The boss of a transport company, Bob Costello, said he had stepped back from his business for the last two months, providing one of his 17 buses to the pro-independence campaign and spending much of his time handing out leaflets from a stall in Dundee’s main square.

Mr. Costello said he believed that Scotland’s oil wealth had been “misused” by politicians in London and looked back with resentment to his school days when, he said, Scots like him “thought we had to aspire to anything English.”

Near the main square, Tony Cox was campaigning for a small, left-wing pro-independence group called Stobbie for Aye — Stobbie being an abbreviation for Stobswell, a down-at-the-heel district of Dundee, and aye the Scottish term for yes. He said his group had persuaded around 1,000 voters to register for the first time, mainly people “left behind” by economic policies, and the enthusiasm was so strong that he said he “had junkies chasing me down the street to get registered.” His group also distributes official campaign leaflets in Polish for immigrant voters emblazoned with the word “Tak” — Polish for yes.

Outside Dundee things are different. Menzies Campbell, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats and an opponent of independence, said on Wednesday that his side had “a lot of support under the radar.” Speaking in Cupar, a town about 25 miles to the south of Dundee, he said the reaction he had received suggested “a majority in favor of staying in the union.”

Campaigning alongside him, Alistair Carmichael, also a Liberal Democrat and secretary of state for Scotland, argued that yes campaigners are “in your face and no supporters tend to be less vocal.”

Getting people to display posters for the no side has been hard. For example, Ciaran Folan, a retired broadcast engineer originally from Ireland, is an opponent of independence. But he does not have a no poster in his window because, he said, “some of the people on the other side are very aggressive.” He said, however, that he was “embarrassed” at how effective the yes campaign has been.