Freak poll or game on? that’s what both sides in the Indy debate are wondering after a quite extraordinary weekend for those of a Yes persuasion.
Until now the broad consensus of surveyed opinion has been that only about a third wanted independence.But at the weekend a Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times and Real Radio showed that 36% would votes Yes, 46% would vote No and 18% don’t know the narrowest gap in the campaign so far.
In other words they would need a swing of just over 5% to win. No one in their right mind would bet against the Nats pulling off a 5% swing. In May 2011 they did more than twice that.
No wonder the Nats had a spring in their step when they headed home from their conference in Inverness at the weekend.
The other interesting thing about the poll is that the SNP are still hugely popular. Some 47% would back them in the constituency vote for Holyrood that’s UP two points from the May 2011 landslide election result.
Labour have fallen back a couple of points even from their dismal showing in 2011 and despite having the luxury of being in opposition both north and south of the border, the Tories are bumping along the bottom at 12% and the Lib Dem vote has collapsed to 5%.
Some in the SNP I have been talking to put forward the view that the announcement of the date of the election has had something to do with what is a definite shift in the Indyref tectonic plates.
I would suggest it has more to do with the increasingly hopeless UK economic position.
Even with full gloss and a full spin the outlook from the chancellor in his budget last week was dismal. We are going to be in the economic doldrums well past the referendum and well past the 2015 general election and there ain’t anything he can or will do about it.
With voters in Scotland getting hit harder and harder and no light at the end of the tunnel, the big question may well be: “Could things be any worse in an independent Scotland?”