The referendum in Scotland is one for the ages. We’re popping the popcorn, watching our newsfeeds, and guessing on the outcome. For 307 years, the governments of the United Kingdom and Scotland have been one in the same. But now, the land of William Wallace wants to break from the relatively conservative UK in favor of creating a socialist democracy like the one in the Netherlands. If you’re late to this political show, get caught up with a Washington Post backgrounder and our own analysis of the vote. The results will come in late at night or early tomorrow morning. And the vote is part of a power struggle played out in first world governments all over the world, according to Neil Irwin at The New York Times “It is a crisis of the elites,” Irwin writes. “Scotland’s push for independence is driven by a conviction – one not ungrounded in reality – that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades. The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone. It is, in many ways, a defining feature of our time.”