Sunday, April 23, 2017

Terror strikes Tyrannical Theresa as astonishing BMG poll suggests Yes has practically drawn level

Should Scotland be an independent country? (BMG)

Yes 43% (+2)
No 45% (+1)

UPDATE : When I first put this post up, I thought I'd only have a few minutes to wait before more details appeared on the Herald website (the last few BMG polls have all been commissioned by the Herald), revealing what the numbers with Don't Knows excluded are, whether there are Westminster voting intention numbers, etc, etc.  Instead all we've got to prove the poll even exists is a single tweet from the Britain Elects account - which admittedly is normally reliable.  It looks like we'll have to wait until the morning for clarity.

As with Survation and Panelbase last night, what's most important about this poll is what it doesn't show.  A few weeks ago, there were YouGov and Panelbase polls published close together which both reported that Yes had slipped below the 45% achieved in the 2014 referendum, thus giving the impression that something had genuinely changed.  But if that was really the case, you'd have expected yesterday's Survation poll to show Yes slipping below the 47% figure that has been so typical in recent months.  You'd certainly have expected BMG to show a drop - and perhaps quite a sharp one - from the heady heights of 48% or 49% recorded in the firm's last two polls.  That hasn't happened.

Of the three polls we've seen this weekend, only Panelbase can arguably be reconciled with the "slippage for Yes" narrative.  Although the 45% Yes vote in that poll represents a 1% increase, it remains slightly below the recent norm.  But even that can potentially be explained away by the rare exclusion of 16 and 17 year olds from the sample.

In short, there is no longer much hard evidence that Yes have suffered any drift at all.  The minimal evidence that does exist is pretty much confined to YouGov polls, and it's possible there's a firm-specific explanation for that.

UPDATE II : Having applied a magnifying glass to a screenshot of the Herald front page, I've finally been able to work out what the BMG figures are with Don't Knows excluded...

Should Scotland be an independent country? (BMG)

Yes 49% (+1)
No 51% (-1)

So with Don't Knows included, the Yes vote is up 2%, and with Don't Knows excluded, it's up 1%.  Let me just gently observe that this renders the Herald's choice of headline ("Independence support fails to rise") more than a touch bizarre!

*  *  *

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 46.8% (+0.4)
No 53.2% (-0.4)

(The Poll of Polls is based on a rolling average of the most recent poll from each firm that has reported at least once within the last three months. The firms included in the current sample are Panelbase, BMG, Ipsos-Mori, YouGov and Survation.)

45 comments:

  1. And we don't even have a Ref confirmed yet.
    ;-)

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    1. But the campaign never stopped. There has been blanket, saturation coverage of this crap in the Scottish and UK media for several years - and you people STILL haven't pulled ahead.

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  2. Also need to know if 16/17 and EU Nationals in this poll.

    I would like to know just how many polls that are out are actually full samples with the relevant electorate polled. Precious few I imagine.

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    1. Well worth considering this when it comes to recent polling.

      https://marcobiagi.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/survation-23-april-2017.html



      1) The Tories are the most fired up right now

      97% of last-time Tories rank themselves as 9-10 out of 10 certain to vote. That is astonishing and almost unprecedented. It boosts their projected share of the vote. 2014 No voters are similarly more fired up than their Yes equivalents. 87% of 2014 Nos consider themselves 9-10 out of 10 whereas only 80% of Yes voters do. That may look like a small gap, but in polls there is a strong and long-observed tendency to feel pressure to say you will vote. Small gaps of those willing to say may suggest larger gaps in practice.

      Similarly, a both proportionately and absolutely greater number of 2015 SNP and Labour (and 2016 SNP and Labour) now declare themselves undecided than 2015 and 2016 Tories do.


      cont.

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    2. 2) Only 43% of their respondents voted SNP at the last UK election

      Survation deliberately balances the sample to ensure that their respondents are representative, based on how people say they voted in the 2014 referendum and 2016 Scottish Parliament elections. There is no point polling 1,000 people if they're all by some freak coincidence Lib Dems, for example, and historically supporters of left parties have been more willing to participate in opinion polls. Survation also reports what their respondents said they did in 2015 - the last actual UK General Election - but do not balance by it. Interestingly this poll only had 43% of respondents remembering voting SNP in 2015, some 7% below the actual level and exactly the same as the proportion Survation estimates voting SNP today. Indeed, the number of respondents saying they voted SNP in 2015 and the number of respondents saying they would vote SNP this time are exactly the same - 350. (The share saying they voted Tory in 2015 was about three points too high as well.)

