On Tuesday night, I published the result of a question from the Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll showing that voters are in favour of the so-called Plan B option to use this year's Holyrood election to seek an outright mandate for independence. Here is a reminder of the question and the result.
The UK Government has stated that it will seek to prevent a Scottish independence referendum taking place for several decades, regardless of whether Scottish voters elect a Scottish Government committed to holding a referendum. In view of this stance, do you think pro-independence parties, such as the SNP and the Scottish Greens, should or should not include an outright independence pledge in their manifestos for this year's scheduled Scottish Parliament election, to give people the opportunity to vote for or against independence? (Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll, 11th-13th January 2021):
Should: 45%
Should not: 36%
With Don't Knows excluded -
Should: 55%
Should not: 45%
Some people obviously felt quite threatened by these numbers, because practically within seconds there was a sustained attempt to discredit the wording of the question. It's possible that a minority of people may have been raising objections in good faith, but there's no doubt at all that the majority of the criticisms had an agenda behind them. They were being made by people who are known to have a dogmatic view that an election cannot under any circumstances be legitimately used to gain an indy mandate. The most prolonged exchange I had was with Cameron Archibald, who notoriously let himself down very badly a couple of weeks ago by calling Joanna Cherry MP a "deceitful moron", simply because she argued that a plebiscitary election is a legitimate option that has a clear precedent in the UK's own history. So there's no secret at all about where Cameron is coming from on this, and the idea that he was just innocently offering textual quibbles about the question should thus be taken with a heavy dose of salt.
Of course Cameron's real problem with Joanna Cherry is her stance on the trans issue. And this is something I've noticed in recent weeks - isn't it odd how completely unconnected issues can become irrationally linked in people's minds, especially when tribal loyalties are involved? Even though there is no possible connection between trans rights and a plebiscitary election on independence, Cameron probably feels on some level that he is defending the former by scathingly attacking the latter. That's because his allies on the trans issue just happen to be mostly opposed to a plebiscitary election, and his 'enemies' just happen to be mostly in favour of one.
I had thought about writing a follow-up blogpost on Tuesday night to rebut some of the criticisms of the question, but I decided against it, on the basis that it might lend credibility to what were mostly bogus and politically motivated objections. However, the fact that there's still chatter about the question after two days demonstrates once again that it's possible to mess with people's heads if you're really determined. If you have enough friends who can insist loudly enough that there's a problem with something, and even if you take a scattergun and contradictory approach to identifying what the problem supposedly is, people will eventually start doubting themselves and think there must be at least some truth in what you're saying. It's a bit like the "doesn't she look tired?" snowball effect in Doctor Who.
So the time has come to knock this nonsense firmly on the head. The main criticism I had anticipated with the Plan B question was its wordiness - but that was pretty much unavoidable, because the concept of Plan B and the reasons for thinking it may be necessary are not familiar to most voters. Unless you put the issue in context, you won't get meaningful answers from respondents. An empty question will produce an empty result. I also expected one or two people might suggest that the question is leading on the basis that "opportunity" is a word with positive connotations - although I thought that would be a bit of stretch.
But no, those weren't the main criticisms. Instead, the absurd line of attack was that the term "outright independence pledge" was somehow "vague" or "unclear". It got to the point where Cameron was repeatedly asking me to explain what it meant - although I have no information on whether he managed to maintain a straight face while doing so. Eventually I said to him in exasperation: "Cameron, if I asked you what 'spade' means, how would you reply?" The point being that I literally cannot think of any simpler or clearer way of expressing the concept of "outright independence pledge" - it's already the most straightforward language available, which is why I used it. An independence pledge is a pledge of independence. 'Outright' means that the pledge is for independence itself, rather than just for a referendum.
Someone claimed in all apparent seriousness to have read the question and to have concluded it was about a pledge of a referendum. Answers on a postcard, folks, if you have any ideas as to how "outright independence pledge" can even conceivably imply such a thing - it plainly can't. The same person then asked me "why didn't you just ask whether the Holyrood election should be used as a national plebiscitary vote?", as if that would somehow have been a much simpler question. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - I doubt if 90% of voters would have the first idea of what a 'national plebiscitary vote' actually is.
Another suggestion that has been made, and this is perhaps not intended quite so vexatiously, is that the question could simply imply that the SNP should beef up the language about independence in their manifesto as compared to previous elections, without going the whole hog of a Plan B. But that fundamentally misunderstands what the SNP have been doing in elections since the start of devolution two decades ago. They haven't been making lukewarm manifesto pledges about independence that can now be strengthened. The reality is that they haven't been pledging independence at all - merely a referendum. When SNP spokespeople, all the way up to the leader, were asked during election campaigns whether a vote for the SNP was a vote for independence, the reply was absolutely explicit: "No, it's a vote for an SNP government and a referendum". Making an outright manifesto pledge of independence would be a radical departure for the SNP, and it would be the first time that a vote for the SNP has directly been a vote for independence since the 1997 UK general election. If the SNP had won the 1997 election in Scotland, they would have claimed a mandate to negotiate independence. That's exactly what Plan B is now.
The final point I'd make is that commissioning a poll from Survation is a slightly different experience from commissioning one from Panelbase, because they're more likely to change the wording of the client's suggested questions (with the agreement of the client, of course). They changed this question slightly, and one of the other questions in the poll was actually changed quite radically. That suggests to me that they were probably satisfied that the approved wording of the Plan B question was clear and was not going to be confusing for respondents.