SCOT goes POP!: 2020-10-11

Friday, October 16, 2020

The Scottish Tories suddenly have a Lib Dem problem

I asked earlier how on earth the SNP had managed to hold on to win the Ellon & District by-election when there were more than enough Lib Dem voters to see the Tories home on transfers. Well, the answer is very simple - here's how the Lib Dem votes transferred for the final count.

Conservatives 161

SNP 159

Non-transferable 165

Nobody could ever accuse the Lib Dem leadership of being equidistant between the Tories and the SNP, but it looks like their voters suddenly are. And if you think about it, that's perfectly logical, because Lib Dem voters are typically opposed to both independence and Brexit, so there's no longer any particular reason why the Tories would automatically be the more attractive option.

The Tories would appear to have now lost a major advantage in constituency tussles with the SNP, because tactical votes from Lib Dem supporters will probably be going in both directions. And arguably there's a warning here for the Lib Dems themselves - will their voters stay loyal if they train too much of their fire on the SNP and independence, and not enough on the Tories and Brexit?

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NEW CROWDFUNDER: On Saturday I launched a fundraiser for the next Scot Goes Pop poll on independence, which I intend to commission at some point between now and Christmas. If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.

SNP's victory in Ellon & District by-election is proof that the surge has reached Tory-friendly areas

I'm not entirely sure whether it was sensible for a local council by-election to have taken place yesterday, but it did, and it was in the sort of place where by-elections in recent years have routinely seen the Tories hold off any SNP challenge. The very different result this time demonstrates how much the political weather has changed.

Ellon & District by-election first preference result:

SNP 42.4% (+10.5)

Conservatives 41.7% (+0.8)

Liberal Democrats 10.2% (-9.5)

Labour 2.9% (-4.7)

Greens 2.8% (+2.8)

Technically this was an SNP 'hold', but the Tories had a very healthy lead in the popular vote in the ward last time around, so they could have 'gained' the seat even with a substantial swing against them. Indeed, they would have been expected to gain the seat even with the SNP having a slight lead on first preferences. It's slightly mysterious it didn't work out that way, because the Lib Dem vote was substantial enough to mean that unionist transfers should have got the Tories over the line handily. Is the unionist bloc vote breaking down?

Thursday, October 15, 2020

'Settled will'

I've been asked by two or three people whether the 58% Yes vote in yesterday's Ipsos-Mori poll has changed my view on whether 60% is unattainable. It actually hasn't, although let me be clear about what I mean by that. It's certainly not unthinkable that there could be the odd individual poll with a figure of 60% or higher, but I still think it's very unlikely that we'll consistently see that level of support over a sustained period. As things stand, there still hasn't been a single online poll showing a Yes vote higher than 55% - and that's significant, because the vast majority of polls are conducted online.

In a sense the whole 60% thing may now be academic, though. It was only ever a point of discussion because of the suspicion that the SNP were using an unattainable 'target figure' as an excuse for putting off an independence referendum indefinitely. That no longer seems to be a danger, because Keith Brown stated yesterday that independence is now the "settled will" of the Scottish people. Those were clearly very carefully chosen words, and strongly imply that the 52-58% we've seen in recent polls is 'enough' as far as the SNP leadership is concerned. (Although I'm not sure if Andrew Wilson was trying to push back against that when he described the people's will as "settling" rather than "settled".)

When John Smith famously described devolution as Scotland's settled will, he meant that support for a Scottish Parliament was astronomically high, that it hadn't changed for many years, and that there was therefore no need to hold another referendum to test public opinion. Ironically, none of those points apply to the current situation - it's a mere seven months since a poll last had No in the lead, so it can scarcely be said that public opinion is no longer subject to fluctuation or change. And I think we can safely assume that Nicola Sturgeon won't be using the Yes lead in the polls as a justification for declaring independence without a referendum. But however dubious the usage of the words "settled will" may be, it's still incredibly heartening to hear them being used.

