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.  

*  *  *

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.)

2) Payments to the Scot Goes Pop GoFundMe Fundraiser page, which can be found HERE.

or

3) Direct bank transfer.  Contact me by email if you prefer this option.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address above, and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only), or on my Twitter profile.

Thank you all once again for your amazing continued support, and in particular many thanks to the more than 160 people who have already donated. 

VIDEO PREVIEW of Friday's question in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll

 

As I'm on a roll with it, here's another response to some internet 'feedback'...

Ah, the unspoofable Mark McGeoghegan, who earlier this year wrote a breathless piece treating the results from an absurdly leading Scotsman / ComRes poll as if they were gospel. Maybe it's all fine if it's a newspaper waving the "couple of grand" (ahem).https://t.co/J2PcQLdVKP

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 18, 2021

Had a bit of a further look at Mark McGeoghegan's recent tweets. Absolutely barking mad. The almost painfully bland and balanced questions I asked in the Panelbase poll were apparently a "transphobic mess" and if he was still in the SNP he'd leave because it's "transphobic".

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 18, 2021

McGeoghegan is extremism posing as detached objectivity. One or two people have fallen for the performance, but he's over-reaching himself more and more as time goes on.https://t.co/M99JhF0aeu

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 18, 2021

SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: The Scottish public (pronouns: he/she/they) do *not* think it is "unacceptable" to misgender someone - although this is a closer result than on the other questions

Although attitudes to pronouns hold huge symbolic significance for both sides of the GRA / gender debate, they can still seem at first glance like a trivial or even frivolous issue compared to the others we've covered in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, such as medical examinations after a sexual assault.  However, it mustn't be forgotten that "misgendering" is front and centre in many definitions of transphobia, including the SNP's working definition as developed by Fiona Robertson.  For many people on the pro-self-ID side, transphobia is every bit as serious a matter as, for example, anti-Semitism. So using the wrong pronouns is potentially already something that could cost someone their career, or lead to a knock on the door from an over-zealous police force investigating a "non-crime hate incident".

In coming up with a question for the poll about pronouns, I was keen to ensure that it couldn't be interpreted as a motherhood and apple pie question about good manners - because I'm sure the vast majority of people would think it's a good idea to be courteous and to use an individual's preferred pronouns wherever possible.  That's not the issue at all - the point of contention is whether people should be compelled to use certain pronouns when referring to others, ie. whether bad manners simply should not be tolerated by society or by the law, or whether going down that road would destroy one of our fundamental freedoms.

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 people argue that it is bigoted or transphobic to 'misgender' a transgender person - for example to refer to them as 'he' or 'him' if their preferred pronouns are 'she' and 'her'.  Others argue that forcing people to use particular pronouns when referring to a transgender person is an unacceptable attack on free speech.  Which point of view do you find most persuasive?

It is unacceptable to refer to a transgender person by the wrong pronouns: 30%

It is an unacceptable attack on free speech to force people to use particular pronouns when referring to a transgender person: 40%

Don’t Know / Prefer not to answer: 29%

Fascinatingly, this is the only gender-related question in the poll to produce an even vaguely close result.  That can perhaps by explained by a feeling among a sizeable minority that there's no good reason not to expect people to use certain pronouns - ie. there's no real cost attached to it.  There's also quite a dramatic gender gap on this issue that wasn't seen on the earlier questions.  Among women, there's actually a very slim plurality (34% to 32%) in favour of the idea that it's unacceptable not to use someone's preferred pronouns.  However, the overall result goes the other way because men feel very differently - they break 49% to 27% in favour of the "unacceptable attack on free speech" option.

