Landmark Panelbase poll finds 50% of public demand a second independence referendum within just THREE YEARS

You may remember that way back in the mists of the time (otherwise known as a couple of months ago), the unionist press were beside themselves with excitement about a YouGov poll that suggested for the first time that support for independence might have fallen fractionally below the 45% achieved in the September 2014 referendum.  However, the actual drop in Yes support from the previous poll was small, and was potentially consistent with meaningless statistical 'noise' caused by normal sampling variation.  So that meant we had to wait for more polls before we could judge whether the shift in opinion was real or illusory.  Unfortunately, we've been stuck in polling Antarctica since then - all we've really had is a mildly encouraging BMG poll showing a very slight increase in support for Yes, but that wasn't reliable because BMG had radically (and rightly) changed their question since their previous poll.  So today's Panelbase poll is the first solid piece of information since YouGov, but unfortunately it hasn't really cleared the mists much.  It does show a trivial 1% decrease in Yes support since Panelbase last reported several months ago, but crucially, it differs from YouGov in continuing to show a Yes vote that is higher than in the 2014 referendum. 

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 46%
No 54%

So the jury is still very much out - there's still no convincing evidence of a recent drop in support for independence.  There are basically two plausible possibilities - either there has been a very small swing to No, or there has been no change at all.

In any case, given that we seem to be at least eighteen months away from a referendum, it's arguably not terribly important which side holds the lead at the moment - what matters is that we have an extremely close and competitive race that is there to be won.  The more interesting question in the poll is perhaps the one on the principle of holding an early referendum...

Want a second independence referendum within two or three years?

Yes 50%
No 50%

The 'Yes' figure is an aggregate of support for two very similar options - 27% of respondents want the referendum "in the next two or three years" as Brexit negotiations are still ongoing, while a further 23% of respondents want the referendum to be held "in about two or three years" after the negotiations have finished.  The bottom line is that half the population want a referendum within a maximum of three years.  You'll probably already have seen unionist politicians and journalists misrepresent the poll by concentrating solely on the 27% figure, and giving the impression that the other 73% don't want an early referendum.  "Deliberately misleading" is the most charitable way of describing that, but it's basically an outright and extremely cynical falsehood.

Incidentally, the Panelbase datasets aren't out yet, so I've taken the above figures from the What Scotland Thinks website.  I gather from observing a few exchanges on Twitter that there are slightly contradictory numbers doing the rounds - some people are saying that opposition to an early referendum stands at 51%, not 50%.  Doesn't make a huge amount of difference one way or the other, though - at worst, we're talking about a 49/51 split, which is comfortably within the margin of error.

Panelbase also asked a few questions about attitudes to Europe.  Support for Britain remaining within the European Union is near-enough identical to the result of the referendum in June, with 61% saying they would vote Remain in a repeat referendum, and 39% saying they would vote Leave.  Those figures may not seem hugely surprising, but it's certainly important for the independence movement that there is no sign of Scotland reconciling itself to the UK-wide referendum result, which is something that potentially could have happened with the helpful 'encouragement' of the London-based broadcast media.  Admittedly, another logical possibility was a widespread outbreak of buyers' remorse among the minority who voted Leave as the horrors of Brexit became ever-more apparent, and that doesn't seem to have happened either.

On the related but somewhat different question of whether an independent Scotland should apply to join the EU, the level of pro-European sentiment is much the same.  I can't find the figures with neutrals excluded, but my rough calculation suggest they must be in the region of 61% to 39% in favour of EU membership.  This handily gives the lie to David Mundell's very, very peculiar claim that Scottish voters only intended to vote in favour of Britain remaining within the EU, and didn't necessarily give a monkey's about whether Scotland did.

There is significant (albeit not overwhelming) concern about the impact of Brexit on the Scottish economy - 41% think the effect will be negative, and only 21% think it will be positive.  The remainder either don't have an opinion or think the effect will be neutral.

There is a narrow plurality (40% to 37%) in favour of EU citizens having the automatic right to live and work in Scotland "after the UK leaves the EU".  In spite of that being a positive result for the Yes/Remain movement, Professor John Curtice is reading exaggerated significance into the fact that the majority isn't much bigger.  For my money, though, the question asked was far from ideal - many people will simply have been answering it on the logical basis of "free movement will obviously end in Scotland when it ends in Britain".  It would have been better if respondents had been asked in a much clearer way about whether special arrangements should be made for Scotland to allow free movement to continue here, and only here, after Brexit.

Respondents were apparently extremely sceptical about whether the UK government will abide by its obligations under the Sewel Convention, which is supposed to prevent powers being stripped from the Scottish Parliament without its consent.  A mere 29% expect Scotland to have more control over its own laws after Brexit, which in theory should happen automatically under the terms of the Scotland Act, as long as the Sewel Convention is adhered to.  Recent statements from both Theresa May and David Davis suggest that the public's suspicions about their intentions may indeed be fully justified.  (By the way, John Curtice seems to be missing the point on this subject - he interprets the poll as showing that the public do not share the SNP's concerns that Scotland will have less control over its own laws than it currently does as a result of Brexit.  The actual concern is that the powers being repatriated from Brussels will be grabbed by Westminster, when in many cases they should go direct to Holyrood under the law as it stands.)

A final thought : incredibly, there are still unionist trolls on Twitter who are trying to paint Northumberland-based Panelbase as some kind of Scottish nationalist front organisation, and one that always produces much better results for Yes than any other firm.  (The claim today being that if even Panelbase have Yes on "only" 46%, the situation must be grim indeed.)  I think these people must be permanently stuck in a 2013 timewarp, because by the end of the 2014 referendum campaign Panelbase's figures were actually fairly typical for the polling industry as a whole, and unlike ICM and YouGov they didn't produce a late poll putting Yes in the lead.

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UPDATE (Tuesday morning) : As mentioned above, I wrote this post before Panelbase released their datasets, so I was having to rely on John Curtice's What Scotland Thinks website for information about the poll.  Now that the datasets are out, it turns out that there were some inaccuracies on What Scotland Thinks.  Most importantly, it turns out that half of the public want an indyref within just TWO years, not three.  You can read an update HERE.

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