      Had Survation chosen methodologically to weight to how people said they voted in the last UK election rather than the last Holyrood election, the projected SNP topline would have been somewhat higher. Arguments in favour of doing this are that it would be comparing election like-with-like, arguments against are that another election in between would confuse memories and lead to inaccurate responses. This second effect happened in the run up to the 2010 election, when far too many people 'remembered' voting SNP the previous time - probably recalling the 2007 Holyrood election rather than the by-then dim and distant 2005. This one is down to a judgement call for the pollster, but if they predict 43% on the eve-of-poll and the SNP get 50%, don't say we didn't warn you.

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  3. Quarmby, if you want to re-post your comment without the swear-word, that's fine.

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  4. I knew a polish girl who had a wonderful tongue . I would rate her 60% tongue 40% swallow with a margin for error.

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    1. The troll calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, arbitrary deportations and public mutilations, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial, homophobic and ethnic slurs, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor

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    2. Really shows you up for what you are a pervert.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. It's just a touch above 51% I think.

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    1. That isn't the way the calculation is made - it'll be based on the raw numbers, which we don't know about yet. The worst it could be would be around Yes 48.3%, No 51.7%, which would be rounded to Yes 48%, No 52%.

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    2. Yep, I'm well aware of that, James.

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    3. I've no idea what your first comment was about, then.

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    4. I was purely making an estimate without knowledge of the raw data - get off your high horse, fgs.

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  7. It's still nothing to write home about though, is it? With everything that's going on, what the hell is wrong with people!

    We're still in the doldrums.

    I despair.

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    1. Er, I think we're going to have to agree to differ on that one. A virtual 50/50 split is "the doldrums"? Let's get real.

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    2. James is right. It always takes ordinary voters much longer than we think is reasonable to get up to speed with what is going on.

      Just look around you. People are going to work and going out for dinner and going to the pictures and doing all the ordinary usual things. They haven't thought this through. Most are probably just annoyed about the sudden general election looking set to take over the airwaves for a month.

      This is going to get extremely unpleasant. I hesitate to say Germany 1930s unpleasant, but the parallels are there. The 30-35% unpersuadables have already gone Tory. The persuadables are still trying to pretend it isn't happening, and they'll go on doing that for a few more months yet.

      We can cope with losing a few Westminster seats. Labour is dead and Scotland is polarising between the SNP and the Tories. There is only going to be one winner there. Patience, grasshopper.

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    3. I agree, we can only win from the SNP/Tory polarisation of Scottish politics. Independence or Tory has been the only actual choice for years, but now finally it is becoming clear to everybody.

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    4. Of course, all you guys are so staggeringly far to the left and caught up in your own propaganda that you forget the basic fact that most countries have a functional, viable and popular party of the right that serves as an option for government. We are witnessing the normalisation of Scotland. It took the SNP to show the Scots that, actually, the Tories aren't that bad. They are the can of fly killer to the SNP's bug. Don't screw around with a rolled up newspaper (labour and libdem). Blast that fecker! :0)

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    5. Are you kidding? The Tories are foul, English or Scottish. Happily sell off the NHS, their grannies and take the 1p you tell the cashier to put in the charity tin.

      And I'm not even a socialist

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    6. The 1948 NHS model is on borrowed time. It can't deal with modern demands. If privatising it wholly or in part leads to better outcomes, then it should be done. Other countries operate a mix of public and private. Sometimes the government pays, sometimes it doesn't - but you get a nice clean private ward and top notch, swift treatment instead of being shoved into a manky death camp.

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  8. I don;t know James, I would have expect the generations alive today in Scotland even allowing for a pro union msm to be clamouring for the independence. Like John McArdle I find it difficult to understand the attraction with British rule that 50% of the population seem to have here

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  9. If it's 48/52 there's not much movement from the polls in the run up to the last indyref. It doesn't inspire hope. With the savage cruelty of the litany of barbaric Tory policies and economic failures in plain sight we should be at 55% at very least.

    I see nothing to get excited about here. This is hardly a breakthrough where we can say we now have the momentum behind us. It certainly won't strike fear into May's heart.

    We have a very long way to go before that happens, in my humble opinion!

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    1. I think it's still a wee bit early to be wanting to strike fear into May's heart.

      Ordinary people aren't massively aware of what we've been obsessing about for a year and more. This has to play out at its own pace and as I said above to Al, it's a faster pace than I originally expected.

      The phase we are entering now is where Scotland polarises between the SNP and the Conservatives, which will eventually become the independence and union camps respectively. Blood-and-soil is going to become an issue here, one we tried to avoid last time. But the fact is, at best only about a third of voters in Scotland identify as British by preference. Many soft No voters last time wanted independence in their hearts but had been persuaded by Project Fear that 2014 was not the time.

