IF THE FUTURE of Scotland was decided by tweets and not votes, the country would now be looking forward as an independent nation.
Data from Twitter shows that in the 48 hours before polls closed on Thursday, 73% of the hashtags about the vote were in favour of a break up of the union.
There were 378,000 mentions of the campaign hashtags for the Yes campaign and 138,000 mentions of No hashtags according to Twitter UK.
Going back a bit further, since 5 August there have been more than 1.55 million uses of the Yes campaign hashtags on Twitter, 500,000 using the No campaign hashtags – a difference of more than a million mentions.
The exceptional worldwide engagement in the vote is clear by the more than 7 million referendum tweets sent since the first televised debate.
Twitter tracking website Trendsmap have compiled a fascinating worldwide map that shows the tweets per minute of both the Yes and No camps throughout polling day.
It’s clear from their visual data that Yes supporters from the UK to Australia were far more active during the day, peaking at 397 tweets per minute at about 1pm.
The No side took control about 12 hours later though when it started to become clear that the referendum was defeated.
The No side won the vote despite Andy Murray’s best of efforts in endorsing the Yes side.
Murray’s tweet giving his tacit support to the nationalists was the most retweeted tweet on referendum day.
Most Used Campaign Hashtags (since 5 August)
1. #IndyRef – 3.75m
2. #VoteYes – 1.1m
3. #Scotland – 439K
4. #ScotDecides – 272K
5. #BetterTogether – 224K
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