YouGov’s penultimate Scottish poll before the referendum is out tonight (the last one being the eve-of-poll one next week). Topline figures, with changes from the weekend, are YES 48%(-3), NO 52%(+3) – the No campaign are once again ahead, but it remains within the margin of error.

One can look at this two ways. One is that Yes moved briefly ahead, but there has been a move back – perhaps the Scottish people recoiled a bit from the risk when it began looking like it would really happen, perhaps the stories over the last few days of pension companies and banks redomiciling to the UK had a impact (fieldwork was between Tuesday and today, so later fieldwork would have picked some of it up). An alternative is that it’s just margin of error – the last poll was a little “yes-ey” or this poll is a little “no-ey”. It’s a natural human instinct to look for narrative, to weave data into a coherent story, when sometimes they are just random noise. As we enter the final week of the referendum campaign what we can be certain of is that the polls are now all showing it extremely close – YouGov and Panelbase have YES at 48%, Survation 47%, TNS 49%. No appears to be slightly ahead, but it’s close…