Monday, January 18, 2021

Sigh. No, the Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll does not mean that Nicola Sturgeon has a "man problem".

There's a rather, for want of a better word, daft post on Wings Over Scotland tonight (ironically tagged with the word "psephology"!) which tries to paint the finding in the new Scot Goes Pop poll that women back Yes by 55% to 45% as some kind of bad news story, on the basis that it must somehow mean that Nicola Sturgeon has a "man problem".  It's true that I mentioned in my own post that men break for No in the poll by 53% to 47% and that I didn't offer any further comment on that - clearly I should always provide footnotes for the benefit of passing numpties.  Allow me to explain.

As a general rule, any subsample, even a subsample comprising half of a poll's respondents, is not going to be anything like as reliable as the full poll.  The full sample will be correctly weighted to demographic and political target numbers, but that isn't necessarily going to be the case for every individual subgroup, so you'd expect a degree of random fluctuation among those.  A No lead among men in an individual poll shouldn't, therefore, be treated as gospel.  Stuart would have more of a point if a succession of polls had repeatedly shown the same thing about male voters, but as he may or may not know (has he bothered to check?), that isn't the case at all.  In fact, this should be pretty obvious even just from a common sense point of view.  It would have been extremely improbable for Yes to have ever built up such a sustained lead if Nicola Sturgeon had been repelling male voters while she had been attracting female voters - the two trends would have cancelled each other out and No would have stayed in the lead.  In the real world, the general picture across most polls is that men have remained pro-Yes while women have been converted to independence in significant numbers.  The Survation poll doesn't disprove that or establish a new trend - the figures for men are probably just caused by meaningless sampling variation.

When I pointed out a couple of weeks ago that Stuart was actively campaigning to bring Nicola Sturgeon down, he angrily denied it, and yet here we have a post that paints the 19th Yes majority poll in a row as bad news, and then attempts to 'blame' Ms Sturgeon for it!  And all on the basis of a very silly false premise.

It's getting almost comical now.

23 comments:

  1. ASD ADHD- He ticks the boxes? A LOT of folk with those conditions are heavily into gaming. I feel their online personas' bravery crosses over into real life! lol He has gotten VERY personal re NS & I've yet to see her name on any document that went between the major players in the Harassment of AS campaign? This 'I know more than I'm telling' shite is wearisome & immature too! Docs show Hynds was 1 who introduced the past minsters thing in 2017. Yet certain folk are STILL saying it was NS & she signed off on it. Yet AS says it was not recorded or adopted...and look from Dangerfields' blog that that bit was only in a draft version, ent to the complainers for their perusal. there are 2 versions of that Draft & I wonder if NS was given the other one..if saw it at all?

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    1. That may be true. She still misled Parliament, and it's going to take some very clever explanation to stop the Committee or the other investigation from stating that pretty plainly. And even if everything else was someone else's fault, she should still have asked for Evans' resignation after such a colossal, potentially criminal catastrophe around the Judicial Review. She should also have banged a lot of heads together to ensure the SG response to the inquiry didn't look exactly like a massive cover-up.

      Instead, she stood firmly behind Evans, allowed further obfuscation, and has continued to mislead and deflect on every aspect of the whole affair she's been asked about.

      Maybe Campbell does know more than he can say, and maybe it is damning. None of us will know until and unless that evidence comes to light. In the meantime though, we have to grow up and acknowledge that a major crisis is very likely to hit the FM in a matter of weeks. Denial of that reality isn't going to help us deal with it if and when it happens. There's something very, very wrong with the Scottish Government over all of this.

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    2. Erm Sturgeon didn't recruit Evans, the UK civil service did. Sturgeon isn't Evans' boss. Sturgeon just got to pick 1 out of 3 unionists proposed by whitehall.

      Scottish civil servants report ultimately to Whitehall, not to ministers. They serve ministers, but work for the civil service.

      Think of it as Sturgeon et al. staying in Hotel Holyrood once elected. They get the services of all the staff in the hotel for the duration of their stay, from policy drafting to PAs to cooks. However, MSPs are guests, not bosses. The boss of all the civil servants is Simon Case.

      https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/nicola-sturgeon-appoints-leslie-evans-as-new-scottish-government-permanent-secretary

      It is a privilege for me [Leslie Evans] to undertake this role, following Sir Peter, who is leaving the organisation in such good heart. I’m very much looking forward to working closely with my [UK] civil service colleagues, our partners in the public, third and private sectors, and the UK government, to meet the challenges and realise the opportunities that lie ahead for Scotland,” she said.

      If staff at Hotel Holyrood have a harassment claim about minsters, they go to Leslie Evans and not to Sturgeon as Sturgeon is a minister. Just the same as hotel staff go to the hotel boss, not senior guests, if they have such a complaint.

      If Campbell knows something key and he's withholding it from police, he's a criminal.

      Certainly, he's no hero if he's not prepared to risk jail for Scotland. If he thinks his own freedom is worth more than Scotland's, he will be remembered for that; a man that put himself before his supposed country.

      And what did she mislead parliament about? She told them she first learned about the allegations in full from Salmond himself at her home.

      So what if Aberdein alleged there was allegations a few days before? Was she supposed to take the word of an ex-employee that lost his job when she took over or wait until she heard it straight from her long term friend and mentor's mouth. If I were her, I would want to see Salmond and look him in the eye before I was no longer allowed to speak with him as the investigation took its course. It's only human.

      If people think this happened differently, pray tell what they think Salmond and her discussed?

