Hope and glory for Yes Scotland?

The tide may be turning in the independence debate.

When they chose Hope Street as their Glasgow headquarters they might not have expected signs of optimism to be in such short supply.

But despite a string of recent setbacks for Yes Scotland, the pro-independence group has been buoyed by new polling which shows they are making progress in the referendum battle.

The hope in this case springs internal, as it was private polling and not for general consumption.

But The Sunday Post has obtained a copy of sections of the results which supports Yes Scotland’s argument that the more people learn about independence the more they are attracted to it.

The poll asked just over 1,000 Scots if they felt “well enough informed” about the issues surrounding the referendum.

Of those who say they do know enough around half of the sample at 47% said they would be voting Yes, just one point behind those backing the Union.

Similarly, the Yes Scotland polling, conducted in April, also shows a softening in the strength of the No vote the more informed people say they are about the issues involved.

The internal polling on the most important question, how punters actually intend to cast their vote next September, reflects previously published polls, i.e that a majority of Scots are against the breakup of the United Kingdom.

But again Yes Scotland say they have been encouraged by a two-point increase in support between January and April while, over the same period, the No vote remained unchanged.

These results are very much in the territory of ‘mighty oaks come from little acorns’ but it does give Yes Scotland cause for optimism.

Insiders claim the figures obtained by The Sunday Post are only one of several indicators away from the “black and white picture” provided by traditional polls which show the sun is beginning to shine on the independence campaign.

And much of this confidence is based on a battle which is taking place far away from the newspaper columns and petty squabbles in the chamber at Holyrood.

On the doorsteps of Scotland a more intense, and hopefully politer, war is under way. Both sides are ploughing millions of pounds into getting volunteers in front of voters and talking to them, away from the backbiting and slanging which has characterised the national debate so far.

And it is only with this “voter engagement”, as the strategists describe it, that Yes Scotland and the SNP can hope to win a core of “persuadable punters” over.

The information gleaned here, and in community events across the country, is being fed back into computer systems which give a clear picture, almost street by street, of where the country is at on the independence debate.

Both sides of the campaign are engaged in this activity but Yes Scotland has a natural advantage as it is using a similar system to the one which helped to deliver the SNP’s spectacular election victory in 2011.

It is this surge which started with the SNP 20 points behind Labour but ended with the Nationalists 15 points in front that the pro-separation side has to replicate.

The polling system used by Yes Scotland uses a one-to-ten scoring system with one or two being most opposed to independence and nine or ten being keenest on it. Yes Scotland chief strategist Stephen Noon last month claimed: “Yes support remains firm and don’t-knows are moving up the support scale slowly and steadily as our plan requires.”

Noon claimed the No support is “exceptionally brittle” and can “rely on only a fraction of the population as firm and committed voters”. But his claims still swim against the tide of decades worth of majority apathy towards independence, which has held firm even with the SNP’s recent electoral success.

The Yes Scotland poll also shows 46% of the population feel “well enough informed” about the debate, which shows both sides have a long way to go in making their case with the voters.

The private polling also has indications of a high turnout with 75% saying they are “very likely to vote” next year and a further 13% saying they were “quite likely to vote”.

A Yes Scotland spokesman said: ‘This was private research but we can confirm that the findings are extremely encouraging.”