The word on Scotland’s future is just hours away

GLASGOW, UK — The polls have closed and a long night of counting a record-smashing number of votes has begun in Scotland’s 32 regions.

Sometime Friday morning, the chief counting officer will tell the world whether Scotland has voted to leave the United Kingdom and become an independent nation. 

More from GlobalPost: Watch as Scotland makes history (LIVE BLOG)

That result will bring to an end nearly two years of passionate campaigning from two sides who believe that nothing less than the future of their nation is at stake.

These are the last few hours when anything is still possible.

Within minutes of the polls’ close, Glasgow’s George Square began to fill with revelers wearing Yes stickers and waving saltire flags.

The day began with the polls too close to call, and UK reporting restrictions meant there was little speculation on the result throughout the day. Within an hour of voting’s close, however, a survey from the polling firm YouGov suggested that independence would fail by 46 percent to 54 percent.

But nobody in George Square was looking at their phone. They were chanting and cheering and slugging wine straight from the bottle and kissing each other hard on the cheek.

People were prepared to stay up all night, most of them hoping to greet news of a new country in the morning.

“If it’s a Yes, no one will leave the square for a week,” one young man said. “It’ll be fuckin’ mad.”

Some Scots were still making up their minds on the way to the polling stations Thursday. For others, their vote was the achievement of a lifetime.

“I’ve waited all my life for this vote,” said Ian McCallum, 67, as he left the polling station in Glasgow’s Easterhouse neighborhood.

Casting a ballot for an independent Scotland felt “fantastic,” he said. “Great. Brilliant.”

He secretly dropped a handful of pens into the voting booth, as he worried that marks from the provided pencils could be too easily erased.

For longtime Scottish National Party supporters, the referendum was the culmination of decades of activism.

“I’ve been voting SNP for the last 40 years, but never in my wildest dreams did I think we were going to get a referendum. I never, ever thought that I’d see this day,” said Rebecca Allison, 64, who stood in George Square Wednesday night clutching a sign that said “Vote Yes and Don’t Be A Shitebag.”

The referendum has engaged people across Scotland who have never been involved in politics before. Many people who became passionately involved with both the Yes and Better Together campaigns are not affiliated with any of the UK’s political parties.

“This is my first time voting, and I’m 40. I’m quite passionate about today. I’ve never been interested in politics ‘til now,” said Elaine Reynolds after voting at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in east Glasgow.

“It’s for him,” she said, pointing to her 4-year-old son Aaron Harrison, who had Yes stickers all over his face. “I’m not swayed by politicians. I made up my own mind. We’ll never know if we don’t try it.”

For unionists, Thursday’s vote was an equally momentous final chance to save the country as they know it.

In Glasgow’s Maryhill neighborhood Wednesday, Haleema Malik struggled to express the depths of her feelings. She moved to Glasgow from Pakistan at 16 to marry. Thirty-five years later, she’s a Brit with no desire to see her country break apart.

“The freedom, the love I got from Glasgow, from Scotland — this is my home,” she said. “If you have one stick, you break easy. If you have four or five, you’re strong.”

Voters thronged polling stations across Scotland on Thursday, with some unofficially reporting higher turnout by 10 a.m. than they’d typically see all day in a general election.

For many voters, particularly Yes ones, voting was an exuberant occasion. In the Garthamlock neighborhood of Glasgow, Maggie Martin, 56, organized a marching party of some 35 friends and relatives spanning four generations to walk the half mile from their housing project to the polling place together.

Waving flags and dancing along to hand-held radios, they cheered as cars tapped their horns in support.

A vanguard of kids ran in the front waving saltire flags and shaking blue foam Yes fingers. Primary school children in Scotland had the day off, as many schools have been converted to polling places.

“There’ll be more jobs,” said Sophie Traynor, a 13-year-old Yes supporter wearing a One Direction T-shirt. “And we’ll be free.”

No votes, on the other hand, were quieter affairs. Throughout the campaign, unionist supporters have reported feeling more threatened by independence backers than the other way around.

No voters also tend to skew to an older demographic less comfortable with making their politics public.

“No, I’m not telling ye how I voted!” one white-haired woman said in a friendly voice upon leaving a polling station in Glasgow’s Easterhouse neighborhood. “That’s how I was raised.”

The long campaign left some nerves frayed. On the steps of Garnethill Multicultural Community Centre, a polling site in central Glasgow, there was a tense moment late Thursday night between Glasgow’s Labour City Council Leader Gordon Matheson and some Yes activists observing the vote.

The activists said he’d told off a vocal Yes supporter just minutes before. Matheson said they were mischaracterizing the incident.

A voter stepped up between them.

“It doesn’t make any difference, does it?” said Lindsay Robertson, 29, who declined to say which way she was voting. “There shouldn’t be any fighting. It’s part of history and I’ve taken part of that tonight.”