      Certainly, if Sturgeon has set Salmond up, she would known about the allegations without Aberdein needing to tell her and she would have refused to met him or Salmond. Why meet them if she knew already and was planning to get salmond sent down?

      By meeting Salmond as a friend and mentor, she has put herself in trouble.

      I await plausible explanations other than this for what happened, because as things stand, the private meeting should convince anyone there is no conspiracy, even if Salmond and her did break the code somewhat by meeting.

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    3. You people are *seriously* crazy.

      Tell you what, big brave man - drop me an email, I'll tell you what I know, then YOU can publish it and YOU can go to jail "for Scotland".

      Deal?

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    4. Smearer Skier there you are just get the inf

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  2. A man on a mission indeed. His disciples are now to be found infesting every site with the word of the Messiah.

    When I watch the footage of the Capitol Hill Trump mob....Wings followers spring to mind

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    1. The Scottish version - "I'm with Nicola "

      The USA version - I'm with Trump

      Don't be to hard on yourself Julia lots of people get fooled by populist leaders.

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    2. Spend that King's Shilling wisely Cubby.

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  3. i havent been on wings for ages as its so anti independence these days.
    try telling stu that though and you get banned apparently.
    if ever there was a more obvious case of the mi6/establishment having turned /blackmailed him i don't know but from being an entertaining and informative site it has descended into an anti independence rant focused by his masters on nicola for supposed maximum effect. very sad but i suppose he is feeling too much heat from somewhere
    i remember once someone asking him if he still supported indepence and he ranted and swore and ranted some more, but didnt actually answer the question, just talked about his previous position which of course wasnt the question

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  4. Wings blog directly persecuting salmond now. I mean if the meeting was dodgy, then this (slight adjustment) applies:

    The first crucial element of this cover-up was for the most senior of former government politicians (and a current privy councilor) to arrange a meeting to discuss sensitive government business at the home of the current first minster, seemingly deliberately doing so with the express intent of excluding civil servants from documenting this meeting and then not reporting the encounter to civil servants in good time. I believe this is confirmed by existing information in the public domain.

    Or, Salmond arranged the meeting to discuss the private party business aspect, and once that was done, the meeting was terminated to avoid a conflict of interest.

    Sturgeon doesn't order Salmond around and he knows the rules which still apply to him. He arranged the meeting at her house as much as she did.

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    1. I remember when unionists were saying this meeting was dodgy because Salmond arranged it to try and get himself off the hook by asking a favour of Sturgeon. Now that he was cleared on all charges, the meeting has become Sturgeon forcing Salmond at gun point to meet her without civil servants present so she can reveal her dastardly plan to have him jailed and laugh in his face. Or something.

      I suspect Salmond came to see her and said 'These are the allegations I'm facing. I am going to have to resign from the party and I'll fight them. I am innocent and you know it.'. Sturgeon replies 'Yes, and you know that I cannot help you; I have to stay out of the process and not do anything that the press/parliament could construe as trying to get you off the hook. We can't talk about this more Alex as it's government business; you know this.'. Salmond replies 'Yes, I understand'.

      Or maybe some conspiracy theorists want to tell us what was said without sounding like Q Anon?

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    2. Smearer Skier howling at the moon and stamping his spear on the ground. Batshit crazy..

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  5. I thought the main thrust of his post was the 'Nicola's man problem' headline resulting in counterpoint to the 'Alex's women problem' from 2014. Obviously the news won't publish any such thing about Nicola putting in stark contrast the difference in treatment about NS/AS and sexual equality.

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    1. And the main thrust of this post is that there is no evidence that "Sturgeon's man problem" actually exists. I thought that was pretty clear.

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    2. I agree with that, but surely WoS's point was that Salmond's women problem also never existed. I read the post as an attack on that fallacy, not on NS.

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  6. I think this latest WOS nonsense highlights the stark contrast between you, applying your polling expertise to the poll results and Campbell applying his agenda. Still waiting for Campbell’s smoking gun in the whole NS saga. We are constantly told there is more to come. Where is it?

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    1. ...filed beside Trumps evidence on election fraud. The same principle...the master knows...that should be enough for a true follower.

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    2. Julia try reading the papers published by the Inquiry on their website. I doubt you have or will look at them because you clearly do not have the mental capacity to read, understand or analyse anything beyond the Daily Record.

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  7. Ah but. Has the Rev factored in the the proportion of trans ex males and ex females moving between the yes and no camps in his somewhat deranged war on personal identity confusing the stats.

    Before anyone queries my own opinion on the
    Trans question, I'm neither for or against it.

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  8. In James' previous panelbase, men were more in favour of indy than women I understand. Small differences are mainly noise.

    Support for indy has risen in both groups since 2014, just more so for women.

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  9. So, 10 months now since Salmond won in court. Twice.

    When's this comeback that the entire SNP was apparently trying to prevent happening?

    Starting to get a bit late for May's election.

    Maybe this story was just all rubbish?

    Key to proving any case against the 'evil SNP' is motive, as things stand, this is seemingly lacking.

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  10. If you come onto someone's blog to call them names and tell them what to write about, you might be asked to leave.

    If folks don't like James's articles, they can just not read them.

    Brave New World is when President James prevents you having your own blog to call him childish on, not when he removes name calling posts from his own.

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    1. Well said. The deleted comment did not engage with the content of the blogpost, it simply suggested that the blogpost should never have been written or published in the first place. I have made abundantly clear again and again that is not appropriate to use the comments section of this blog to lecture me on what I can or can't write about. If people want to choose the subject-matter of a blog, here's a radical thought: they should start their own.

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