For the first time a recent poll has found that a majority of Scottish voters support choosing independence from the UK in a September 18 national referendum.
The poll, carried out by YouGov for The Sunday Times, sampled 1,084 respondents between September 2 and 5, and found that 51% want to break away from the UK, with 49% opting to stay put.
The support has reportedly been gaining primarily through TV debates between Scottish National Party (SNP) head Alex Salmond of the Yes Campaign, and Labor head Alistair Darling of the Better Together Campaign,
Darling's campaign previously held a 22-point lead, making the recent turnaround the more dramatic as 35% of Scottish voters have deserted the Labor campaign.
SNP member Math Campbell-Sturgess, a former resident of a town near Cambridge in England who moved to Scotland in 2000, told the Scottish paper The Herald "in Greenock, what I saw was an entire community devastated by 30 years of neglect. For me, it is not about the money Scotland has but where it is spent."
Another SNP member, Steve West, who like Campbell-Sturgess moved to Scotland from England in 1986, said independence would remove some anti-English feelings in Scotland.
"Anti-Englishness is partly caused by a sense of frustration at being governed from afar by English people, so I think independence is likely to improve that rather than make it worse," stated West.