Final YouGov poll puts Yes just 2% away from victory

YouGov's final word of the campaign is -

Yes 48% (n/c)

No 52% (n/c)

Meanwhile, there's a phone poll from Survation which shows that the Yes vote has crept up since the equivalent poll at the weekend -

Yes 47% (+1)
No 53% (-1)

I thought we were going to get a rare Scot Goes Pop exclusive tonight, because two different commenters seemed to have leaked the YouGov result several hours early on the previous thread.  But I'm very glad we didn't get the exclusive, because the numbers were less good than we ended up with.  It does mean that I pre-wrote an entire post on the assumption that the leak was correct, and now I'm going to have to cherry-pick the bits that still make sense!  I certainly thought that YouGov was going to be our only real clue before the end of the evening as to whether there had been any last-minute swing, because their fieldwork carried on a bit longer than either Panelbase or Ipsos-Mori. If that had been the case, the message would have been "no, there hasn't", because the sequence of results that YouGov have produced over the last three weeks looks fairly stable within the confines of the standard margin of error - 47, 51, 48, 48.  But now Survation have muddied the waters with yet another completely unexpected intervention, and with fieldwork that is more up-to-date than anyone else's - it took place entirely over the last 24 hours.

There shouldn't be any dismay at all that they've produced a slightly lower Yes vote than the phone polls we've had from ICM and Ipsos-Mori, because different methodologies produce different results (as we know in this campaign of all campaigns).  It is absolutely correct to compare this poll solely with the last Survation phone poll, and doing so paints a good news story for Yes - there has been a pro-Yes swing since the weekend, albeit well within the margin of error.  There is certainly no evidence there of any last-minute swing to No.  My only slight doubt is due to the fact that the previous Survation phone poll was commissioned by the No campaign, who seemingly only made the decision to publish at the very last minute for tactical reasons.  So we can't entirely exclude the possibility that the No campaign have commissioned several Survation phone polls, and withheld all the others because they were better for Yes - in which case the trend in tonight's poll obviously wouldn't be quite so good.  But that's just wild speculation, and there's no point worrying about something that is utterly unknowable at this stage.

Unless we get any more surprise polls at a few minutes' notice, the last clue as to whether there has been any late swing will come in one further Ipsos-Mori poll, which is rather disrespectfully being published tomorrow morning while people are in the middle of voting.  But obviously 'clue' is the operative word, because unless there's a very big shift from today's poll conducted by the same firm, any change could just as easily be a margin of error illusion.  If we can dodge that bullet and convince ourselves there has been no late swing to No, then it seems to me the scenario for reconciling the polls with our hopes for a Yes victory would be as follows -

1) That phone polling is more reliable than online polling.

2) That ICM, with their "gold standard" reputation, are the most accurate phone pollster.

Both of the above held true in the AV referendum - there's certainly no guarantee that they will again, but it's an encouraging thought.  Under that scenario, it's perfectly credible to believe that Yes are at the higher end of the range that the polls are suggesting, ie. 49% - because that is what ICM showed in their only phone poll of the campaign.  If so, the race is close enough to be decided one way or the other by the ground operation tomorrow.

Alternatively, the polls could be structurally wrong, just as they were in 1992, in which case all bets are off.  But remember, it's completely 50/50 as to whether that would be a good thing for Yes or a good thing for No.

Basically, the outcome is unknowable.  And at the end of a long campaign that has seen voters being constantly bullied by having one-sided polls shoved in their faces, we should probably regard that as a truly wonderful destination to have arrived at, however scary it might feel.