First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, announced earlier this year that the Scottish Government wants to hold a second referendum on independence on 19 October 2023 – exactly one year today, National World reports.
Whether or not Scotland will have a second vote lies with the Supreme Court which is currently weighing up the arguments on whether the Scottish government should be allowed to hold a poll without the agreement of Westminster. Whatever the result, voters in Scotland remain split on the issue.
It has been eight years since the first vote on independence in 2014 and a lot has happened since then – Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, four different prime ministers, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and now an energy and cost of living crisis.
Despite a tumultuous number of years the polls have remained relatively consistent with neither side taking a dramatic lead, so where will the battlegrounds lie with ‘IndyRef2’?
Elections guru Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and senior research fellow at the Scottish Centre for Social Research, said we do not know what will happen if there is a second independence referendum but – unlike in 2014 – Europe and Brexit will be “central to the story”, adding that Brexit and independence were now “very clearly intertwined”.
How likely is it that Scotland will vote for independence? With potentially one year to go until a second vote we’ve looked at the data to see where Scotland stands.
