Scotland votes 'No': How the 'No' side won the referendum
The Kingdom of Scotland is an independent sovereign state that is part of the United Kingdom. In 2014, they voted whether or not to break from the United Kingdom fully and entirely independent. However, Scotland holds a separate jurisdiction, though many education, religious, legal institutions continue from the greater UK.
By Vanessa Barford, BBC News, 19 September 2014
1. They were always the favourites
The No camp had a head start. When the Edinburgh Agreement was signed on 15 October 2012, paving the way for a referendum in 2014, polls suggested about a third of Scotland's 4.2m voters wanted independence.
A plethora of polls over the next 18 months consistently put the No camp ahead.
In June - by which time there had been 65 opinion polls - all bar one had put the No side in the lead, according to polling expert Professor John Curtice.
"The No side were always favourites to win, which is why the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times which put the Yes vote ahead about 10 days ago created such an upset," he says.
Happily for the No side, most of the following polls put them back in the lead again and they were able to finish ahead of the underdogs on polling day.
2. The Scottish feel British
A resurgence of Britishness - either caused by, or coinciding with the referendum - is credited with giving the pro-union No campaign a boost.
The number of people living in Scotland who chose British as their national identity rose from 15% in 2011 to 23% in 2014, according to the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. The number of people who chose Scottish fell from 75% to 65% over the same period.
However, there is also evidence that the rising tide of British sentiment in Scotland has taken place over a longer timescale.
Almost one third of Scots now say they are "equally Scottish and British" - the highest proportion since former Labour PM Tony Blair came to office in 1997, according to the survey. Less than one in four describe themselves as "Scottish not British".
"At the end of the day, Scotland still feels moderately British," says Prof Curtice.
3. The risk factor
The No campaign came under fire from the Yes campaign for being negative, with some dubbing it "Project Fear".
However, the No vote suggests Better Together was successful in "drawing people back from the prospect of taking a risk that was not necessary," according to Prof Curtice. Just two days ahead of the polls, voters were twice as likely (49%) to regard independence as a risk than staying in the Union (25%), he says.
In April, Scotland's First Minster Alex Salmond called the No campaign "the most miserable, negative, depressing and thoroughly boring" in modern times. In contrast, he said the "Yes" campaign was "positive, uplifting and hopeful".
More recently the leader of the SNP criticised the "scaremongering" of No, saying the Yes side was "determined to focus on opportunity".
The Better Together campaign always denied being too negative, saying the campaign was a positive one, emphasising what the union had achieved with Scotland in it, and how much more could be done when the UK "stands together".
However, it often accused Mr Salmond of not giving answers, with Mr Darling saying voters were "very alive to the risks" and uncertainty of independence.
Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron told Scottish voters it was his "duty" to warn them of the stark costs of a "painful divorce".
4. They stemmed the Yes surge
The Sunday Times YouGov poll which put the Yes camp in the lead 10 days ago led to a surge of momentum, and increased mobilisation, in the Yes camp. Suddenly the prospect of a victory was in sight.
The response of the No camp was swift. Mr Cameron and labour leader Ed Miliband skipped their weekly Prime Minister's Questions clash to travel to Scotland. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg went too. The Saltire was flown above Downing Street.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown, who has high approval ratings in Scotland, set out a timetable for boosting the Scottish Parliament's powers if voters reject independence, promising a draft new law for a new Scotland Act would be published in January.
Then came "the vow" to devolve more powers and preserve the Barnett funding formula if Scotland voted No.
Prof Curtice says the interventions of "the three wise men heading north" didn't really change people's opinions of devolution, or their view on the referendum. It did yield an eight point rise in those who thought Scotland would get more more powers though, he says.
What the No campaign's final actions successfully managed was to halt the momentum of the Yes campaign. "It stemmed the tide," he says.
5. For richer, for poorer?
This was one of the biggest questions for voters, if not the biggest question.
Both sides battled hard over the economy, with claims and counter-claims over currency, oil and business playing a big part of the debate. The No vote suggests Scots were not convinced that an independent Scotland would be better off.
The pound was at the heart of the disagreement, with the Scottish government consistently stressing a currency union would be in the "best interest" of both Scotland and the rest of the UK - something the UK government strenuously rejected, along with a currency union.
How much of the North Sea oil it would be entitled to - and what it might be worth - and the future of financial institutions and businesses north of the border were also the subject of heated discussion.
So was the amount of money in people's wallets. The Scottish government calculated that "each Scot would be £1,000 better off" after 15 years. However the UK Treasury claimed Scotland, as part of the UK, would be able to have lower tax or higher spending than under independence. This "UK Dividend" is estimated to be worth £1,400 per person in Scotland in each year from 2016-17 onwards.
Ultimately, no-one knows whether an independent Scotland will be better off or not. There are too many variables on issues such as productivity, tax and employment levels.
6. Their voters voted
The turnout in areas that voted No was high
Turnout - which was 84.5% across Scotland - was generally higher in No areas than Yes areas.
Particular highs were recorded in East Dunbartonshire (91%), East Renfrewshire (90.4%) and Stirling (90.1%) - which rejected independence by 61.20%, 63.19% and 59.77% respectively.
Relatively fewer people went to the polls in the urban strongholds where Yes Scotland was relying upon large numbers of supporters to turn out - such as Glasgow, where the turnout was 75%, and Dundee, where the turnout was 78.8%. They voted in favour of independence by 53.49% and 57.35% respectively.
