Monday, April 6, 2015

SNP lead by a commanding 17% in deeply gratifying new YouGov poll

A new full-scale YouGov poll has appeared in today's Scottish Sun...

Scottish voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election (YouGov, 26th-31st March) :

SNP 46% (n/c)
Labour 29% (+2)
Conservatives 16% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 3% (-1)

In respect of the SNP lead, this looks like yet another 'no change' poll - the gap of 17% is firmly within the narrow range of 16-21% that YouGov have reported since the referendum.  To be fair, though, Labour's own share of 29% is higher than the 27% they've received in all four previous YouGov polls.  That could still easily be a meaningless margin-of-error effect, but if you were being ultra-generous, you might interpret it as Labour's vote strengthening very slightly, perhaps due to tactical voting from Tory supporters.  As you can see, there's no evidence at all that they're winning anyone back from the SNP.

The fieldwork dates mean this poll does not take us closer to finding out whether the smearing of Nicola Sturgeon has had any effect on the state of public opinion.  It's a bit hard to understand why the poll was held back for several days - OK, no-one could have predicted what happened in the interim (well, apart from the out of control civil service), but everyone knew the debate was coming up on April 2nd, so commissioning a poll before that and waiting to publish it afterwards seems a bit odd.

The independence question was also asked -

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Don't Knows not excluded) :

Yes 46% (+1)
No 48% (n/c)

I haven't seen the figures with Don't Knows excluded yet, but it looks like they'll most probably be Yes 49% (n/c), No 51% (n/c).

In real terms, this may well be the best showing for Yes in any YouGov poll since the referendum.  Although Yes were reported to be in an outright lead by the first two post-referendum polls, that was under a different methodology (ie. without weighting by recalled referendum vote).  If those polls had used the new methodology, it looks as if they would have shown Yes on roughly 48% with Don't Knows excluded.  So the new poll is a continuation of the well-established pattern of the Yes vote having increased markedly since the referendum, and it may even be that it has crept up still further since the start of this year.

Not that you'd be aware of that if you follow the Twitter account of good old Mike Smithson.  Naturally, he's pretending that the methodological change never happened, and that the Yes vote has slipped over the last few weeks.  Great to see Smithson spending Easter Monday doing what he does best - misleading the Westminster bubble about Scottish politics.  (By the way, he's also done what he does best by blocking me on Twitter since I last checked - I'm quite sure he'd block me from using the whole internet if he could.)

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While we await the appearance of the full YouGov datasets (although that may not be until tomorrow), here's another random photo.  I went on a long Easter walk yesterday, and saw plenty of wildlife, including lambs and rabbits.  But I wasn't expecting to see this in my own back garden when I got back -


Incidentally, what I also spotted on the way back was a couple of Yes posters in windows that have gone back up.  I'm 99% certain they haven't been there continuously since September.

25 comments:

  1. I notice the two Tory parties are swapping their votes back and forward.

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    Replies
    1. They can't both be Tories, given you won't work with one of them under any circumstances, but are constantly complaining that the other one won't work with you.

      So there has to be some difference. Unless you're just really really hate the colour blue or something.

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    2. They're both centre-right ('Tory'). Just Labour is less centre-right.

      http://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015

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    3. Quite simply, Anon 2:26, some Tories are even worse than others.
      Robert Llewellyn Tyler

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    4. Unfortunately as long as we remain in the UK we will always be forced to choose the lesser of two Tories.

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    5. My apologies, Anon.
      When i say Tory, i simply mean right wing, evil bastards.

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    6. If that is not the opening line to the post-May SNP/Labour negotiations, I will be sorely disappointed.

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  2. Might have been hoping to compare 'pre-debate' to 'post-debate', but when Nicola stormed debate they decided against the post debate poll?

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  3. James, any chance a chance of some analysis of the SNP voters? I.E age group, gender, socio-economic group?

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  4. YouGov doing a daily poll till election day?

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    Replies
    1. I don't know - have they made an announcement? They do five days a week as it is.

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    2. Yes I saw Kelner in an interview say they'd be doing polls seven days a week starting after the Easter break. Didn't mention Scottish polls.

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  5. wee jock poo-pong mcplopApril 6, 2015 at 5:31 PM

    What is the bird?

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    Replies
    1. Could be a female pheasant.

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    2. Yes, definitely a female pheasant.

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  6. James, even in Edinburgh Yes posters and stickers are still up, and have never been taken down.

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  7. If you include a 1% margin of error then we could say you are 100% sure the yes posters were not up the whole time :D

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  8. As a Lib Dem is Smithson not worried about his links to organised child abuse? M Senior of Political Racism actually defended C Smith just because he was a Liberal MP.

    As a senior Libdem supporter and former candidate it is well worth asking what did Smithson know and why (like Malcolm Bruce) did he do nothing?

    On that touchy subject. Labour ran Scotland top to bottom for decades. The favourite sporting institution of SLAB covered up industrial scale child abuse. It is stretching credulity to the point of non-existence to think that they're not just as guilty as the blue and yellow kiddie-fiddling tories.

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  9. Anonymous posters with a fascination for child abuse? Never a good sign

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  10. Populous has SNP: 45% Lab: 27% today, fieldwork 2-6 of April.

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    Replies
    1. Down-weighted modestly 71 to 65 (9.2%) while the total number of Scottish respondents was up-weighted modestly from 168 to 181.

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    2. Also, for what it's worth, highest ever (since I've been recording) SNP identifiers in the unweighted base.

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    3. No sign that MemoGate has had its desired effect so far.

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