Alba Ahoy! New pro-indy kid on the block continues to register with 2% of the list vote in latest Savanta ComRes poll

At long last, we have the datasets from the Savanta ComRes poll commissioned by The Economist, and some of the lingering questions can be answered.  Firstly, the all-important fieldwork dates.  The poll was conducted between the 24th and 28th of February, meaning it coincided with the first five days of the war in Ukraine.  That may be a positive sign, because there's always a danger that a major international crisis could dampen support for independence, and yet the poll produced a 49% showing for Yes, which is relatively good when you bear in mind that ComRes have typically been on the No-friendly end of the spectrum in recent times.  That said, most people tend to complete online polls on the day they are sent the link, which presumably means most responses will have been collected on the 24th - the very first day of the invasion.  Given that the sheer scale of Russia's actions came as a bolt from the blue, it may well be that it took the public a certain amount of time to truly 'process' what was happening - and if so, we may not really know the effect of the war on support for independence (if any) until the next poll appears.

The Yes vote is sky-high among the younger age groups, at 79% among 16-24 year olds, and 73% among 25-34 year olds.  You have to go up to the 55-64 year olds to find the first age group that is narrowly opposed to independence, but as usual, the real backbone of the slim overall No lead in the poll is the over-65s, who break 3-1 against self-government.

The unionist media's reporting of the poll gave the impression that there was no great public appetite for an early independence referendum, which made me wonder if the questions had been framed entirely neutrally.  You won't be surprised to hear that they weren't. The question that asked about the timing of a referendum offered six options - in the next year, in the next two years, in the next five years, in the next ten years, longer than the next ten years, and never.  On the principle that people without strong feelings tend to hover towards the middle options, they were effectively being guided towards the five year and ten year responses.  For my money, you'd have got a far more meaningful result by simply asking a binary Yes/No question on the Scottish Government's stated timetable of late 2023.  The good news, however, is that just 23% of respondents think a second independence referendum should never be held, and there is an absolute majority (55%) for holding it at some point within the next decade.

There's a question that asks about "which conditions should be placed on a new independence referendum".  That's seriously dodgy, because it implants the notion in respondents' heads that it's somehow obvious that there should be conditions.  Importantly, however, there is opposition to the suggestion that Westminster's agreement should be a condition.

There's a downright peculiar question about the extent to which the Scottish Government's plans for a referendum make respondents feel "anxious" or "relieved".  If anxiety was going to be mentioned at all, I'd have thought the more natural two poles are "anxiety" and "excitement".  There can't be all that many Yes supporters whose first reaction to the genuine calling of a referendum would be "oh gosh I'm so relieved".

The poll also contains Scottish Parliament voting intention numbers...

Constituency ballot:

SNP 47% (-)

Labour 22% (-)

Conservatives 21% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Regional list ballot:

SNP 34% (-4)

Conservatives 21% (+3)

Labour 20% (-)

Greens 14% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-1)

Alba 2% (-)

Across all polling firms, there have been ten polls with Holyrood voting intention numbers since the election last May.  Of the first eight, only one had Alba above 1% on the list vote, whereas this is now the second in a row to have them on 2%.  So that could be a positive sign with the local elections fast approaching. (Having said that, three of the first eight polls were conducted by Panelbase, who literally don't even allow respondents to give a preference for Alba!)

34% is the lowest list vote for the SNP in any poll since May, but that can perhaps be mostly explained by the good showings for both Alba and the Greens - the latter's 14% is unusually high.  What is a little troubling, though, is that there may be signs of a Tory bounceback on both ballots.

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