The final result of the election will not be known until Saturday after a delay in the count in one Scottish constituency.
The returning officer in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-Shire halted a recount on Friday due to a “discrepancy” in the number of verified votes.
It has now been decided to resume the count on Saturday, after staff worked through the night and into Friday morning.
The MP for the area will be announced then. It is rumoured that the Liberal Democrat candidate was ahead - a shock result if confirmed.
The seat is newly-created by boundary changes and is being contested by Drew Hendry for the SNP – the current MP for the area - Michael Perera for Scottish Labour, Ruraidh Stewart for the Conservatives and Angus MacDonald for the Lib Dems.
The Greens, reform and the Scottish Equality Party are also running.
A statement for Highland Council said: “During the formal checking of the totals for the Inverness, Skye, and West Ross-shire constituency count a discrepancy was identified between the verified votes total and the provisional number of counted votes.
READ MORE: Labour sweep to general election victory as Tories and SNP collapse
READ MORE: Swinney: We have failed to convince Scots on independence
“An accountancy check was carried out along with a visual check that did not resolve the discrepancy.
“A recount was then implemented to reconcile the difference between the totals.”
It added: “Following the recount, as Returning Officer, I have advised candidates and agents that I am unable to declare a result, therefore another recount will take place tomorrow morning at 10:30am.
“Candidates and Agents have been informed at each stage of the count.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel