All the tenors have been quick to take centre stage as the leaders of the Yes and No camps voted early in the Scottish referendum. First Minister Alex Salmond and his family voted in his home town, and in many places there were queues of expectant people doorstepping polling stations for the seven AM opening.

The cameras were also on former British prime minister Gordon Brown as he and Alistair Darling went to vote. Some observers were still purring over what was described as a barnstorming speech he gave on Wednesday night, with some saying his defence of the Union was one of his career-defining addresses. But what do the voters think?

“I very much want an independent Scotland. I want a different kind of Scotland, a socially just Scotland. A Scotland with no significant gap between the rich and the poor,” said one woman.

“I just don’t believe that the Yes campaign was convincing enough about how it could go wrong. So they had all the best cases, but not the worst cases,” was one man’s opinion.

If numbers mobilised and noise generated counted towards the final result the Yes camp would already have this in the bag, but the outcome remains too close to call, and few in the Scottish press this morning were willing to call it.