Poll crowdfunder update II

The Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser is moving tantalisingly close to reaching its target figure of £7500 - as of 7.30 this morning, £6290 has been raised.  Thank you to everyone who has donated so far, or shared the link on social media.

Thanks also for the suggestions for poll questions.  I think it might be helpful, though, if I'm more specific about the types of questions I'm looking for.  As this will be an immediate post-Brexit poll, I think it makes sense for most (not all, but most) of the questions to be directly related to Brexit - for example, the rights that people have lost now that they are no longer European citizens.  Do they want those rights back?  Or do they feel, as Labour and (extraordinarily) the Liberal Democrats apparently do, that we should now accept Brexit and move on?

I've also got one left-field, non-Brexit question that I hope to ask if there's enough room.  In addition, I know there's always demand for a "Plan B" question, and I'm not totally opposed to that idea, but only if there's a way of asking it that adds some value.  Remember that all three polls I've run so far have had a Plan B question - the first asked about legislating for an independence referendum without a Section 30 order and allowing the courts to decide whether it can go ahead, the second asked about using a scheduled election to double as an indyref, and the third asked about the general principle of whether there should be some sort of Plan B if London keeps saying no.  All three questions produced positive results, so there's no point in duplicating them.  Is there a possible question that is sufficiently different to be worth asking?  Some of you want a question specifically about whether this year's Holyrood election should be used as a plebiscitary election - but there are two potential problems with that.  One is that the SNP leadership have clearly already decided not to go down that road, and even the best poll result is unlikely to change their minds.  The other problem is that I suspect that we wouldn't get a positive result anyway, because people would think we'd be jumping the fences too quickly.

To be honest, I'm still attracted to tacking on a question about whether Douglas Ross should give up refereeing in order to "get on with the day job", so to speak.  When I floated that idea last time, there was a very mixed reaction, and Craig Murray in particular thought it would demean the whole exercise of the poll.  Frivolous question though it may be, I do think it could prove extremely embarrassing for Ross - however, I suspect I'll probably let it go again in favour of more important questions.  

Click here to visit the fundraiser page.

Crowdfunder Update

The response to the fundraiser so far has been nothing short of incredible - after less than 48 hours, £5367 of the £7500 target figure has already been raised.  I'm grateful to Paul Kavanagh and The National for helping to publicise it - in fact the running total jumped from £2000 to £3000 within just one hour of The National's article appearing.

Hopefully we can keep the tempo up, but in the meantime feel free to suggest questions for the poll, because I might be able to get something underway early next week.  Unfortunately I've had to switch pre-moderation back on, due to our tiresome troll turning up again after a long gap.  But I'll approve comments as soon as I can.  

Click here to visit the fundraiser page.

CROWDFUNDER: A new opinion poll to test support for independence now that the Tories' Hard Brexit has become a cold reality

Click here to go straight to the fundraising page. 

Hi, I'm James Kelly, and I write the pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop, which has a particular emphasis on opinion poll analysis. Over the course of 2020, I commissioned three Panelbase polls with your help. All three showed pro-independence majorities, and they were all landmark results in their own ways - the one at the start of the year put Yes on 52% for the first time since the summer of 2016, the one in June was the first to show that the events of the pandemic had pushed Yes back into the lead, and the one in November saw Yes soar to an all-time high in Panelbase polls of 56%. 

The time is now ripe for another poll. After four and a half years, the terms of Brexit are finally known and will become a harsh reality within just hours. Extraordinarily, and without a shred of evidence, the Conservatives are claiming that Boris Johnson's last gasp, minimalistic trade deal is some sort of monumental setback for the independence movement. They also seem to believe that the public have been successfully hoodwinked into believing that the SNP "voted for No Deal" - when in fact it was only the Conservatives themselves that put us all at severe risk of a catastrophic No Deal outcome. Who knows, perhaps the public are reacting in the way that the Tories want them to react - but that seems highly unlikely somehow, and they should probably be allowed to speak for themselves. 

As before, if the crowdfunder is successful, I will commission an opinion poll from a firm affiliated to the British Polling Council. It will ask the standard independence question, ie. 'Should Scotland be an independent country?', plus a number of supplementary questions of interest to the Yes movement. I'll ask for your suggestions before deciding on the final list of questions. Bear in mind that there's never any guarantee that we'll get the results that we want - but anything is better than unionist parties presuming to speak for the people of Scotland at such a critical juncture in our national story. 

Target figure: I've set a slightly higher target figure of £7500 this time - not because the poll is likely to cost any more than the previous ones, but simply to give us a head start for the spring. It would probably make sense to commission one more poll during the Holyrood campaign proper. 

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