WILL Scotland's "missing million" hold the key to the nation's future or will it be the ghost of Margaret Thatcher?

While apathy has stalked recent elections across the UK, fuelled by voter distrust of the political class, few expect this to be a problem next September.

The gut feeling across the parties is that such will be the blanket coverage of the independence debate and the realisation of the historic importance of the vote that more than 80% of Scots will make the effort to cast their ballot. Interestingly, the turnout for the 1999 devolution referendum was just 60%.

Opinion polls over recent months have by and large shown the No camp ahead. One last month had the antis on 47% and the pros on 29%. But that was among those who were certain to vote; some 24% said they were still uncertain.

Alistair Carmichael, the ubiquitous Scottish Secretary, who, when not putting "the fear of God" into his Cabinet colleagues about the possibility of losing next year's poll, noted: "There may be one million people likely to vote who have never voted before; they have not been reached by conventional politics."

Certainly convention might not be enough this time round. Mr Carmichael acknowledged the pro-UK forces had to do much more to convince not just the don't-knows but also the don't-votes of their argument and to get them to cast their vote for it.

While there appears to be a void on what unconventional means the pro-UK forces might engage in, the Yes camp has already been targeting the don't-votes for some time. Indeed, its workers have been able to access a smartphone app, which tells them, in any street, which voters have not voted in recent elections and who is not registered. Quite a tool.

The SNP pitch to the marginalised and disenchanted don't-votes is that the Yes camp stands for change while the No camp stands for the status quo and, while this group might not have voted for years because it does not think its vote will make a difference, this time it will because it is a once-in-a-generation chance to make a real difference.

There is also another element to the strategy of targeting key groups.

Senior Labour figures appear worried it could actually be traditional Labour-supporting voters who hand the key to independence to the SNP. The suggestion is that it was these voters who helped to give Alex Salmond his landslide victory in 2011; the fear in Labour Towers is they will do it again next year.

This group, sometimes dubbed the "braveheart generation", has been described by Mr Carmichael as the "formerly reliable Labour-voting males in the urban, post-industrial belt of Scotland" who "have a folk memory" - Margaret Thatcher and the de-industrialisation of the Scotland in the 1980s.

The Iron Lady is always assured to raise hackles across Scotland, even after her death, but the idea she could help spur a generation of men to vote Yes might even be a suggestion too far for the First Minister. Mightn't it?