YouGov poll shows familiar pattern: support for independence holds up within the normal range, but Humza Yousaf's personal approval rating drops further to a deeply worrying *minus 27*

There's a limit to what I can tell you about the new Scottish poll from YouGov, who are always pretty quick to get up the data tables from their GB-wide polls, but as far as I can see haven't done so with this poll yet. Some unionist Twitter accounts are reporting the independence results with Don't Knows excluded as Yes 45% (-2), No 55% (+2), which makes no sense because the previous YouGov poll had Yes on 46% and No on 54%.  So if the headline numbers are comfirmed, it's actually a statistically insignificant one point change, and very much within YouGov's normal range, who are now pretty much the most No-friendly active pollster.  That would be bang in line with other polling firms reporting that Yes support is holding up normally in spite of the SNP's travails. However, I'm not even going to take it as read that the 45-55 split is accurate until we hear that from YouGov - this could turn out to be yet another bogus back-of-the-envelope amateur recalculation.

Labour propagandist Blair McDougall, who famously finished third in East Renfrewshire in 2017 after telling Tory voters they had to vote for him because it was a "two horse race" between himself and the SNP, is today saying that it's "still 45-55", as if polling has remained absolutely steady for the last nine years.  Embarrassingly for him, it turns out that YouGov's fieldwork is actually less recent than the Redfield & Wilton poll showing the gap had closed to Yes 48%, No 52%. In any case, the vast majority of polls in 2023 have shown Yes higher than 45%, and of course no fewer than five of those polls have shown an outright Yes lead.

I'm also concerned to see the STV news website reporting the Yes vote in the poll as being the support for "separation", which is pejorative language that an Ofcom-regulated broadcaster should not be using. They would never dream of describing the No vote as being for "London rule" or "colonialism", so there's no reason for them to apply different rules for the Yes vote.  It would be interesting to know whether they lifted the word direct from a press release, or whether the apparent political bias is in-house.

One thing that doesn't seem to be in dispute about the poll is that Humza Yousaf's net personal approval rating now stands at minus 27, which is a further slight worsening from the minus 25 recorded in April when his leadership was in its infancy.  The number of Don't Knows has dropped significantly since then, which suggests that as more people have seen him and made up their minds about him, they've come to the same negative conclusion as the people who already had a view about him before he became leader.  There's no point in anyone sticking their heads in the sand about this - the severe personal unpopularity of Yousaf represents a crisis for the SNP that must be resolved before the general election.

So far there's no sign of Holyrood and Westminster voting intention numbers, but I'd be very surprised if the poll didn't ask those questions.  I wouldn't be totally startled to see the SNP slip into second place - at the very least it's going to be tight.

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