Once again, there's a gulf between the generations, with a reasonably strong plurality (42% to 30%) of under-35s supporting compelled speech on pronouns, while the two older age groups take the opposite view.  It perhaps won't be a surprise that SNP voters believe misgendering is unacceptable, although the result is startlingly narrow (38% to 35%).  And, remarkably, a slim plurality of Labour voters (41% to 36%) favour free speech over compelled speech on this matter - a verdict that is at odds with the stance of both Keir Starmer and his radically different predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

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A response to Professor John Robertson:  It belatedly came to my attention yesterday that Professor Robertson has made a number of angry ad hominem attacks on me as a result of this poll. That's disappointing but not remotely surprising - over the last few weeks he's attempted to leave a few snide comments on Scot Goes Pop, and for the most part I haven't let them through.  

If memory serves me right, Robertson's blog used to be called "Thought Control Scotland", and I now realise that wasn't an ironic title - or, if it was intended to be ironic, the only real irony lies in the fact that it was nowhere near as ironic as planned.  It's become scarily clear that thought control is in fact Robertson's cardinal belief.  His pattern of behaviour towards me actually goes back to an issue that was totally unrelated to gender or GRA reform.  Devi Sridhar, as long-term readers will know, is something of a heroine of mine (to such an extent that our resident anti-lockdown nutter always refers to her as "your girlfriend, James"), but I made one small criticism of something she said a few months ago - it was probably just about the only time during the pandemic that I queried her stance at all.  It was to do with schools, from what I recall - I thought she was too bullish about getting schools back to normality, or something like that.  Robertson jumped down my throat and instructed me to be unquestioningly accepting of everything that Devi Sridhar said in future, because she was the expert and I wasn't.  In other words, "stop thinking and shut up".  The glorious irony here is that unquestioning acceptance of "expert opinion" is precisely what got Britain into the Covid disaster of March/April 2020, and Sridhar was one of the people who pulled us out of that hole by teaching us to apply some critical thinking to the propaganda we were being fed in the false name of science.

But it appears that "stop thinking, shut up, and follow the leader without question" is Robertson's basic approach to every other subject too. I wonder if that's bound up in his background in far-left politics, ie. communist-style "democratic centralism" (that's just a guess, but I wouldn't be at all surprised).  When he started berating me and others on gender matters, he simply failed to make any sort of case whatsoever - he didn't make any positive argument in favour of GRA reform or self-ID, and he didn't even try to identify any flaws in the arguments of those who were opposed. Instead, he arrogantly demanded that the critics of GRA reform should simply stop talking about the subject.  The blogposts he's written about me and about the poll just amount to a massive "SHUT UP" - there's literally no other content there at all.

Self-ID opponents are being "boring", apparently. (The main thing required of allegedly boring people is, naturally, that they should shut up.)  They are "starting a moral panic about trans people", we're told.  (What is the only way to prevent Robertson from accusing you of starting a moral panic?  Why, by shutting up, of course.  Could trying to get you to shut up be his sole motivation for making the moral panic claim in the first place?  Perish the thought!)  I shouldn't, it seems, have asked a question in the poll about whether sexual assault victims should have the right to be examined by a biologically female doctor, because the asking of the question implies that there's a genuine issue there.  (Could Robertson be trying to prevent the question from ever being asked because he doesn't want the public to ever have the opportunity to say that they think there's a genuine issue there? Oooh, don't be so cynical!)  In fact, it turns out that neither I nor anyone else should ever commission a poll with any GRA-related questions in it at all, and we should instead be asking questions that Robertson - or, bizarrely, his daughter - personally find more interesting.  His daughter's suggestion was supposedly that I should instead have funded research into how to stop the abuse of women in the wake of the Sarah Everard tragedy.  I tell you what, John, if that's the poll you want to see, then why don't you commission and fund it, and then we'll observe you trying to maintain your composure as cretins come along and ask: "Why didn't you poll about starving children in Africa, Robertson?  Don't you care, man?  Your priorities - where the hell are they?"

The reality is, as I've pointed out before, that there has been polling done on just about every subject under the sun - including the consequences of the Sarah Everard case.  (See, for example, this Sky News report, posted this very day, about a YouGov poll.)  That being the case, the real question for Robertson and his fellow travellers is: why not the GRA? Why should that be the only subject that no-one is ever allowed to poll about?

