It’s just an exit poll. They can be wrong. They were, substantially, in 1992 and lowballed the Tory result in 2015. Those caveats stated, we have to address that number for the SNP. Fifty-five seats, every seat but four north of the border, would represent the Nationalists’ best result since 2015. Before polls closed, SNP insiders were nervous they might lose some marginal seats to a combination of the Tories and Labour. If the exit poll is broadly accurate, Nicola Sturgeon has pulled off a second historic victory. Since she placed Brexit and Scexit at the centre of her campaign — stopping the former and securing a second referendum on the latter — we can expect her to say the result establishes a mandate for just that.
The problem for Sturgeon is that, again, if the exit poll is accurate, Boris Johnson has bagged himself a substantial majority. Power over the constitution is reserved to the UK Parliament and a Tory-dominated Westminster is unlikely to grant any request from Bute House.
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