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Is it nine in a row for Yes? Ten in a row?

Bloody hell, the BBC website is actually covering the Ipsos-Mori poll. So the answer to the question, how many Yes-majority polls does it take to get the BBC to report the story, is "about ten in a row".
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 14, 2020

It might be worth starting with a discussion of how many ''in a row" it actually is, because that's no longer such a straightforward question. The first port of call for many people will be Wikipedia's list of polls (if only because it's top of the search engine rankings), which suggests we've now had ten Yes majorities in a row - but that's including the Survation/Progress Scotland poll, which asked a "non-standard question". The snag is that it's only a few weeks since Wikipedia's inclusive policy towards non-standard questions stretched as far as Scotland in Union's notorious propaganda polls using the "Remain in the UK/Leave the UK" format. If those polls were still being included, we'd currently only be on three Yes-majority polls in a row, because believe it or not there was a poll as recently as mid-September that purported to show a majority for "remaining in the UK". For my money, the most logical approach is to only include polls that ask the standard, binary-choice independence question, and on that basis it's nine Yes majorities in a row.

The BBC website's unexpected acknowledgement of the Ipsos-Mori poll came in the form of an analysis piece by John Curtice, who surprised me somewhat in the angle he took. He suggested that we'd need further polls before knowing whether "the higher level of support for Yes" is just "random variation". I actually think it's highly unlikely that there has been a further recent increase in the Yes vote, but I don't think the 58% in the Ipsos-Mori poll is random variation either - it's almost certainly caused by methodology. If you look back over recent years, telephone polls by Ipsos-Mori have again and again stood out for producing better results for Yes than online polls conducted at around the same time. For example, the most recent Ipsos-Mori poll before yesterday was in the middle of last year's general election campaign, and showed an exact 50-50 split. Online polls during the campaign consistently had No ahead.

Incidentally, it may not be just the telephone data collection method that sets Ipsos-Mori apart - I believe I'm right in saying that they also only weight by demographics, and not by past vote recall. That probably makes it easier for Yes to poll well. The datasets show that the weighted sample for the new poll was made up of 398 people who recalled voting Yes in 2014, and only 375 people who recalled voting No. It might seem obvious that this undermines the credibility of the poll's results, but I'm not sure it's as simple as that - we're now more than six years on from the indyref, and pollsters who do weight by recalled vote are taking a big gamble that their respondents will accurately remember votes that were cast a very long time ago.

Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:

SNP 58%
Conservatives 19%
Labour 13%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:

SNP 47%
Conservatives 19%
Labour 13%
Greens 9%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Seats projection: SNP 73 (+10), Conservatives 22 (-9), Labour 15 (-9), Greens 10 (+4), Liberal Democrats 9 (+4)

Pro-independence parties 83 seats (+14), anti-independence parties 46 seats (-14)

Those are truly abysmal figures for both the Tories and Labour - the former are down in the teens, and the latter are barely even in the teens. It's hard to say which of the two parties should feel more chastened.

I have more analysis of the poll in The National - you can read it HERE.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2020

58% Yes: Writing is on the wall for the United Kingdom as support for indy hits record high in telephone poll

Since the independence referendum in 2014, there's been a general trend that telephone polling has produced better results for Yes than online polling - an exact reversal of what was the case before the referendum. Unfortunately the recent period of Yes majorities has coincided with a total absence of telephone polls, so although I did wonder aloud a few times whether the differential was continuing and a telephone poll might produce something over and above a Yes vote in the low-to-mid 50s, there was no way of knowing for sure. Luckily STV have now resumed their long-running series of telephone polls with Ipsos-Mori, and the result is not a disappointment.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos-Mori, 2nd-9th October 2020)

Yes 58% (+8)

No 42% (-8)

This is almost certainly the biggest lead for independence in any poll from any firm, ever. It's difficult to find records from the early days of devolution (when TNS polls sometimes showed a Yes lead), but 58% is undoubtedly the highest Yes vote in a published poll since independence became a serious proposition in 2011. The previous high watermark was 55%.

