Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Beware the Herald's reporting of a "new" independence poll - the fieldwork is actually several weeks out of date (although it still shows a small Yes lead)

A Scot Goes Pop reader has alerted me to the fact that the Herald is reporting a "new" YouGov poll on independence.  I'll give you the results for the sake of completeness, but the crucial point here is that the fieldwork took place weeks ago, between the 22nd and 25th of November, which means it predates the run of four polls since the Supreme Court ruling showing a clear pro-independence majority.  The Herald's report says that the fieldwork "took in" the moment of the Supreme Court ruling on the 23rd, which is true, but it must always be remembered that most respondents to online polls reply to the interview request as soon as they receive it.  So the bulk of this poll is likely to have been carried out on the 22nd, before anyone knew that the Supreme Court was going to rule that Scotland is a prisoner in a non-voluntary union.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (YouGov / Scottish Election Survey, 22nd-25th November 2022)

Yes 50.2%
No 49.8%

It's extremely unusual in this day and age for polls to be rounded to one decimal place, but I'm just giving you the results exactly as the Herald have published them.  They even give percentage changes rounded to one decimal place from the previous poll for the Scottish Election Study, showing a 2.6% boost for Yes since August.

Obviously rounded to whole numbers this is a 50/50 result, but before Don't Knows are excluded, Yes have a slim lead of 43% to 42%.  So it's in the eye of the beholder whether this is a Yes-majority poll or not.   If you take the view that it is, it means we now have six polls in a row, with fieldwork stretching all the way back to mid-October, showing a pro-independence majority.

The emphasis the Herald are placing on supposedly poor voting intention results from the poll for the SNP really is a complete red herring, given we have a much more up-to-date poll from YouGov that is more favourable to the SNP.

UPDATE: Having done some more checking, it turns out to my surprise that only around one-third of the fieldwork for the poll was completed before the Supreme Court ruling.  However, there are two caveats to put on that.  Firstly, some of the respondents who took part after the ruling will have done so just afterwards and may not have caught up with the news yet.  And secondly, the 'before and after' results have been published from the poll, which show - as expected - that the Yes vote did indeed rise immediately after the ruling.  Among the one-third of respondents who took part before the ruling, there was a No lead of three points (after weighting but before the exclusion of Don't Knows), compared to a Yes lead of two points among the two-thirds of respondents who took part after the ruling.  There's an astoundingly biased and disingenuous write-up of the poll on the Scottish Election Study website which dismisses the difference between the two sections of the sample as statistically insignificant, and concludes that any impact from the court judgement on public opinion must have been extremely minor.  This conveniently ignores the elephant in the room - namely that we've had another four polls since this one, all of which pretty conclusively confirm that Yes has received a significant boost as a result of the ruling.

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11 comments:

  1. Aye curious, Yougov just published a new poll - the Brits are feverishly clutching at old straws. They probably (initially) decided not to publish the YES-majority, hoping it would go away but now the creepy hope is to dilute the YES majority momentum. THIS winter's 'Eat-orHeat' will crush that BritNatzy party.

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  2. I suspect this upward drift for YES is both political (disgust and revulsion following Truss) and a small generational change (deaths and births) - the Supreme court nonsense would pass largely unnoticed (except for those in our political bubble). We will experience the Eat-or-Heat winter that should stabilise us to a permanent YES majority (contingent on the SNP becoming NOT any worse in HRood than it currently is - a big ask perhaps).

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  3. Campbell is an f*n disgrace. Anyone still saying he supports independence needs to have a word with themselves.

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    1. Sturgeon is a f*n disgrace. Anyone still saying she supports independence needs to have a word with themselves. That word would be numpty.

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    2. I take more of a middle line on this. I think Campbell is not anti Indy but anti SNP, regardless of the impact that might have on Indy. Sturgeon's priorities are all wrong. Indy should be her top priority, but there seem to be a fair few other things higher up her list. Her number one priority seems to be herself.

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    3. But Nicola is wonderful! I was blind and lame until she let me touch the hem of her gown and cured me - and people on here say it's a cult!!!
      PS Agree about Campbell. You can be antiSNP without being anti-independence. I certainly am.

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    4. As far as I can see, you've fundamentally misunderstood Stravaiger's point. He's saying, as I understand it, that Campbell's overriding drive is to harm the SNP, and he *doesn't actually care* if in doing so he also harms the cause of independence. The front page of the Mail today is the grotesque but entirely natural end point for a man who, due to his own vanity and petty grudges, has become an enemy of independence. It's hard to see any way back for him from this.

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  4. Flynn was good at PMQs today again. Much better than Blowhard Blackford but that wouldn't be hard. It was long overdue that someone said what he said in his second question. It's a pity however that the Britnat media blanked what he said on energy re Scotland as most people in Scotland will not hear it. Not a word on STV, Scotland Tonight, or BBC Reporting Scotland. Propaganda by ommission a Britnat media specialty. Not sure where Flynn got his £3300 pa being an average bill in Scotland compared to the £2500 average quoted by the Tories for the average householder - this £2500 average obviously being skewed towards the greater amount of English households - but I know my household bill was £2400 last year so it will be a lot higher this year than the £3300 Flynn quoted. The fact that the unit price is the same in Braemar as in the Isle of Wight is just another example of the English screwing Scotland. It's a lot colder in Scotland.
    There is a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the big energy companies and this is facilitated by the Tories but the Britnat media is silent.
    I have not seen anything from the Britnat media on the run of yes majority polls. Another example of propaganda by ommission.

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  5. SCOTLAND'S FUTURE

    In the debate Tommy Shephard SNP MP says that the people living in Scotland should decide if there is a second independence referendum.

    Sadly, not all the people living in Scotland will then get to vote in the SNP UK GE de facto referendum. Is this acceptable? The solution to ensure that all the people who voted for a referendum get the opportunity to vote in a referendum is to use a Holyrood de facto referendum.

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  6. I hate knee jerk conspiracy theories but the advantages of a Holyrood plebiscite election over a Westminster one ( apart from self serving interests among the inner clique of SNP leaders) is so stark that it's hard not to wonder why it has firmed up so solidly.

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  7. The Anglo-British media is the enemy of Scotland. Flynn should call them out as such; we can forget about Sturgeon doing so. Nothing to lose everything to gain.

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