Oh, and the other question for Robertson is: why are you fibbing, and pretending that I've said things that I quite plainly haven't?  

Never mind "all of Scot Goes Pop's scaremongering about trans women abusing other women", I'd be interested in seeing evidence that there's been *any* such scaremongering. I can't remember saying anything like that at all. John has lost the plot on this.https://t.co/p1OPMLz2D8

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 17, 2021

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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.)

2) Payments to the Scot Goes Pop GoFundMe Fundraiser page, which can be found HERE.

or

3) Direct bank transfer.  Contact me by email if you prefer this option.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address above, and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only), or on my Twitter profile.

Thank you all once again for your amazing continued support, and in particular many thanks to the more than 160 people who have already donated.  

VIDEO PREVIEW of the next question in the Scot Goes Pop poll (pronouns: matter/of/some/dispute)

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 just over halfway there so far, with the best part of another £3000 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.)

2) Payments to the Scot Goes Pop GoFundMe Fundraiser page, which can be found HERE.

or

3) Direct bank transfer.  Contact me by email if you prefer this option.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address above, and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only), or on my Twitter profile.

Thank you all once again for your amazing continued support, and in particular many thanks to the more than 160 people who have already donated.

Scot Goes Popcast with guest Denise Findlay: Thoughts on the latest coordinated bullying campaign against Joanna Cherry, and reaction to the results of the GRA poll

For the latest episode of the Popcast, I was joined once again by Denise Findlay - a fellow member of the Alba Party's NEC, and a passionate supporter of the rights of women and girls.  We spoke in-depth about the results of the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll on GRA reform and related gender matters, but of course we also touched on the latest extraordinary campaign of harassment and bullying against Joanna Cherry, which seems to have been coordinated by certain SNP parliamentarians and office holders. And we discussed the Alba Party's potential route-map for achieving independence.

You can listen to the episode as a traditional podcast via the embedded Soundcloud player below, or via the direct Soundcloud link, or you can watch it in video form via the embedded YouTube player.  The Popcast is also available on Stitcher and Spotify.  Bring a packed lunch with you, because this is a 'feature-length episode' (as they always used to say whenever Bobby Ewing got killed off in Dallas).

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 13: Denise Findlay

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast - 

Episode 1: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 3: Denise Findlay

Episode 4: Ellen Höfer

Episode 5: Len Pennie (Miss PunnyPennie)

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 7: Chris McEleny

Episode 8: Election Results

Episode 9: Eurovision 2021

Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

Episode 11: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 12: William Duguid

SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: Substantial majority of Scottish public think gender critical views should be "respected as a legitimate part of democratic debate"

As previous questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll have established, there's a difference of view between the Scottish Government and the majority of the public on the proposed introduction of legally-recognised gender self-identification.  The vast bulk of voters oppose self-ID, and also feel that if self-ID does reach the statute book, individuals who change their legal gender from male to female under the new rules should not be able to access female-only spaces on exactly the same basis as all other women.  It's not that strange in a parliamentary democracy for the government to push through a reform that the public opposes, but what makes this debate highly unusual is that the government not only wishes to face down majority public opinion, it also wishes to pathologise majority public opinion as a form of bigotry, and thus silence it completely.  Some of the responses that the majority of voters have given in this poll would clearly fall foul of the SNP's working definition of "transphobia" as developed by the controversial Equalities Convener Fiona Robertson.

So the next question in the poll is about the legitimacy of holding views that are at odds with the government's worldview on the gender debate.  It's not about whether such views are right or wrong - it's just about whether it's acceptable to hold them and express them, or whether they fall outside the boundaries of what must be tolerated within democratic debate.  Essentially this question covers the same issues that were weighed up in the Maya Forstater legal case.

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 people believe that biological sex cannot be changed, and that individuals who change their legal gender from male to female should not have unrestricted access to female-only spaces such as changing rooms, toilets, hospital wards and women's refuges.  How do you think society should treat these beliefs?

