REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, EDINBURGH - Scottish supporters of staying in the United Kingdom are 4 percentage points ahead of secessionists with just a day to go before Scots vote in an independence referendum, three different opinion polls showed.

The United Kingdom's fate remains uncertain as the three surveys - from pollsters ICM, Opinium and Survation - showed support for Scottish independence at 48 percent compared to 52 percent backing union.

The polls found 8 to 14 percent of Scotland's 4.3 million voters were still undecided before polls open at 0600 GMT on Thursday.  All three polls showed nationalists had gained ground, but the fact that supporters of the union were ahead in the polls prompted investors to buy the pound, extending sterling's gain against the US dollar.

"It is very tight," John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and one of Scotland's premier pollsters, told the Scotsman newspaper which commissioned the ICM poll.

"At the moment it looks as if the 'yes' campaign is going to fall agonizingly short from their perspective. But I have always said this is the 'no' campaign’s to lose and it certainly looks as if they have got pretty close to that."

In the face of the biggest internal threat to the United Kingdom since Ireland broke away nearly a century ago, Britain's establishment - from Prime Minister David Cameron to the City of London and soccer star David Beckham - have united in an almost panicked effort to implore Scots that the United Kingdom is "Better Together."

Attempting to blunt nationalist leader Alex Salmond's argument for breaking away, Britain's rulers promised to guarantee Scotland high levels of state funding and grant Scots greater control over finances.

In a deal brokered by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leaders of Britain's three main political parties said they would retain the funding equation that sustains a higher level of public spending north of the border.

British leaders accept that even if Scotland votes to keep the 307-year union, the United Kingdom's structure will have to change as the rush to grant so many powers to Scotland will provoke calls for a less centralized state from voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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