Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Misery for Boris as another YouGov poll finds a clear majority of the Scottish public demand an independence referendum within five years

I was oblivious to this for most of the day, but the fourth independence poll of the year has been published - and perhaps of most significance is that it's the first post-Brexit poll.  However, it should be stressed that, strictly speaking, it's not directly comparable to the three polls conducted in January.  There are a couple of reasons for that - a) the question asked was non-standard, and b) it appears from the datasets that a supplementary question about whether Scotland is "heading in the right or wrong direction" was asked before the main independence question, which is highly irregular and might conceivably have affected the result by putting respondents into a certain mindset.  For my money, the second problem is far more important than the first, because although the wording of the main question is non-standard, it's not leading in any obvious way.  (That said, it's perfectly reasonable for us to wonder why the client seems to have insisted upon unusual wording.)

YouGov/Hanbury poll:

If another Scottish independence referendum were held today, how would you vote?

Yes to an independent Scotland: 45%
No to an independent Scotland: 46%

Some of the insanely biased newspaper reports of this poll (which are probably lightly rewritten versions of a press release) suggest that with Don't Knows excluded, the figures are Yes 49%, No 51% - but there are no such numbers in the datasets.  If this is simply based on a crude recalculation of the 45 and 46 figures, it may well be inaccurate due to rounding issues, because it comes out very close to Yes 49.5%, No 50.5%.  In other words, until and unless we hear definitively from YouGov, it shouldn't be assumed that No are actually in the lead in this poll on the rounded figures excluding Don't Knows.  It might be a 49/51 split, but it could just as easily be 50/50.

The drop in support for Yes since the last YouGov poll is therefore either one percentage point or two percentage points.  It's not statistically significant either way.  There are three possible explanations for the slight drop.  It could just be random sampling variation (if Yes are on around 51%, you'd expect some polls to put them on 49% or 50% due to the margin of error). The unorthodox question sequence might have distorted the result.  Or there could have been a real but modest slip in support for independence due to the 'Brexit lull' - ie. in some voters' minds, Brexit is 'done' and nothing disastrous seems to have happened, but in reality the cliff-edge is looming at the end of this year when the transitional period finishes.

As things stand, though, an average of all four polls this year continues to show a slight pro-independence majority.

Contrary to the impression you might have got from the press relea....sorry, original newspaper reporting, the poll actually detected considerable enthusiasm for a second independence referendum.  55% of respondents want it to take place within the next five years, and 40% want it by 2022.

UPDATE: It's far from clear whether 16 and 17 year olds were interviewed for this poll.  The datasets for the last YouGov poll specified that over-16s were the base, but this time it just says "2587 Scottish adults".  If by any chance 16 and 17 year olds were excluded, the media narrative about this poll would be completely bogus, because the Yes vote may well be underestimated by 1%.

28 comments:



  1. Divide and control, it’s the English way.

    Seems this Transgender issue is being pushed to cause division and conflict in the ranks of Independence for Scotland supporters.
    We finally have support for Independence polling regularly at over 50% but now we have problems with Transgender people ? with a site using a Nazi Hitler Youth poster implying that the SNP youth supporters are brainwashed like the 1930s in Germany.
    I really thought the main reason of the Wings over Scotland site was to push for Scottish Independence not give Scotland’s enemies opportunities to destroy our chances.
    Not for the first time recently the Wings over Scotland site is like a cancer to the cause of Scottish Independence.

    Saor Alba

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    1. Indeed, Stuart Campbell seems to spend 24 hours a day now on name calling Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP Nazis to boost his failing website by attracting Unionists, Zoomers and general Internet trolls by giving them something to hate, we shall see when he comes to ask those people for even more
      money to carry on his crusade against the First Minister in pretty much the same vein as he did with the previous Labour Leader Kezia Dugdale, and that didn't turn out well for Campbell
      At a guess there's money behind this and given that Boris Johnson said he was prepared to spend £5million of Scottish taxpayers money on the Internet to *convince* Scots not to back Independence maybe some of this cash has been hefted in Campbells direction

      How can a person who claimed everything meant nothing until Independence was gained for Scotland now tell his followers that it's better to vote for Johnson than Independence, which he more than implied in his latest piece of SNP hatred, or is that just women politicians hatred

      Even if Campbell were correct in his statements about the First Minister and the SNP, he states it on the ridiculous presumption that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP would have to be power forever while Johnson could be gone at the next election and if you fall for that nonsense you're as stupid as Campbell hopes you are

      The cancer infecting Scotland is coming from Bath in England in the presence of Stuart Campbell self confessed subversive

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    2. It would help if the SNP stopped dropping the ball. Mhairi Black calling parents and voters homophobic hypocrites for having concerns about someone with a sexually explicit online persona? She's drunk on her own arrogance.

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    3. Pretty stupid from Black to not admit fucking up.

      A drag queen is by definition a male portraying a caricature of a sexist female stereotype, commonly (but not exclusively) for adults only entertainment; as is the gent in questions line of work.

      Saying 'Kids this is what gay/trans folk look like' is hardly progressive too. I have both family members and friends who are LGB; they lived in the same 'community' as everyone else rather than some special, mysterious one, and are just regular folk with normal professions. Why not show kids LGB folks are no different to the rest of us, rather than e.g. sexist caricatures?

      I just got the quick 'X has two mums' explanation and that seemed all fine to me over 35 years ago when I was a wee kid. You have to actually teach children that there's something wrong with LGB for them to think that. You don't need to teach them its ok; they don't care at all naturally. Hate / bigotry / homophobia is learned; it's not natural to children. So, teaching kids that 'gay folk don't look like the rest of us, but are all wild, colorful and slightly odd' doesn't make a lot of sense, you'll just confuse them.

      Why not bring in a gay GP or architect? Or maybe bring in a gay one and a hetro one and ask the kids if they can spot the difference?

      Seems like a better way to teach things to me.

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    4. Well said, Scottish Skier. Little kids' real innocence doesn't lie in their ignorance of sex, but in their naturalistic lack of interest in it.

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  2. I hope you are combining the two yougovs to create a single before averaging the three pollsters james! Don't want a PoP weighted towards a particular pollster. But aye, still yields yes narrowly ahead.

    As I said in the last thread, the crossover has been occurring since autumn last year. Ashcroft picked it up first within MoE. Yes has gained about 1% per year since 2014 due to underlying demographic changes, just as people said would happen. If you ignore the month to month knee jerk volatility in response to headline events, the trend is clear as day.

    Hence the talk of a natural yes majority. Jeez, it's 6/10 Yes in the average office now!

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  3. But, but... The Herald said it shows that support for indy has slipped!

    But good to hear due scrutiny of what's underneath the headline figures


    But surely No has a majority (46>45)?

    Or are you saying that if converted to "excluding don't knows" the rounded percentages could be 50:50?

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    1. Exactly - based on the available information, the rounded figures with Don't Knows excluded could be either 49/51, or 50/50. Unless journalists have been given information that isn't in the datasets, they appear to have jumped to conclusions and are prematurely reporting it as 49/51.

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  4. Correct me if I am wrong but it seems 16 and 17 year olds weren't polled.

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    1. Yep. youngest age range 18-24

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    2. No, there's no definite information in the datasets one way or the other. I'm suspicious about it, but there's no way of telling at the moment. Pollsters (including YouGov) have previously used the 18-24 grouping in datasets for polls that included 16 and 17 year olds, so that doesn't tell us anything for certain.

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    3. The unweighted figures in the 4 age groups add up to 2,512.
      The total should presumably be 2,587 so where are the other 75?

      Ignoring that, and using the (rounded) data for each age group, you can calculate -
      Yes = 45.136%
      No = 45.69%

      That then means -
      Yes = 49.695%
      No = 50.305%

      A dead heat!

      Not a proof of anything, but suggests their overall results are consistent with what you get when you combine the four age groups.

      So where's the missing age group, or have they just labelled them wrongly?

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    4. You got that in while I was still typing James.

      What about the missing 75?

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  5. James

    My security system is warning of a tracker on your site, this may be benign but perhaps you should check

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    1. There's no way I can check. The only way it would be within my control would be if it's caused by something in the list of other blogs, which is possible but unlikely.

      (Or is it just complaining because I use Analytics?)

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    2. Ghostery logs 8 trackers, they are all Facebook, Google & Twitter related.

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  6. Excellent analysis as usual. We're going to get plenty more roller-coaster stuff before independence. That's why we need you, James.

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  7. Boris will not be giving it a thought. He has a country to run and getting trade deals. Our borders will be controlled from January 2021 and we will be out of the EU completely. The Scottish Nat si EU erse lickers will continue grovelling in normal fashion shaming Scotland.

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    1. I like grovelling to the EU. We need the EU to run Scotland if we leave the UK. The Scottish Nationalists do not want to run Scotland.

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  8. 2.8 million EU citizens have applied for settled status in the UK for after brexit. The fear games from the remainers have fallen on deaf ears. Onwards and upwards for Scotland and the UK. The Irish do not need to apply as they have special status. Scottish Nat sis are fooked big style.

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    1. Which part of Scotland do you inhabit?

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    2. Are you suggesting they didn't apply and instead found themselves deported, leaving their jobs, homes, kids, elderly dependents etc behind?

      The English gestapo didn't give them any choice.

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    3. I did not suggest anything I quoted the government's figures.

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  9. No wonder the BritNats have been going into overdrive. Pity that some independence supporters have taken the Britnat bait and started squabbling over issues that can wait till independence has been achieved. They've been played like a violin.

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  10. Could you possibly share a link to the actual poll. I have been trawling YouGov and the net in generally under multiple different search parameters and all I can find is the press articles referring to it and blogs.

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  11. 10 o'clock trawl. Bridge Street.

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