Prof Curtice says the No support in different council areas was also in line with some of the expectations about the kinds of places in which the No campaign would do relatively well.
The No vote averaged 64% in areas where more than 12% of the population was born in the rest of the UK, compared with 53% in those where less than 8% were born elsewhere in the UK.
It averaged 61% in places where more than 24% of the population were aged 65 and over, compared with 51% where less than 21% were over 65 and over.
And the No vote was higher in the more rural half of Scotland - 60% - than in the more urban half, where it averaged 53%, according to John Curtice.
The No vote also averaged 60% in councils where more than 30% of the population were professional and managerial, compared with 51% where less than 26% were in professional managerial occupations, he added.
6 questions about South Sudan you were too embarrassed to ask
By Max Fisher, The Washington Post, December 30, 2013
South Sudan's crisis began just two weeks ago, on Dec. 15, and it already has observers warning that it could lead to civil war. Fighting has killed an estimated 1,000 people and sent 121,600 fleeing from their homes. International peacekeepers are preparing for the worst; some have been killed and a number of them, including four U.S. troops, have been injured.
What's happening in South Sudan is complicated and can be difficult to follow; understanding how it got to be this way can be even tougher. Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most basic questions. First, a disclaimer: This is not an exhaustive or definitive account of South Sudan and its history -- just some background, written so that anyone can understand it.
1. What is South Sudan?
South Sudan is the world's newest country. It's located in Central Africa, is about the size of Texas and has about as many people as Ohio (11 million). South Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, has a 27 percent literacy rate and is so underdeveloped that it has only about 35 miles of paved road. Its economy is driven by oil exports.
South Sudan declared independence from the rest of Sudan on July 9, 2011. At the time, it was considered a huge success for the world. But its 2½ years as a sovereign state have been disastrous. This latest crisis is just another part of the country's struggle to stand on its own.
2. Why are people in South Sudan killing each other?
The violence started on Dec. 15, when troops in the presidential guard started fighting against one another, in what is a depressingly accurate metaphor for South Sudan's problems. That fighting quickly spread and is now engulfing entire swaths of the country.
If that seems like a strange way for a potential civil war to start, it will make more sense once you hear the backstory. In July, the president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, fired his vice president, Riek Machar. The two were more rivals than partners; Kiir thought that Machar was gunning for his job. Here's the really important thing: Kiir and Machar are from different ethnic groups, and in South Sudan ethnic groups are really important. Kiir is ethnic Dinka, the largest of South Sudan's many ethnic groups. Machar is Nuer, the country's second-largest group.
Tension between the Dinka and the Nuer goes way back in South Sudan, and the political rivalry between the groups' two most powerful members, Kiir and Machar, always had the potential to become an ethnic conflict. It did on Dec. 15, when members of the presidential guard who are Dinka tried to disarm members of the guard who are Nuer, maybe because they feared the Nuer would try to stage a coup. (Kiir later said the fighting had started because Machar had tried to stage a coup, although evidence for this is thin.)
The fighting between Dinka and Nuer presidential guards very quickly spread across the country. The main antagonists are rebels, often ethnic Nuer, including a group called the White Army. (Some reports say the group got its name because fighters smeared themselves with white ash to protect themselves from insects.) The rebels have seized territory, including some oil-producing land, and may or may not be marching on the city of Bor.
3. How could that one little incident spark such a big conflict?
When fighting spread from a few presidential guards to entire areas of South Sudan, we saw something that has happened before in sub-Saharan Africa. Political leaders and grass-roots militants alike defaulted from their national identity to their ethnic identity. Political rivalries became ethnic conflicts. Competing against the other group became more attractive than cooperating.
Since they won independence, it's been hard for South Sudan's ethnic groups to get along. Southerners don't have that common enemy uniting them anymore. Worse, they don't have a strong sense of belonging to a shared nation. People have been identifying by ethnicity for so long that they often still do. Another big problem is that South Sudan is extremely poor but has lots of oil; that makes it very tempting for ethnic groups to compete for the scarce resources they so badly need.
If this were, say, Iceland, then a contentious rivalry between the nation's two leading politicians would probably be seen as just political infighting, or at most perhaps a clashing of political parties or ideologies. But Kiir and Machar are the two most powerful people from their ethnic groups in a country where ethnic grouping is very important. So a fight between those two men was bound to exacerbate tension between their respective ethnic groups, which also have lots of other people in positions of power. And they have militias.
4. I thought giving South Sudan independence was supposed to stop ethnic fighting. Why didn't it?
The tragedy of South Sudan is that the same forces that helped it win independence also set it up for this conflict.
People in southern Sudan spent decades fighting for autonomy from the north. This led them to organize themselves by their tribe or ethnicity, since they had no national identity to align with. It also led them to form militias. Those militias, sometimes organized by tribe or ethnicity, came together as the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). The SPLM has since become South Sudan's national army.
When the south's ethnic groups were fighting on the same side, against the north, they mostly got along okay. But, in 1991, the SPLM split along ethnic lines. Some fighters who were ethnic Nuer formed their own semi-official breakaway group, the White Army, which attacked Dinka civilians in the city of Bor, killing 2,000.
That fighting stopped, but the White Army has stuck around, in part because some Nuer fear they will not be treated fairly by the Dinka, who are more numerous and who hold the country's presidency.