Vote 2021: Five things to watch for in Scottish election results | Political news

This year’s Scottish election is highly publicized and has far-reaching implications for the future of the UK.

But, the secure COVID count means we won’t get Holyrood results as quickly as usual.

Instead, they will be announced slowly throughout Friday and Saturday. We may not have the final numbers until Saturday night or even Sunday morning, but the trends should be clear much sooner.

Scots have two votes: one for their constituency, and a second for the region in which they live, known as the ‘list’. The latter aims to make the system more proportional and allow small parties to increase their number of seats.

Because the SNP are likely to be successful in ridings, they won’t get many seats on the list. Indeed, in the calculation of the distribution of regional seats, the success of a party in the constituencies is taken into account.

Here are five things to look for at the start of the count:

1) Will the SNP get a majority?

Nicola Sturgeon’s position as Prime Minister is beyond doubt. The SNP is also not the largest party in the Scottish Parliament.

Instead, the focus is now on whether the Nationalists get the majority of seats – at least 65 of the 129 proposed.

Ms Sturgeon argues that if she wins a majority of MPs in the Scottish Parliament, she will have a mandate for a second Scottish independence referendum. In the last elections in 2016, the SNP won 63 seats, two less than a majority.

In Scotland’s proportional constituency and regional MP electoral system, the easiest route to an SNP majority is to win more seats in the constituency.

Keep an eye out for Edinburgh Central, where the ancient …