendum, the BBC forecast on Friday after preliminary results showed 54.3 percent voting “No” and 45.7 percent voting “Yes”.
“The BBC forecasts that Scotland has voted against becoming an independent country,” read a statement on its website.
Scotland’s First Deputy Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon admitted on Friday that her party’s campaign for independence had likely been defeated.
“It looks at though we might not get the Yes vote that I was hoping for,” Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC.
The “Yes” camp had been pinning its hopes on a big win in the largest constituency of Glasgow to close the gap, but could only register a winning margin of 54.5 percent to 46.5 percent.
“We’ve just had a whole slew of results here… that really did add to the evidence that the ‘No’ side are looking set to win this referendum and probably doing so fairly comfortably,” polling expert John Curtice told the BBC.
He said that it would “require something extraordinary” to prevent a “No” victory “within the next two to three hours”.
At 84 percent, so far, turnout for the vote looked set to break records for United Kingdom post-war elections.