That's exactly what I thought the results would be before recent polls showed it tightening, yesterday I was expecting "no" to win a squeaker. Cameron celebrates a decision that saves him from going down as the PM that lost Scotland, but also decreases his chances of reelection.
I guess Idi Amin won't go down as the last King of Scotland (provided that the Queen is not in fact immortal, able to die only if Sean Connery cuts off her head).
I thought that NO would win with 54%-56% even before yesterday’s YouGov poll. It’s easier to tell a pollster that you favor independence than actually to do it in the voting booth when you have no idea what currency you’d use, whether your biggest banks would leave, exactly what oil and natural-gas rights you’d have, etc.
BTW, before everyone declares YouGov to be a top-notch pollster, let’s keep in mind that the problem of self-selection faced by Internet pollsters diminishes quite a bit when you have an election with 85% of eligible voters turning out (as opposed to maybe 35% as we’ll see in the U.S. this November).
I’m not shocked. The biggest “no” margins were the at the southern parts on the English border.
Whoops, I forgot to include a map of the results:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29255449