Scottish election 2021: Polls close in Scottish Parliament election
- Published
Voting in the Scottish Parliament election has ended but Scotland has an 11-hour wait for counting of the ballots to begin.
The usual overnight count was postponed because of Covid restrictions.
Instead, counting will start at 09:00 on Friday, with the final result expected on Saturday.
A record number of people had already cast their ballots before polls opened - with more than a million having registered to vote by post.
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.
But it will also decide who forms the next Scottish government, which has considerable powers over areas such as health, education and income tax.
The Electoral Management Board expects 48 of the 73 constituencies to be declared on Friday, including both the most marginal and safest seats from 2016, and 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.
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.
Scotland's party leaders all turned out at polling stations on Thursday.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who had already voted by post, was in Glasgow, which was where Scottish Labour's Anas Sarwar and Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie cast their votes.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross was at Alves Hall in Moray, while Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie - who had also voted by post - was at Strathpeffer Community Centre near Dingwall.
Voting in this election was impacted by the pandemic, with voters expected to follow social distancing rules, wear face coverings and use hand sanitiser at the polling stations. Special measures were put in place to allow people who tested positive for Covid-19 or were self-isolating to apply for a proxy vote on the day.
Anyone living in Scotland and registered to vote was eligible, so long as they were aged 16 or over on the day of the election and had not been legally excluded from voting (for example because they were serving a prison sentence of longer than 12 months).
People had two votes - one for a constituency MSP and another for a regional ballot.
There are 73 Constituency MSPs, 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, people 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 - to make the overall result more proportional.
There are eight electoral regions, each with seven regional MSPs.
This means that people in Scotland 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 alternatively a coalition of more than one party.
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.
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.
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