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Strategists in the pro-Union Better Together insist that they can still win next week's referendum despite a late surge to the yes camp from Labour supporters and women voters. But if they fail, they will reflect on a series of mistakes:
Too negative They took a highly calculated risk after polls showed the referendum would be decided by about a third of voters who feel instinctively attracted to independence but who would be put off by any economic instability.
Alistair Darling, the leader of the cross-party Better Together campaign, has based almost his entire strategy on warning middle ground voters of the dangers of economic uncertainty after independence. This explains why George Osborne changed the Treasury position from saying that a currency union with an independent Scotland would be highly unlikely to ruling one out completely.
The rejection of a currency union was followed by warnings of uncertainty over the future of pensions, public spending, public services and diminishing supplies of North Sea oil.
The weakness in the strategy is that Better Together has won full marks for outlining what it is opposes but no marks for outlining what it supports. It pursued this approach after polling showed that middle ground voters would either be indifferent to, or repelled by, arguments about the merits of the UK. The leaders of the three main UK parties will belatedly address this in Scotland on Wednesday when they follow Gordon Brown's lead in spelling out plans for what they call Home Rule within the UK.
Currency union presentation One of the most significant moments in the campaign came when Osborne travelled to Edinburgh in February to deliver a speech in which he definitively ruled out a currency union with an independent Scotland. The Better Together team believe this was the right thing to do and point out that Darling beat Alex Salmond decisively in their first debate when the first minister struggled to outline a plan B if the rest of the UK carried out its threat.
But critics from within the pro-Union camp believe the optics around the Osborne speech were wrong. The chancellor made sure he stayed in Scotland overnight to avoid handing the SNP an easy hit about English day trippers. But the critics say that Osborne should have made a greater virtue of the cross-party agreement. They say he should have released a joint letter with Ed Balls and Danny Alexander whose two parties command more than 50 of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats.
Alistair Darling's weaknesses The former chancellor seemed to be the perfect candidate to advocate in a calm, understated way the rational arguments about why the populist Salmond is planning a dangerous gamble. Darling is, after all, one of the few finance ministers in office at the time of the global financial crash whose reputation has grown in the intervening years.
Critics say Darling is not a decisive leader and the second televised debate with Salmond showed he can be slow on his feet. But if the no side wins, memories will turn to the first debate in which Darling trounced the first minister.
Late summer surprise Every US presidential candidate fears an "autumn surprise" that derails their best laid plans ahead of the election in November. The Scottish referendum has experienced a late summer surprise after Salmond bounced back from his defeat in the first television debate to warn in the second of a Tory-led plan to privatise the NHS in Scotland. Downing Street and Better Together thought the Salmond "scaremongering" would not gain traction because the NHS is wholly devolved in Scotland. But pro-Union sources say this chimed "intuitively" with Labour voters. It has not helped Better Together that he is making an identical argument to the one made in England by shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham.
Poor timing If the Yes side wins, David Cameron and Osborne may face questions about whether it was wise to stage the referendum during the biggest fiscal contraction in modern peacetime? The prime minister and chancellor, who pushed for the referendum, discounted the impact of austerity because they believed that voters across the UK understood the need for belt tightening. But Salmond's success in appealing to natural Labour supporters - and his claim that the NHS is threatened with privatisation in the face of the fiscal tightening across the UK - suggests that the Tory leadership overlooked their own toxicity on fiscal policy in Scotland.
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