But political prediction markets, in which people bet on the likely outcome, are all about evaluating and quantifying the full range of risks. And currently, bettors aren’t buying into the pro-independence hype.

In contrast with the polls, traders at the British betting exchange Betfair.com currently assess the “No” vote as the likely favorite, assigning it a 72 percent chance of winning. To be sure, that still suggests a sizable 28 percent chance that a majority of Scots will vote for independence, but the odds that it will happen seem a lot weaker than polls would suggest.

Either way, the Scottish referendum will provide one more data point to inform the continuing debate among political prognosticators about the relative efficacy of polls versus markets. It’s a debate I’ve followed closely throughout my career, and over the hundreds of such comparisons I’ve studied, markets have typically had the edge. Prediction markets may not get it right every time, but they get it wrong less often.