Salmond still top dog.

Even after a bad month for Alex Salmond As Better Nation Reports  he is still the most popular political figure in Scotland by a mile.

Between Oct 10 and Oct 12 the polling company YouGov. conducted a survey of 1,000 Scots and asked, amongst other questions, the following questions

In general, which government do you think is better 
at making decisions for Scotland?

The UK government 24
The Scottish government 64
Don't know 12

Which ONE of the following people do you think 
would be best at standing up for Scotland's 
interests?

Alex Salmond  SNP 43
Johann Lamont Labour 6
Ruth Davidson Con 5
Willie Rennie  LibDem2
None of these 24
Don't know 21

As Better Nation point out its a pity we don't see a clearer breakdown of the None of These and in particular  Green party leader Patrick Harvie who impressed me during the last Scottish Parliamentary Elections.

Clearly the majority of Scots of Scots believe that the Scottish Government is best for them . Though it would be interesting to compare similar polls to when Labour were in power.

However I suspect that the opposition leaders would have rated higher than a combined 13%

One of the  most interesting  surveys was on the economics of Independence,


The ‘Yes’ campaign is deploying a series of 
arguments as part of their campaign to achieve a 
‘Yes’ vote for an independent Scotland in the 
referendum in 2014 – for example they point to 
statistics showing that Scotland generates 9.6% of 
UK taxes, but receives just 9.3% of UK spending in 
return. If the ‘Yes’ campaign could persuade you that 
you and your family would be economically better off 
with Scottish independence, in these circumstances, 
how likely or unlikely would you be to vote ‘Yes’ for 
an independent Scotland in 2014?

Very likely 30
Fairly likely 15
TOTAL LIKELY 45
Neither likely nor unlikely 10
Fairly unlikely 9
Very unlikely 27
TOTAL UNLIKELY 36
Don't know 9

So there's a significant pro-independence vote if the Yes campaign can persuade voters they were financially better of in an Independent Scotland.

How they can do this ?

They could argue on the current economic settlement but both sides will be twisting the figures to suit their argument.

They could compare Scotland to the likes of Norway even pointing out how Iceland have managed to pull themselves out of the mess that they were in due to the financial crisis.

Or they could argue that Independence would create the very dynamics and optimism  that Scotland to declare the the world that they are worth investigating.

In other words the economic case doesn't have to be there now. Independence will create the economic case.