These beliefs should not be tolerated because they are bigoted or transphobic: 20%

These beliefs should be respected as a legitimate part of democratic debate: 53%

Don't Know / Prefer not to answer: 27%

Another unambiguous outcome.  The disconnect between the government and the public therefore goes beyond the principle of self-ID itself. Most voters think that the normal rules of democratic debate must apply to this topic, while the SNP leadership and the Greens (most especially the Greens) insist there can be "no debate".  That begins to look like an unbridgeable ideological gulf.  Is it really possible to police language and thought without popular consent?  We may be about to find out.

The data tables show a familiar pattern to previous questions.  Women are slightly less likely than men to feel that opposing the government-approved view is democratically legitimate, but they still break by a decisive 50% to 20% margin against the idea that gender critical views should not be tolerated.  There's a reasonably pronounced generation gap, with 30% of under-35s feeling that gender critical views are unacceptable, compared to only 16% of 35-54 year-olds, and 16% of over-55s.  

Bigger minorities of SNP and Labour voters are intolerant of gender critical views than is the case among Tory and Lib Dem voters - but intolerance is very much a minority pursuit across all parties.  For example, 50% of SNP voters chose the "these beliefs should be respected" option, and only 24% plumped for the "these beliefs should not be tolerated" option.

Of course the comparison that the minority of people who want to shut down debate would make is with gay rights in past decades - they would point out that homophobia was never acceptable, even when the majority of people held such repugnant views, as they undoubtedly did until at least the 1960s and 1970s (and possibly a lot, lot later).  But there are two things to say about that.  First of all, it's by no means clear that the comparison is a valid one - gender self-ID, at least in some circumstances, appears to interfere with the rights of others (most obviously women as a sex-based class) in a way that equal rights for gay people never did and never will.  But even if we assume for the sake of argument that the comparison is reasonable, it was nevertheless the case that intolerance of homophobia didn't exist as a concrete reality until there was a degree of 'critical mass' in public opinion as voters gradually became more enlightened.  The pro-self-ID activists seem to think it should be possible to rush their fences and get an enforceable doctrine without that critical mass even existing - in other words without anyone bothering with the hard work of persuading the public to change its thinking.  It's as if they believe they can just clap their hands and expect the world to instantly reflect back at them in their own image.  It would be great - and sometimes fairer - if life really were that simple, but it isn't.

And because of that bracing reality, it has to be very doubtful that what appears to be a coordinated campaign to get Joanna Cherry out of the SNP parliamentary party can or will succeed.  We've seen tweets from Emma Roddick, Mhairi Black, Fiona Robertson, Kirsty Blackman and even - disappointingly - Julie Hepburn, all clearly attempting to prepare the ground by establishing a coded 'discourse of expulsion'.  It's almost like the "stab in the back" myth of the interwar years in Germany - a false history is being seeded that promises of disciplinary action were made and broken, that the righteous folk have been patient beyond all reasonable endurance, and that the only reason a few bad apples hold gender critical views is because of dark interventions by the far right.  Apart from all of that being patently untrue, it isn't going to resonate with people in the real world because the concepts are all totally alien to most of the public.  The well-known (albeit very young) SNP activist Lloyd Melville clearly felt the ideological ground had by now been well enough prepared that he could afford to dispense with the coded language of others and openly call for Ms Cherry's expulsion from the SNP parliamentary group - and in my view he's likely to discover that he's extremely badly mistaken about that.

