Speaking on Friday in Aberdeen as votes are counted across the country, Mr Salmond said that rather than assessing their success on the number of seats they win, he views their success simply as having “registered as a political party on the political spectrum”.
He said: “To form a political party in a six week period, to publicise it and to get the activists and the members and the candidates and the program, and everything else, I don’t know if it’s ever been done before, certainly not in a general election – and this is the Scottish general election.”
Mr Salmond added: “I think time will tell if our argument that we’ve been putting forward in this campaign proves correct.”
Counting got underway on Friday morning and constituency results started being announced shortly after noon.