Support for independence soars to 50% in sensational Ipsos-Mori telephone poll

There was a time, in the run-up to the first indyref, when we used to dread the "Hi, I'm John MacKay" telephone polls conducted by Ipsos-Mori for STV - they were typically much worse for Yes than the online polls conducted by other firms (with the exception of YouGov).  Those days are long gone, though, and today brings word of an extraordinary STV/Ipsos-Mori poll that should finally lay to rest the myth beloved of the mainstream media that support for independence is falling.  It also raises genuine question marks over whether John Curtice was right to assume that the Yes surge in the recent BMG poll was most likely an illusion caused by sampling variation.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 50% (+2)
No 50% (-2)

Yes actually have a slender lead on the unrounded numbers, by 50.4% to 49.6%.  There's also a Yes lead even with rounding on the version of the figures that leave Don't Knows in : Yes 47%, No 46%, Don't Know/Refused 7%.  (It's the turnout filter that pushes Yes in front, though - without it, there's a small No advantage.)

This means all three of the most recent independence polls - from BMG, Panelbase and Ipsos-Mori respectively -  have shown some sort of swing to Yes.  In the case of Panelbase the change was not significant, but the fact that all three have shown movement in the same direction, and that two of the three have shown Yes support above the typical range of recent months, suggests that it's perfectly possible (albeit not certain) that we're looking at genuine progress for Yes as opposed to margin of error 'noise'.  If so, the breakthrough could scarcely be better-timed, with Nicola Sturgeon seemingly edging ever closer to making an announcement about a second independence referendum.  It'll be a tad difficult for the UK government to maintain the fiction that no-one in Scotland wants a referendum when two of the last three polls suggest that either 49% or 50% of the population would vote for independence itself.

Ipsos-Mori are unusual in choosing not to weight by past vote recall, and relying on demographic weightings only.  That means it's impossible to tell whether Yes are making more headway with anti-Brexit former No voters than has been the case in other recent polls.  There is, however, a supplementary question that asks whether an independent Scotland should remain fully inside the EU, or should retain "full access" to the single market from outside the EU, or should sever ties with Brussels completely.  Professor Curtice has leapt on the fact that "only" 48% of respondents support full EU membership, but a couple of points need to be made about that - it's actually an outright majority (52%) once Don't Knows are stripped out, and it's likely that the three-option format will have led some people without a strong view to gravitate instinctively towards the middle, 'compromise' option.  I strongly suspect that a straight Yes/No question on full EU membership would have produced a more decisive majority.

There's also a question that asks about independence in a slightly different way, by inviting respondents to rate themselves on a 1-10 scale, with 1 representing total commitment to independence, and 10 representing total opposition.  The outcome suggests that Yes support may be somewhat softer than No support, because 52% of respondents put themselves on the anti-independence half of the scale, and only 46% on the pro-independence half.  Having said that, those numbers aren't filtered for turnout, so can't be directly compared with the headline voting intention figures.

Intriguingly, the two parties whose voters are most split on independence are Labour and the Greens.  They're the reverse mirror image of each other, with people who plan to vote Labour in the local elections splitting 2-1 for a No vote, and prospective Green voters breaking 2-1 for Yes.  That suggests (incredibly) that Labour could have even further to fall if Kezia Dugdale doesn't temper her hardline ultra-unionist "no surrender to the SNP" rhetoric.  It also underscores that the Greens may be able to reach the parts that the SNP can't in some select wards in the local elections, and that SNP voters giving lower preference transfers to the Greens might just conceivably help to elect a few unlikely pro-independence councillors in No-friendly wards.

Here are the full voting intention numbers for the local elections -

SNP 46%
Conservatives 19%
Labour 17%
Greens 8%
Liberal Democrats 6%
UKIP 3%

For my money, that will be more than a little worrying for the Tories.  They've been getting a tad complacent of late, imagining that a second-place finish is already assured (to be fair I've tended to make that assumption as well) and setting their sights instead on a strong enough popular vote to generate acres of "blow for the SNP" headlines.  A sub-20 showing won't be anything like enough for that - and remember that the Tories are at a disadvantage in local elections, because their areas of traditional strength often prefer independent councillors.  If the above figures are close to the true state of public opinion, they could suggest that the Tories are in danger of remaining in third place - which, weirdly, would actually be quite a story.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS 

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 48.3%
No 51.7%

(The Poll of Polls is based on a rolling average of the most recent poll from each firm that has reported at least once within the last three months.  The firms included in the current sample are Panelbase, BMG and Ipsos-Mori.  The aggregate YouGov figures for August to December are excluded, because they don't really constitute a standalone poll.  The most recent proper YouGov poll was completed just over three months ago.)

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