Scottish National Party sees huge gains after UK election

The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) took 48 seats out of 59 Scottish constituencies, emboldening the party's demands for a second independence referendum next year, and putting Scotland on a constitutional collision course with Johnson's Conservative administration.

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader and Scotland's first minister, who has now led her party to three consecutive UK general election victories in Scotland, as well as victory in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, stood on a platform of opposing Britain's forthcoming withdrawal from the European Union - otherwise known as Brexit- and advocating a poll on Scotland's right to choose its own constitutional future by 2020.

Sturgeon's party gained 13 seats from the 2017 UK general election but was eight seats shy of the 56 it took in 2015. She said the result represented a "renewed, refreshed and strengthened" mandate for a second vote on Scottish statehood.
"It's the second-best performance they've ever had at a Westminster election - and second-biggest mandate," Gerry Hassan, a senior research fellow in contemporary Scottish history at Dundee University, told Al Jazeera. "It provides an opportunity for the SNP and a window to progress and advance towards an independence referendum."

The SNP had 1,242,372 votes and a 45 %. In 2017 it took 977,569 and 36,9 %. In the UK the turnout was 68,8 % in 2017 and 67,3 % in 2019.  In Scotland the turnout was 68,1 %. growing from 66,5 two years ago.