Wednesday, April 21, 2021

New evidence that the Yes vote didn't dip as much as we thought earlier this year

If there's a precedent for this, I can't remember it.  Savanta ComRes have retrospectively changed the results of three independence polls from several months ago.  It looks like the British Polling Council spotted a calculation error and urged them to correct it.  In each case the Yes vote has been revised downwards, meaning that Yes never hit the heights with ComRes that we thought.  Instead of being on 58% in December (a joint all-time high across all firms) they were on a still-very-healthy 55%, and instead of being on 57% in January they were on 52%.  Looking back, that actually makes a lot more sense, because it always seemed odd that ComRes suddenly became a Yes-friendly pollster and then returned to the pack after only a few months.

In a strange way this is good news, because it means the dip in Yes support earlier this year may not have been as significant as we originally thought.  The dip certainly happened, because other firms picked it up, but no other firm showed quite such a sharp drop as ComRes.  Now it turns out that there's only a 5% gap between the highest Yes vote with ComRes and the Yes vote in the most recent ComRes poll.

It's been an eventful year for ComRes, because they were the firm caught up in the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal, although of course they were as much victims in that as the rest of us.

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You can catch-up with Episode 6 of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I speak to Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, HERE (with video) or HERE (audio only).  And if you find Scot Goes Pop's coverage of polls helpful and would like it to continue, I'm currently running a fundraiser HERE.

6 comments:

  1. Dunno whether to be pleased or gutted......

    ReplyDelete
  2. New Scottish Parliament poll, ComRes 16 - 20 Apr (changes vs 2 - 7 Apr):

    Constituency:
    SNP ~ 46% (-3)
    Con ~ 25% (+2)
    Lab ~ 20% (+2)
    LD ~ 6% (nc)

    List:
    SNP ~ 38% (-2)
    Con ~ 23% (+2)
    Lab ~ 17% (-1)
    Grn ~ 7% (-2)
    LD ~ 5% (-2)
    Alba ~ 1% (-2)
    Others ~ 7% (+5)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Also Yougov. I imagine James will get both up soon!

    Constituency:
    SNP ~ 49%
    Con ~ 21%
    Lab ~ 21%
    LD ~ 6%
    Others ~ 3%

    List:
    SNP ~ 39%
    Con ~ 22%
    Lab ~ 17%
    Grn ~ 10%
    LD ~ 5%
    Others ~ 6%

    Indy numbers not so exciting, but the pattern is people do defo want an iref in the next term, but not until we are out of the pandemic.

    As a result, you they will tend more to say 'no' in the standard 'referendum tomorrow?' question.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I imagine James will get both up soon!"

      I've had them both up for hours - you're commenting on an old post.

      Delete
    2. My browser has a habit of doing this to me, i.e. showing me an old version of sites when I open a tab and go to a bookmark unless I deliberately refresh. It should check to see if the page has changed, but often it doesn't!

      Delete