I'm not sure even Joseph McCarthy would have tried the "I've got to do this for the good of my health" angle.https://t.co/e5XYgzcsay

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 15, 2021

If you look closely at this, it's targeted at Mhairi's highly regarded MP colleague Joanna Cherry. It seems to me there's a coordinated effort by the likes of Ms Black, Fiona Robertson, Kirsty Blackman etc, to prepare the ground for Ms Cherry's expulsion.https://t.co/BwvyUt7uMj

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 15, 2021

My guess is that it actually won't work. Expulsion from the party is a very different matter from sacking someone from the front bench, and I think there are enough decent people in the SNP who know a line has to be drawn. And the leadership know those people would stop them.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 15, 2021

Jesus Christ. When I said there was a coordinated campaign to have Joanna Cherry expelled, I didn't realise it was quite this blatant.https://t.co/ScKdElw7LH

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 15, 2021

This is extraordinary. It's an explicitly *anti-unity* message. I'm no longer in the SNP, but I still care about it (and independence), so please guys, step back from the brink. Independence cannot be won without the people you are unjustly demonising.https://t.co/BNUzYXECQ8

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 15, 2021

*  *  *

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.)

2) Payments to the Scot Goes Pop GoFundMe Fundraiser page, which can be found HERE.

or

3) Direct bank transfer.  Contact me by email if you prefer this option.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address above, and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only), or on my Twitter profile.

Thank you all once again for your amazing continued support, and in particular many thanks to the more than 160 people who have already donated. 

The future of London rule in Scotland hangs by a THREAD tonight as fresh Panelbase polling evidence emerges that opposition to independence has PLUMMETED BY THREE PER CENT in recent days

As I mentioned yesterday, the new Sunday Times / Panelbase poll on independence is extremely encouraging - it suggests that the Yes vote has increased by 2% since the previous Panelbase poll (commissioned by Scot Goes Pop in October) and that public opinion is now essentially split down the middle, with 49% in favour of independence and 51% opposed. But one thing that appeared to be missing from the Sunday Times article was the poll result prior to the Don't Knows being stripped out. Those numbers have emerged today, and they shed fascinating light on the way in which voters have apparently changed their minds. Although the Yes vote has crept up by 1%, the real change appears to be that a substantial number of No voters have drifted to the Don't Know column. I wonder if that can be attributed to the whiff of corruption emanating from Westminster, and people beginning to question whether Scotland should be associated with the Boris circus anymore. 

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Sunday Times / Panelbase poll, 9th-12th November 2021)

Yes 45% (+1) 

No 47% (-3) 

Don't Know 8% (+3)

VIDEO PREVIEW of tonight's question in the Scot Goes Pop poll - highly topical in the light of a seemingly coordinated campaign to get Joanna Cherry expelled or disciplined

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.)

2) Payments to the Scot Goes Pop GoFundMe Fundraiser page, which can be found HERE.

or

3) Direct bank transfer.  Contact me by email if you prefer this option.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address above, and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only), or on my Twitter profile.

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Boris Johnson's pipe dream of British unity has been CRUSHED this morning by a stunning new Sunday Times poll showing support for Scottish independence has SOARED by 2% over the space of just TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

OK, so the headline is a tribute to the hysterical treatment the Express website gave to the statistically insignificant 1% decrease for Yes in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll on Friday night. (They published no fewer than two articles on the same subject, and Unionist Twitter went nuts over it.)  But there's a serious lesson here about the way mainstream media journalists treat their readers with utter contempt on polling matters.  Having cynically misrepresented the significance of the margin of error noise that flattered No in the Scot Goes Pop poll, will they do the same thing today now that a fresh Panelbase poll, this time for the Sunday Times, is showing what may well just be margin of error noise that flatters Yes, but that on the face of it amounts to a rather impressive 2% increase in support for independence?  Especially as it takes Yes to 49% - a statistical tie with No, and the best result for Yes in any Panelbase poll since April?  I suspect they won't.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Sunday Times / Panelbase poll, 9th-12th November 2021)

Yes 49% (+2)

No 51% (-2)

(Note: The Sunday Times are reporting it as a 1% increase for Yes, and a 1% decrease for No, but that's because they're pretending that the only Panelbase polls that exist are the ones they commissioned themselves - which in fairness has been standard practice for all newspapers since the dawn of time.  However, even on the basis of the claimed 1% increase, I can't help but raise a smile at the mundane reference to the Yes vote merely "holding up", given the rather more excitable treatment the Express, Blair McDougall, "HappyBritScot", Pamela Nash, Murdo Fraser et al gave to a similarly trivial 1% decrease on Friday night.)

