The Labour Party seems set to be denied an overall majority in Thursday's historic elections for the new Scottish Parliament. And despite reports here that Labour might try to go it alone and form a minority administration, the latest polls suggest Mr Donald Dewar will need a formal pact with the Liberal Democrats to secure his position as First Minister.
Meanwhile, as the war of words continues over the Scottish National Party's economic case for Scottish independence, the election campaign in Wales has been enlivened by accusations from the Liberal Democrat that Plaid Cymru "has deceived the Welsh people" by its disavowal of independence as its ultimate goal.
As the final heave for votes got underway, the latest opinion polls offered some conflicting news for Scottish party leaders.
A Mori poll for the Sunday Herald gave Labour 62 seats, just three short of overall control, with the SNP on 45, the Liberal Democrats on 12, the Conservatives nine, and others one.
However, the ICM poll for Scot- land on Sunday suggested Labour falling eight short of a majority, on 57, to 41 for the SNP, with the Tories moving into third place with 17 seats, and 13 for the Liberal Democrats.
According to ICM, Labour's support in the "first" vote, for directly-elected SMPs, is down three points from 1997 - while the impression of a modest SNP recovery is sustained by an apparent six-point drop in Labour's share of the "second" vote (for election of additional SMPs from regional party lists) over the past week.
Despite the clear inclination of some of his colleagues to claim the spoils of victory for themselves, pressure on Mr Dewar to form a pact with the Liberal Democrats would appear increased by evidence that this is what the country as a whole favours. Some 55 per cent favour a coalition as against only 28 per cent wanting a minority Labour government.
Lord (David) Steel - a former Liberal leader and a possible candidate for the post of Presiding Officer in the new parliament - said yesterday that the Liberal Democrats would be prepared to talk about forming a coalition with the SNP.
But the possibility seemed instantly to evaporate when he added the rider: "We certainly wouldn't countenance a deal that led to separation - that's the key issue.
"If the SNP were to drop their demands for endless referenda on independence, then of course it would be perfectly possible to agree a programme with them, as it would with the Labour Party."
The SNP leader, Mr Alex Salmond, insists that a referendum on independence is the absolute precondition for his party's participation in any coalition - with only the timing of it, during the first four-year term of the parliament, a matter for negotiation.
While the SNP leader yesterday raised the prospect of a battle between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom over who would owe what portion of the national debt in the event of independence, in Wales Labour and the Liberal Democrats attacked Plaid Cymru on the independence issue.
The Welsh Secretary, Mr Alun Michael, whose election to the National Assembly remains in some doubt, told the BBC programme On The Record that "a new Wales" would have to work "in partnership with the United Kingdom government, so that Wales has a strong voice in the UK and in Europe."
The Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Michael German, accused Plaid of "trying to hide their true ambition for a Socialist Welsh Republic from the Welsh people." Plaid Cymru's commitment to independence had been well documented over the past 20 years, said Mr German, who added that a "divorce" would be bad for Britain and costly for Welsh politics.
Speaking on the same programme, Mr Dafydd Wigley, the Plaid Cymru leader, insisted self-government and not independence was the issue. "There are no countries that are independent within the EU," he said. "Countries have given up the right to set their own interest rates with the creation of the Central European Bank."
Mr Wigley added: "We're moving toward a common defence and foreign policy, we've done away with Customs posts, we're having a harmonisation of fiscal matters. In other words all countries are giving up part of their independence, they are interdependent within the new European structures . . ."
"And people in Wales understand that very well," he said.