Support for independence surges to 49% as the roof caves in on Theresa May's "Scotland will have to lump it" doctrine

After a six or seven month spell during which polls across all firms have stubbornly refused to put support for independence any higher than 47%, we may at last have our breakthrough moment in the latest BMG poll for the Herald.  I say "may", because there's always a chance that an individual poll showing a novel trend could turn out to be a freak result.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 49% (+3.5)
No 51% (-3.5)

Note : I doubt if the swing is exactly 3.5% - BMG seem to round their results to the nearest 0.5%.

This is comfortably the best showing for Yes since the flurry of three polls (two from Survation, one from Panelbase) in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum which all reported an outright Yes lead.  Although tonight's poll still shows a narrow lead for No, it should be noted that a 49-51 split is a genuine 'statistical tie' - meaning that even if the methodology is completely sound (a very big if in this day and age), it's impossible to tell which side is really in the lead due to the standard margin of error.

I know some people will be thinking to themselves "this is very similar to the polls we saw on the eve of the referendum in 2014, and look what happened then".  The good news is that the similarity is likely to be highly misleading.  There was plainly a small pro-Yes bias in the pre-referendum polling in 2014 which has since been tackled by the introduction of weighting by recalled referendum vote.  Although the datasets are not yet out for tonight's poll, it's clear that in the last BMG poll there must have been a very sharp downweighting of the Yes vote due to that factor, because in the unweighted sample there were actually more people who recalled voting Yes in 2014 than who recalled voting No.  If anything even close to the same pattern has been seen in the new poll, the likelihood is that Yes would have been in the lead without weighting by recalled indyref vote, meaning that in 'real terms' the numbers we're seeing now are better than the 49% showings for Yes in September 2014.

The Herald's write-up of the poll ascribes the boost for Yes to Theresa May's speech confirming that Britain will leave the single market, and that by extension Scotland will be dragged out against its will.  The problem with that theory is that May's speech was delivered on 17th January, and the most recent Panelbase poll - which failed to detect any Yes surge - was entirely conducted after that, between the 20th and the 26th.  If the Yes surge is real and not an illusion caused by sampling variation, the explanation is probably a little more complicated.  It's possible that the Supreme Court ruling on the 24th played a part, because most of the Panelbase fieldwork would have been conducted before that, and all of BMG's fieldwork was conducted afterwards (between the 26th and 31st).  It may also be that as the dust has settled from May's speech, a sense of hopelessness has gradually set in about the chances of Scotland's interests being protected inside the UK.  Quite honestly, it would be preferable if the apparent change in public opinion isn't caused by a shocked reaction to a specific speech, because that would mean it's less likely to be quickly reversed as the shock subsides.

As you may remember, the BMG/Herald series of polls have developed something of a reputation for asking biased questions.  The first poll in the autumn used just about the most ludicrous "question on independence" that I can ever recall - so ludicrous, in fact, that the poll should not properly have been considered to be an independence poll at all, although that didn't stop the mainstream media reporting it as if it was.  The second poll a month ago reverted to the standard question on independence, but unfortunately that return to good sense was spoiled by a mind-bogglingly daft supplementary question that asked whether people wanted a referendum in 2017 - in spite of the fact that nobody in the SNP was talking about a referendum this year.  The sole purpose of that question seemed to be to produce responses that could be spun as "Scotland doesn't want a referendum".  Nicola Sturgeon has since explicitly ruled out a 2017 indyref, leaving BMG with no choice but to change their question wording.  We won't know what the exact question was until the datasets are published, but given BMG's dodgy past form on this, we should be extremely cautious about the Herald's claim that there is a 56% to 44% majority against holding a referendum "before Britain leaves the EU".  When we see the question wording, I wouldn't be totally surprised if it turns out to be narrower than we've been led to believe.  We already know from Panelbase's multi-option question that there are plenty of people who don't want an indyref while Brexit negotiations are ongoing, but who nevertheless do want an indyref as soon as those negotiations are over, "in about two years".  I suspect BMG's findings won't contradict that, but we'll see.

And a rather amusing point : when Panelbase changed their wording to ask people if they wanted a referendum within "one or two years" rather than "two or three", the media falsely reported the findings as if they were directly comparable to the previous poll, thus producing the illusion of a drop in support for an early indyref.  If our journalists were being consistent about things, they would similarly ignore BMG's change of wording, and report this poll as if it shows a huge 5.5% swing in favour of an early indyref - because the 38.5% who wanted a 2017 referendum in last month's poll has "increased" to 44% support for an early referendum in this poll.  I somehow suspect it won't be reported in that way, though!

Whether he's doing it wittingly or unwittingly, the BMG spokesman quoted in the Herald piece is parrotting inaccurate Tory propaganda when he says that this poll still falls short of Nicola Sturgeon's "red lines" of "clear and consistent support".  (Notice how Tory MSP Adam Tomkins uses similar language later in the article.)  In fact, Ms Sturgeon set no such "red lines" for calling a referendum.  In her statements between September 2014 and June 2016, she made clear that a second indyref could be triggered by a sustained increase in support for independence OR by a material change in circumstances such as Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will.  The necessary conditions have therefore already been met.

The reality is, though, that the vast majority of polls conducted since 23rd June last year have continued to show support for independence that is higher than in the 2014 referendum - so arguably there has been a sustained increase in support anyway.

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