EDINBURGH, Scotland — Fifty-two percent of Scotland’s electorate want to remain part of the U.K., while 32 percent favor independence, a poll for the Times newspaper found.
First Minister Alex Salmond, leader of the governing Scottish National Party in Edinburgh’s semi-autonomous parliament, has said Scots repeatedly get governments in London for which they do not vote. Scotland’s electorate will cast ballots in a referendum on independence a year from Wednesday.
The YouGov survey was broadly in line with other recent opinion polls showing about a 20 percentage-point lead for the campaign against independence. The Times didn’t give a margin of error for the poll, which was conducted Sept. 13-16.
About 13 percent of voters said that they were undecided. When YouGov subtracted undecided people and those who said they would not vote from the responses, the lead rose to 24 points.
Women showed less support for independence than men, with about 25 percent of women saying they will vote “Yes” to separation, compared with 40 percent of men, the poll showed.
One in four respondents between the age of 18 and 24 said they favor independence with 55 percent saying they will vote against, according to the YouGov poll. About 28 percent of those over the age of 60 said they will vote for independence, while 61 percent said they will vote against.
In a separate survey, 45 percent of Scots said the economy would perform less well after a split with the U.K., compared with 23 percent who said it would improve. The survey of 1,017 adults was conducted Aug. 21-27 by TNS BRMB for the Glasgow, Scotland- based Herald daily. The newspaper didn’t give a margin of error.
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