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Progress Scotland poll: By 3-1 margin, voters want the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government to have control over all decisions affecting the people of Scotland's lives

Well, the first thing to say about the latest batch of results from the Progress Scotland/Survation poll is that they include a question about an independent Scotland's currency that is very similar to the one I've been strongly urged to ask in my own forthcoming poll, so I may have been saved the trouble. Perhaps disappointingly, an absolute majority of respondents (54%) want to keep the pound in the long-term. Only 19% favour the most likely compromise of retaining the pound in the short-term and moving to a Scottish currency later on, and a mere 5% would want a Scottish currency straight away. Just 10% want to join the euro.

Another mildly disappointing result is that a slim plurality (40% to 38%) want the UK Government to retain control over foreign affairs and defence. On the face of it, that contradicts the desire of a clear majority in the poll for Scotland to become an independent country, although respondents may have just been answering in respect of what they think should happen if Scotland remains a devolved part of the UK.

The good results are, however, very good. By the decent margin of 45% to 34%, respondents say that independence would be beneficial for the Scottish economy in the long run - radically different from polling findings in the run-up to the 2014 indyref. An enormous majority of 62% to 18% say that all decisions affecting people in Scotland should be made by the Scottish Parliament and Government - that one should terrify unionists. By 61% to 22%, respondents feel that Scotland's relationship with the EU should be decided by the Scottish Parliament and Government. And the notion that independence would be more economically damaging than Brexit is rejected by the narrow plurality of 39% to 37%.

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Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Get Well Soon, Paul

I know we're all shocked to hear that Paul Kavanagh (Wee Ginger Dug) was taken ill yesterday, but it's really encouraging that he's conscious and talking. Paul is not only the jewel of the pro-indy blogosphere, he's also an incredibly kind and generous man, as many of us have discovered over the years. Here's wishing him the fullest and speediest possible recovery.

Progress Scotland poll: Humiliation for Boris Johnson as just 12% of the Scottish public say he has handled the pandemic well

Some more results from the bumper Progress Scotland/Survation poll have just been released, and they show that the Scottish Government is more highly regarded than the UK government on a number of counts, that the Scottish Government's handling of the pandemic is regarded more favourably than the UK Government's handling, and that Nicola Sturgeon is regarded as having performed far better than Boris Johnson during the crisis. Although these findings very much echo what has been reported in previous polls, it's nevertheless encouraging that the recent onslaught from unionist parties doesn't seem to have fundamentally changed public attitudes.

Agree or disagree that the Scottish/UK government is...?

'Authoritative'

UK Govt: Agree 41%, Disagree 34%
Scottish Govt: Agree 57%, Disagree 18%

'Responsive'

UK Govt: Agree 27%, Disagree 49%

Scottish Govt: Agree 59%, Disagree 22%

'Competent'

UK Govt: Agree 24%, Disagree 57%

Scottish Govt: Agree 54%, Disagree 26%

'Effective'

UK Govt: Agree 25%, Disagree 54%

Scottish Govt: Agree 55%, Disagree 26%

'Good at communicating with public'

UK Govt: Agree 23%, Disagree 60%

Scottish Govt: Agree 67%, Disagree 17%

'Empathetic'

UK Govt: Agree 20%, Disagree 54%

Scottish Govt: Agree 53%, Disagree 22%

Rating of Scottish/UK government's handling of the pandemic on 0-10 scale (0-4 bad, 6-10 good)

UK Govt: Good 16%, Bad 74%

Scottish Govt: Good 60%, Bad 29%

Rating of Nicola Sturgeon/Boris Johnson's handling of the pandemic on 0-10 scale (0-4 bad, 6-10 good)

Boris Johnson: Good 12%, Bad 79%

Nicola Sturgeon: Good 62%, Bad 29%

Perhaps the most striking finding in the whole poll is that no fewer than 39% of respondents give Boris Johnson a zero rating, and another 20% rate him at just 1 or 2. There's not a great deal of nuance about Scots' disdain for the Prime Minister. And the biggest mystery is that a plurality of respondents think the UK government is 'authoritative' - something that is totally out of kilter with the other results.

