Alex Salmond has chosen not to attend the second day of north-east vote counting at P&J Live – at least through this morning.
The former first minister is understood to be working from his Ellon office this morning, instead of attending the count.
His no-show is so stark in contrast to Friday within the arena, as he was an ever-present on the floor yesterday.
For long periods, of what was a very long day, the once SNP stalwart marched up and down the rows of tables to oversee the counting of regional list votes.
Result for regional lists expected at 7pm
A result for the regional list is expected to be announced at 7pm at P&J Live, when seven North East MSPs will be declared for the area stretching between Dundee and the eastern boundary of Moray.
Mr Salmond, top of the Alba list in the north-east, admitted last night: “We’re still obviously hopeful because most of the votes are still to be counted on the list but in terms of what information we have we think we’re going to fall a bit short.
“We’ve some ballot boxes showing Alba at 10% but there are many others where we’re not registering anything like that.”
He claimed success for just getting the party started and for encouraging two MPs to defect from the SNP to sit as Alba members at Westminster.
Early signs of Alba Party struggles
The North East regional candidate was sitting on about 2% in regions after the first of two days of counting in the Scottish election.
And he argued there could still yet be a parliament in favour of independence, through the combination of the SNP and Greens.
Alba was at 2.1% in Aberdeen Donside, which is within the North East region.
Elsewhere, Alba sunk to around 1% across Orkney, Hamilton and Clydebank. It reached around 2% in Angus North and Mearns.
It is not yet clear if the former north-east MP and MSP will attend later today towards the 7pm list declaration time.
Sources close to him would only tell us he was working at his Ellon office “this morning”.