CAMPAIGNERS for a Yes vote in favour of independence claim latest polling vindicates their concentration on winning over traditional Labour voters in the run up to September's poll.
Further Labour stalwarts are lined up - not necessarily national figures but with strong local recognition around the country - to keep up the momentum over a summer when there is still ground to be made up.
Yes Scotland said the voting swing required for independence to win the day on September 18 had plunged from 13 to just five points, according to their latest monthly poll of polls analysis across all the polling organisations.
They said these combined statistics put Yes support in July at 45 per cent so far to 55 per cent for No, excluding undecided voters, compared to 37 per cent for Yes and 63 per cent for No last September.
The latest TNS survey, highlighted in The Herald yesterday, showed the highest pro-independence rating by that pollster in its series of independence polls so far.
Blair Jenkins, Chief Executive of Yes Scotland, said: "The monthly poll of polls analysis shows that a swing of around only five points is all that is needed to win a Yes majority in September.
"This is a significant shift at this stage, and we are confident of building on this momentum in the two months ahead. The polls also show that undecided voters are more likely to make up their minds in favour of Yes than No.
"The polls highlight the strong appeal of the guarantee that Scotland always gets the government we vote for only with independence, instead of being stuck with Tory governments under the Westminster system that we reject."
The SNP's opponents and the Better Together campaign were reluctant to give further credence to the TNS survey beyond observing that No still had a healthy lead and Labour would continue to push a message of "partnership and co-operation".
All polling companies have their varying methodologies which result in them tending to produce results more favourable to pro-independence or pro-union stances depending on how the questions are put and the methods used to adjust the raw data.
Panelbase, for example, has tended to produce more pro-independence findings, as have Survation, in contrast to YouGov or Ipsos MORI, with ICM somewhere in between.
Yesterday's was the best poll produced by TNS from the nationalist point of view, and it highlighted that in just three-months, excluding don't knows, the number of 2011 Holyrood Labour voters planning to vote Yes had risen from 21 per cent to 28 per cent.
The Yes campaign has lent strong support to the Labour for Independence group and wheeled out a succession of former party stalwarts in support of a Yes vote.
Labour has countered with its own United with Labour campaign led by former Premier Gordon Brown with support from Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander, which has allowed the party to distance itself from the Tories and LibDems of the Westminster coalition.
A Yes campaign source said: "There is no question that the senior Labour figures who have come out for Yes have had a galvanising effect on persuading many Labour voters to back Yes, and we expect other respected Labour figures to be announced in the weeks ahead."
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