Scottish independence backers lead - Times of India

LONDON: Supporters of Scottish independence from Britain have taken their first opinion poll lead since the referendum campaign began, indicating a real possibility that they might win, according to a YouGov survey for the Sunday Times newspaper.

With less than two weeks to go before the September 18 vote, the poll put the "Yes" to independence campaign on 51% against "no" camp on 49% overturning a 22-point lead for the unionist campaign in just a month, the Sunday Times said.

YouGov said that the results excluded those who would not vote and those who did not plan to vote or did not know how they would vote. With those groups included, secessionists would be on 47% and those championing the UK would be on 45%, it added. It said that the poll, conducted after pro-independence leader Alex Salmond was widely judged to have won the second of two televised debates, amounts to a statistical dead heat at the moment. "The last poll ... was the first to represent a real possibility for a "yes" win ...," it said.

A separate poll by Panelbase, commissioned by the pro-independence campaign, showed support for a breakaway rising but still short of a majority at 48%. When undecideds were included, that fell to 44%. After months of surveys showing nationalists heading for defeat, recent polls have been showing the gap narrowing to the extent that they raise the real prospect that secessionists led by Salmond's Scottish National Party (SNP) could achieve their goal of breaking the 307-year-old union with England.

A previous YouGov poll on September 1 put the lead for the "no" to secession campaign at just six points, down from 14 points in August and 22 points at the start of that month. But the latest average issued on September 1 by Strathclyde University Professor of Politics still placed the unionist lead at 10 points. The late showing by the independence camp has hit sterling on the foreign exchanges and electrified Britain's political class.

A vote to break away would be followed by negotiations with London on what to do about the currency, national debt, North Sea oil and the future of Britain's nuclear submarine base in Scotland ahead of independence pencilled in for March 24, 2016. If Scots voted to leave the UK, PM David Cameron would resignation calls before a national poll in May 2015 while the opposition Labour party's chances of gaining a majority could be scuppered if it lost its Scottish lawmakers.

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