This will shock you, but it turns out the Express weren't telling the truth about that BMG poll yesterday

So you may have seen claims in the Express yesterday - and repeated on TV by Ruth Davidson - that a new BMG poll had found a 2-1 majority against an independence referendum taking place "before 2019" (after Don't Knows were excluded), that this marked a "sharp" decline in support for a referendum since January, and that this sudden "change" was proof of "referendum fatigue" setting in.  If so, you'll now undoubtedly faint with amazement at the discovery that all three of those claims were untrue.

It was always obvious that some sort of leading question must have been asked, because a) the results weren't easily reconcilable with other extremely recent polls, and b) the new poll was commissioned by an "Edinburgh-based Brexit campaigner" with a very open anti-independence and anti-SNP agenda.  As it turns out, though, the date 2019 wasn't even mentioned in the question, so that part of the reporting was a complete and utter lie.  This is what was actually asked -

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? "A referendum on Scottish independence should not be triggered until the UK & EU have completed their Brexit negotiations"

The plural in the word "statements" may look odd at first glance, but that indicates other questions were asked that haven't been published yet (and perhaps never will be if they produced less convenient answers for Mr Brexit of Edinburgh).

As you can see, the statement presented to respondents could hardly be more leading.  It's deliberately designed to be extremely easy for supporters of a referendum (and indeed supporters of independence itself) to agree with, because the word "until" implicitly accepts that a referendum is definitely coming at some point - although of course you would never have guessed that from the reporting yesterday.  It doesn't mention a date, and therefore will have left supporters of a referendum feeling that it's not necessarily suggesting a postponement of much length.  And most importantly of all, it's framed in the negative (ie. "should not") which means that supporters of a referendum are being challenged to actively disagree with a statement that's falling over itself to sound reasonable and modest in its aspirations.  If respondents had been warned that their agreement with the statement would be reported as outright opposition to a referendum, I guarantee you that the results would have been totally different.

The question wording is also radically different from the one BMG asked in January, which was as follows -

"In 2014 there was an Independence Referendum in Scotland. In your opinion, should there be another Independence Referendum held prior to Brexit negotiations being concluded between the UK and the EU?"

As you'll have noted, on that occasion respondents were asked a straight question, rather than being challenged to disagree with a negative statement. The results of the two polls are therefore not comparable, and the claim in the Express that there has been a "sharp fall" in support for an independence referendum since January is utter garbage.

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