Sturgeon vowed to hold another vote within the first half of her new five-year Scottish parliamentary term. However, the key question is whether U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government will block this request, a move the Scottish nationalists would then likely challenge in the courts.
The last independence referendum in 2014 saw Scots vote 55% to 45% to stay in the union, but the U.K. has since left the EU despite Scotland voting 62% to remain. Johnson, a key figurehead of the Brexit vote, remains unpopular north of the border.
'Noisy stalemate'
Berenberg Senior Economist Kallum Pickering noted that with polling indicating that the once-consistent majority for Scotland to remain in the union has narrowed since Johnson took office, he may use his 80-seat majority in the U.K. Parliament to refuse a second Scottish referendum and avoid becoming the prime minister who oversaw the fall of a 300-year union.