As I've mentioned before, the two Panelbase polls before Friday both had Yes on 48%.  So an entirely plausible interpretation is that Yes has been steady at around 48% for many months now, and that normal sampling variation caused a meaningless dip to 47% on Friday night, and an equally meaningless bump up to 49% this morning.  But there is also an alternative explanation. Whatever you may think of Nicola Sturgeon, no-one can doubt the excellence of her public relations skills, and she's had a particularly good couple of weeks at COP26.  So it's just conceivable there may have been a genuine Yes bounce off the back of the climate summit in Glasgow.

Unlike the indyref numbers, the Westminster voting intention numbers from the Sunday Times poll are almost identical to the Scot Goes Pop poll - with the exception of the fact that Labour have slipped back into third place (perhaps surprising given Boris Johnson's troubles and the trajectory of GB-wide polls).

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Sunday Times / Panelbase poll):

SNP 48% (-)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Labour 20% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-)

(Note: Once again, the Sunday Times are reporting completely different percentage changes, because they're pretending Friday's Panelbase poll doesn't exist.  Instead, they're using the much less recent Panelbase poll they commissioned themselves back in September as their baseline.)

Although the SNP haven't made further progress, this is one occasion when a no change poll may be of interest - because as I mentioned on Friday night, the 48% for the SNP in the Scot Goes Pop poll was the highest the party had recorded in any Panelbase poll for around one year.  The fact that the same figure has now been recorded twice in quick succession may increase the chances that there has been a genuine (albeit modest) uptick.

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election): SNP 53 (+5), Conservatives 3 (-3), Liberal Democrats 2 (-2), Labour 1 (-)

The above projection has been calculated by Professor John Curtice on behalf of the Sunday Times.  It presumably must be based on the existing boundaries, because the seats add up to 59 - as opposed to 57 on the proposed new boundaries.

There are also Holyrood numbers in the new poll - and for those the Sunday Times actually do list accurate percentage changes, because there aren't any Holyrood results in the Scot Goes Pop poll.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 47% (+1)

Conservatives 20% (-2)

Labour 19% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 8 % (+1)

Greens 4% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 41% (+3)

Conservatives 21% (-2)

Labour 18% (-)

Greens 10% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Others 3% (-1)

The 3% for 'others' includes Alba, who Panelbase have completely stopped offering as an option in their Holyrood polls - which to me seems a very odd decision given the clear evidence that Alba are still registering when respondents are given the chance to express a preference.

Seats projection (with changes from May 2021): SNP 64 (-), Conservatives 26 (-5), Labour 22 (-), Greens 10 (+2), Liberal Democrats 7 (+3)

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 74 seats (57.4%)

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 55 seats (42.6%)

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 19 SEATS

It's a 1% increase but what it really means is 2% 🤣🤣🤣. It's really very sad.

— Areopagitica (@tweetmentcentre) November 14, 2021

Sorry, run that past me again? On what basis is it not a 2% increase? Take your time.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 14, 2021

Forgive me I was using 'standard practice since the dawn of time'

— Areopagitica (@tweetmentcentre) November 14, 2021

What I love about this is that you guys have been gloating about a 1% decrease in the poll on Friday night - but in order to maintain the fiction that today's poll doesn't show a 2% Yes increase, you have to suddenly pretend Friday's poll never even existed. Schrodinger's poll.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 14, 2021

I won't need to go fishing this afternoon at this rate

— Areopagitica (@tweetmentcentre) November 14, 2021

Probably better not. On this morning's form, it would be the fish catching you.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 14, 2021

The Yes vote has gone from 47% on Friday to 49% on Sunday. Does this logically mean there'll be a Yes majority by Tuesday, @murdo_fraser? I think it must do.

Tick-tock. Tick, and if I may say so, TOCK.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 14, 2021