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Monday, October 12, 2020

Progress Scotland poll reveals that the public have noticed the Tory trashing of devolution, in spite of the media's best efforts

Over the last few weeks I've been wondering whether the issue of the Internal Market Bill has really cut through with the public, because the BBC in particular have failed to inform viewers that the legislation reverses large swathes of the devolution settlement. Newly released results from the Progress Scotland poll suggest that, to the extent that the public do have an awareness of what is going on, they're very angry, and also deeply sceptical about the UK government's claims. So that's good news as far as it goes - but the snag is that there are an awful lot of Don't Knows and neutrals. So the Beeb's vow of silence hasn't been entirely in vain.

The Bill will lead to 'scores of new powers' coming to the Scottish Parliament: 23%

The Bill will lead to a 'power grab' of responsibilities held by the Scottish Parliament: 33%

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The UK government will transfer all relevant powers from the EU to the Scottish Parliament and protect the devolution agreement: 22%

The UK government will not transfer relevant powers from the EU to the Scottish Parliament and will damage the devolution arrangement: 47%

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It is acceptable for the UK government to break the rules of international law if it thinks that it will lead to a better trade deal with the EU: 19%

It is unacceptable for the UK government to break the rules of international law even if it thinks it will lead to a better trade deal with the EU: 66%

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The Internal Market Bill will make me more likely to vote in favour of independence if there is another referendum: 23%

The Internal Market Bill will make me more likely to vote in favour of staying in the union if there is another referendum: 11%

The Internal Market Bill will make no difference to how I will vote if there is another referendum: 39%

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NEW CROWDFUNDER: Yesterday I launched a fundraiser for the next Scot Goes Pop poll on independence, which I intend to commission at some point between now and Christmas. If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.

Sunday, October 11, 2020

New Progress Scotland poll suggests a majority want independence - and an even bigger majority expect independence to happen

Progress Scotland's latest Survation poll on independence has just been released. As you may remember, these polls deliberately avoid asking the indy question in a binary way, instead asking for strength of opinion on a 0-10 scale. In the past (for reasons that have been speculated about at length) that's led to a somewhat less rosy picture for Yes than in the standard polls. So the new results should be seen in that context.

49% of respondents are somewhere on the pro-indy end of the scale (6-10), and 43% are somewhere on the anti-indy end (0-4). However, there is an exact 28-28 tie among those who are absolutely certain in their views, with the Yes advantage being owed to a healthy number of respondents rating themselves around 7 or 8 on the scale. According to the press release, the rough Yes lead with Don't Knows and neutrals excluded is 53-47 - exactly the same as in the new Savanta ComRes poll which used a binary question.

Respondents were also asked to predict the result of a new indyref. 55% thought there would be a Yes vote, and only 30% expected a No vote - very much in line with a similar question asked in a recent Panelbase/Business for Scotland poll. There's a theory in some quarters that these "wisdom of crowds" questions offer a better indication of what is likely to happen than standard polling, because people give an honest assessment based on what they hear from friends, family and colleagues. If that's right, it may be significant that 45% of people who voted No in 2014 now expect a Yes vote (if Don't Knows are excluded). On the other hand, it may just be that people expect a Yes vote because Yes have been ahead in recent polls.

Once again, the myth that the people of Scotland don't want a second indyref is exploded by this poll - 49% think there should be a referendum if pro-indy parties win a majority next year, and only 38% disagree.

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NEW CROWDFUNDER: Earlier today I launched a fundraiser for the next Scot Goes Pop poll on independence, which I intend to commission at some point between now and Christmas. If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.