It's just our flippin' luck that the smearing of Nicola Sturgeon occurred at the start of the Easter weekend, which was the only point between early January and the general election when we'd have to wait several days for proper polling data to come through. Or, as a Labour supporter put it on Twitter last night -
"YouGov, ComRes et al. I HAVE GONE 3 DAYS WITHOUT A POLL. JESUS DID NOT DIE FOR THIS."
Quite so. We do, however, finally have a second Scottish subsample from a GB-wide poll that was conducted partly after "Frenchgate". Populus' fieldwork started on April 2nd (the day of the leaders' debate) and finished yesterday, and the subsample shows : SNP 45%, Labour 27%, Conservatives 14%, Liberal Democrats 11%, UKIP 2%, Greens 1%.
Those numbers are entirely typical of what Populus have been showing since their big methodological change at the start of the year. The YouGov subsample conducted on Friday and Saturday also showed entirely normal results. So as of yet we have no reason whatever to suppose that the SNP's position has been damaged in any way, although to say that with real confidence we'll need a few subsamples that were conducted wholly after the smearing commenced, or more ideally, a bang-up-to-date full-scale Scottish poll.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-defector-who-wasnt/
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't already seen this have you any thoughts on this article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/no-really-snp-are-going-win-least-50-scotland-s-59-seats
It seems to me that many people are missing the key point about UNS. It is a simple, easily applied approximation which gives quite good results as long as the swings involved are no more than a few percentage points. The larger the swings, the less useful it is. UNS does not allow for the fact that generally a party which is losing support will lose the most votes in those constituencies where it was previously strongest, while a party which is gaining support will gain most votes in those constituencies where previously it was weakest.
Deletehttps://lescunningham.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/a-happy-new-year/
Lib Dem 11%? Eh?
ReplyDeleteIt's a subsample. The range of potential results is bigger - 11% is at the higher end of the Lib Dems' normal range.
DeleteUKIP got 13% in a yougov subsample a couple of weeks ago, although that was a weird week for that particular polling company.
DeleteAt conference SNP spoke of a majority of SNP MPs going to WM. By the arithmetic I learned in school that would be from 30 up.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the MSM will regard anything other than a full house as "a blow for Sturgeon" or "a devatating blow for Sturgeon"
Sadly for them nobody will give a shit about the unionist media's spin because we will have rocketed our representation up regardless and have already consolidated and utilised much of the astonishing rise in our membership to use in every future election from now on.
Delete" So as of yet we have no reason whatever to suppose that the SNP's position has been damaged in any way"
ReplyDeleteSNP membership is now well over 105,000 while the campaigning on the ground over the easter period produced some staggering turnouts. I'm talking even busier than peak Indyref in a few places. Though obviously that was primarily because it was a holiday there are still a good number more joining in who hae already commited to keep helping with canvassing. leafleting, stalls, SNP shops etc.
We're basically getting down to the final campaigning period and there is a hugely encouraging amount of activity ramping up as more and more people turn their attention to the general election. I keep getting told they would prefer to actually do something to help out rather than spending the next five years regretting they didn't. That and those who watched the first Indyref result unfold and decided "never again" to just sitting back and watching helplessly from the sidelines.
I see the New Statesman's May2015 site is sticking its neck out and projecting 50+ seats for the SNP. Seems quite bold at this stage in the game.
ReplyDeleteGreat work James and co.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for May.