80 per cent of No supporters are hiding their support for the Union

Should we expect a more convincing No victory tonight than the polls suggest? The vast majority of Unionists are supporting the campaign quietly.

By Harry Lambert

(Photo By More than twice as many Yes voters have publicly displayed their support. Photo: Getty.)

For more on Scotland explore our new elections site, May2015.com.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at how effective each referendum campaign had been at reaching out to voters.

As we put it then,

The Yes campaign is winning the ground war on almost every front. It has delivered more leaflets, put up more posters, set up more stalls and knocked on more doors. This seems to support the Economist‘s recent contention that while the No campaign has a capable leader, plenty of money and support from business, it has few of the enthusiastic activists fuelling the SNP-led campaign.

The latest polling data is reinforcing this story. YouGov’s final poll for the Times, published online last night and in today’s paper, shows that far more Yes voters are displaying their support than No voters.

Nearly half of the former have “personally displayed a poster or worn a sticker” during the campaign. That compares with just a fifth of unionists.

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Some commentators have suggested this supports the views of some pollsters and psephologists that the polls are underestimating ‘shy Noes’, and we may be in for a more convincing unionist victory than many expect.

For more on the latest independence polls, and how different parts of the electorate are expected to vote today, you can explore our new elections site May2015.com.