      It's going to take some time now for these people to follow their hearts. They mostly haven't really noticed how viciously nationalistic (in the bad sense) England and the BritNats are becoming, but once they do, the momentum will gather.

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    2. "Blood-and-soil is going to become an issue here, one we tried to avoid last time."

      I really really really hope the Tories go the 'blood and soil' route.

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    3. Your pessimism is well founded. We've had the brexit vote, the indyref2 veto and now an approaching Tory landslide - and still the polls show no. And even if yes did swing upwards, its no guarantee of anything. Scottish independence recorded some staggering poll leads in 2006. Yet we all know what happened 8 years later.

      The game's a bogey chaps. Use the powers to mitigate bad stuff about the UK and accept that this is as far as it can ever go.

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    4. Good old Pollyaldo. It's always sunshine and rainbows in his little world

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    5. You're on the slide. You know it, we know it - everyone knows it.

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  10. Rolfe

    'This is going to get extremely unpleasant. I hesitate to say Germany 1930s unpleasant, but the parallels are there. The 30-35% unpersuadables have already gone Tory. The persuadables are still trying to pretend it isn't happening, and they'll go on doing that for a few more months yet.'

    I just hope you're right about this state of affairs continuing for only a few months.
    Meanwhile, the night is pitch black and we yearn for the dawning of the light. So many sick and/disabled people and our poorest are already suffering desperately. It is absolutely not hyperbole to say that many will not survive the coming onslaught of Tory tyranny unfettered and given a new lease. God help us.

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  11. "The 30-35% unpersuadables have already gone Tory."

    If my instincts are correct, time is not on their side, due to age, and perhaps even due to the lifestyles of some of the less savoury among them.

    The next 2 years should be interesting. If Yes can go from 45% to 49% in 2.5 years without an official campaign, think at what it can achieve with all the SNP and other Indy-minded MPs, MSPs, councillors and activists.

    55% Yes should be easily do-able by 2019. I will take a punt at more than that, as word spreads, and Brexit bites and so on.

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  13. Given massive media bias, the fact Yes support stays solid and edges up is fantastic.

    Excellent base to be starting from when the IndyRef actually begins

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  14. Starting out at 49% with an average low of 45%. To me is a rock solid support going into indi ref 2. Not forgetting that faced with another 5 years of Tory rule many more 5-7% have said it would move them to yes. We are probably already ahead as that prospect is inevitable.

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  15. You won't get me I'm a True Blue Tory Yoon son, till the day I dieApril 24, 2017 at 3:17 PM

    Taylor‏ @dtaylor5633

    Labour reject alliance to boot out the Tories with SNP etc

    But Labour have told their members to vote Tory in Scotland

    Lab/Tory alliance

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    1. Red Tories Down and OUTApril 24, 2017 at 3:19 PM

      Gillian ��‏ @GillianSproule 4 hours ago

      I was a teen when Thatcher won & witnessed 1st hand the devastation she brought on #Scotland I'll NEVER vote Tory nor Tory enabling Labour.



      .

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    2. And yet the Nat sis pursue Thatcherite policies. GILLIAN tick as a shithoose wa.

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    3. Thatcher pulled the plug on dud industries that were costing the state a fortune. But the thirty year old policies of a dead woman will not sway this election in Scotland - not this time. The Thatcher obsession is drawing to a close, finally.

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  16. You won't get me I'm a True Blue Tory Yoon son, till the day I dieApril 24, 2017 at 3:21 PM

    Helen‏ @couper40 16 hours ago

    Slab have really reached rock bottom when Ian Murray is asking labour voters to vote Tory.He should hang his head in shame.#VoteSNP #GE17

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  17. Red Tories Down and OUTApril 24, 2017 at 3:26 PM

    Fergus Mutch‏ @Fergoodness 7 hours ago

    .@theSNP National Exec decided on Saturday we would not go into coalitions with Tories after #council17 elections. #VoteSNP #bbcgms



    Dugdale and her Red Tory Britnats in SLAB have, tellingly, NOT done so.

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  19. 1 point lead for yes; "Yes! We're on our way! The union is finished! Suck it yoons!"

    2 point lead for no; "we're practically level, the union is finished".

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    1. Carlotta Colostomybag PredictsApril 24, 2017 at 8:35 PM

      "The undecideds and the bottlers will put it in the back of the net for 'remain'. I'm sure Cameron also has a few tricks up his sleeve to deploy in the dying days of the campaign."

      Carlotta 'Aldo' Vance

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    2. Keep up the good work insane guy!

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