Saturday, November 20, 2021

SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: John Nicolson's implausible claims are finally confronted with electoral reality as just 11% of voters in Scotland, and just 15% of SNP voters, say they voted against Holyrood candidates for opposing gender self-ID or for being "transphobic"

Is it possible for a government to have an electoral mandate to do something the public strongly opposes?  That may seem like a contradiction in terms, but it's actually at the core of how parliamentary democracy works.  We don't usually decide individual issues by referendum, and therefore the only test of whether a mandate exists is whether or not the party or parties elected to government pledged to take a particular course of action in their manifestos.  Every manifesto contains a large number of pledges which we, as individual voters, have to accept or reject as a package.  There's no à la carte menu - which makes it nigh-on inevitable that governments will at least occasionally be able to claim a mandate for a specific policy that voters don't agree with.  Some of the excesses of the Thatcher years would fall into that category - as would the SNP/Green government's determination to push through gender self-ID, which the new Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll has convincingly demonstrated the public are strongly opposed to.

Now, to be clear, there's nothing anti-democratic about what is being done.  If you believe in parliamentary democracy, you have to accept that self-ID is a matter for the elected Scottish Parliament to decide.  You can urge MSPs to listen, you can warn them that your vote will go elsewhere next time if they don't take your concerns on board, but ultimately the decision is theirs.  That fundamental principle, however, should not be seen as some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card that allows politicians to cynically misrepresent the meaning of election results with impunity.  If people elect an SNP government largely because they support independence and oppose Brexit, but the SNP instead use that mandate to push through a policy that didn't actually influence all that many votes, it's profoundly dishonest to claim that they're engaged in delivery of the popular will.

A number of SNP and Green politicians have made very bold and specific claims about what voters meant when they produced the election result they did in May.  People were showing their 'decency' by endorsing gender self-ID in their droves with votes for the SNP and Greens.  They were 'rejecting transphobia and bigotry' by only giving 2% of the list vote to Alba.  Here are two examples from Twitter to demonstrate exactly what has been said...

John Nicolson (SNP MP): "They [Alba] are a Twitter phenomenon. When their bigotry meets electoral reality they find their level of support is 1.6%...in any event Scottish voters are decent. That’s why this nonsense gets no traction. #TransAwarenessWeek #TransRightsAreHumanRights"

Maggie Chapman (Green MSP): "And, a word to those who thought that beating up on trans people would be an easy ticket into Parliament … the people of the North East … indeed, the people of Scotland, have rejected you. It is time you left politics. For good. #SP21"

The latter claim is, on the face of it, particularly brazen.  Yes, in a sense the voters "rejected" Alba, because 98% voted for other parties - but by that standard the voters also "rejected" the Greens, because 92% of people didn't vote Green.  More to the point, there's no evidence that voters had trans issues in mind when they rejected either party, so to suggest that Alba politicians, and only Alba politicians, should leave public life altogether off the back of that result seems absolutely barking mad - not to mention completely outrageous.

The mere 20% support for self-ID in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll is already sufficient to give the lie to Nicolson's and Chapman's outlandish claims.  However, to put the matter beyond all dispute, I also asked an additional question, specifically about whether respondents had used their votes in the way Nicolson, Chapman and others insist they did.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll (a representative sample of 1001 over-16s in Scotland was interviewed by Panelbase between 20th and 26th October 2021)

Some politicians have suggested that the result of the Scottish Parliament election in May of this year showed that voters rejected candidates who they believed were "transphobic" for opposing reforms to make it easier for individuals to change their legal gender. Thinking back to the Scottish Parliament election, which of these statements best describes how you used your vote?

I consciously rejected candidates who I believed to be transphobic: 11%

I did not consciously reject candidates due to their alleged transphobia: 57%

I did not vote: 13%

Don't Know / Prefer not to answer: 18%

Those numbers, I would suggest, speak for themselves very eloquently.  Nobody can stop Nicolson and Chapman from continuing to claim that the 2021 election was a resounding endorsement of the Stonewall worldview and a rejection of "transphobia" - but it is also now an established and irrefutable fact that they are either deluded about that or are misleading people.  Of the people who voted "against" Alba, it appears that at least 80% did not do so for the reasons we're supposed to believe.

Just 15% of people who voted SNP in the 2019 Westminster election say they used their vote this year to reject transphobes, and 59% say they didn't. So homing in on SNP voters in particular doesn't make a huge amount of difference to the equation.  

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SCOT GOES POP POLLING FUNDRAISER: I'm having to partly cover the costs of the current poll with my own funds, so if we're going to run further polling in the future, we'll need to reach the £6500 target in the fundraiser (or get very close to it).  We're close to 60% of the way there so far, with more than £2500 still required.  So any donations, large or small, would be greatly appreciated and will make all the difference.  Don't risk leaving public opinion polling exclusively in the hands of the mainstream media, with all the bias that entails!  Here are three ways in which you can donate...

1) Paypal payments to the email address:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Paypal is the preferred payment method because money is transferred immediately and without fuss.  All you need to ensure is that the above email address is entered correctly (note the .co.uk ending), and add a note with the word "poll" or "fundraiser".  (But don't worry if you forget to do the latter bit, because it'll still be obvious what the payment is for.)

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8 comments:

  1. Vote Alba in the next local elections.

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  2. Nicholson and Chapman do seem to be Albaphobes. Nicholson, like Pension Pete,does always give the impression of being just so very very comfortable at Westminster. Is Pension Pete Nicholson's role model for how he sees his future. Make noises about the nasty Torues for a void,e of hours a month

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  3. will make sure i get another donation across to you James.

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  4. https://summit.news/2021/11/17/documents-reveal-kindergarteners-being-forced-to-learn-about-transgenderism/

    This is where all this GRA stuff is going. Unacceptable, time to wake up and call it out.

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  5. Sturgeon chooses a new Permanent Secretary that was involved in the DWP/Universal Credit work. Says it all about Sturgeon.

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  6. I feel sad that people who seemed genuinely radical, like Mhairi Black (and even the old john Nicholson), have swallowed the trans-woo-woo stuff. Perhaps they've been feeling misplaced guilt about the trans folk who have latched on to the LGB movement like a parasite which takes over its host. However, looking at some of the trans stuff that's happening elsewhere, including Canada and the US, it may be that there's worse to come.

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  7. You are asked to believe that the SNP members will deliver independence for Scotland. They cannae even deliver independence for their own political party.

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  8. I take your point about parliamentary democracy sometimes meaning that governments pursue unpopular policies at odds with public opinion. However, it vexes me to see how a group of trans extremists have attached themselves like leeches to the SNP and have slowly drained it of its lifeblood of independence. They have left us with an empty husk of a party where Indy is barely mentioned, let alone progressed.

    Nobody can tell me that people like Nicolson, Blackman et al would get elected on this woke platform of theirs if they weren't piggy-backing on the electoral popularity of the SNP. If they had any integrity, they would have joined the Greens where these ideas have always been a lot more mainstream but, of course, their chances of a lucrative lifestyle in Westminster and Holyrood would be greatly reduced had they done so.



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