WINGS-WATCH: Fact-checking the bogus claim that the new Panelbase poll shows "SNP voters hate women"

So as Magnus Magnusson used to say back in the day, there's "just the one" factual inaccuracy to be corrected from today's Wings output - but, alas, it's an absolute whopper.

Mr Campbell claims that the majority of SNP voters who replied to Panelbase's latest poll think that the Scottish Government's planned gender recognition reforms pose a threat to women's safety, and that the majority of SNP voters in the poll also say that the reforms would make them even more likely to vote SNP.  He then goes full Sherlock, dons a deerstalker hat, puts two and two together and makes twenty-two, and declares that this combination of alleged results means that SNP voters hate women because they must be positively enthused about a policy that they think will put women at risk.  To emphasise that he means this absolutely literally, he sums up as follows...

"SNP voters say they’re MORE likely to vote for the SNP specifically because of a policy that they themselves think puts women in danger."

VERDICT: Lie.  There is, in fact, not a scrap of evidence in the poll that SNP voters support the idea of women being put at risk, and every reason to believe that the polar opposite is true.  Although a plurality of SNP voters say that the gender recognition reforms would put women at risk, this in fact amounts to only 39% of SNP voters in the sample (31% take the opposite view and the remaining 30% don't know).  Similarly, it's only a plurality of SNP voters who say that the reforms would make them even more likely to vote SNP, and it's a smaller plurality at that - just 28%.

To state what ought to be the bleedin' obvious, it is eminently possible that the 28% of SNP voters who say the reforms make them more likely to vote SNP, and the 39% of SNP voters who say that the reforms will put women at risk, are not actually the same people.  Indeed, it's overwhelmingly likely that they are not.  If there's any overlap at all between the two groups, it's likely to be extremely minor.

From listening to Mr Campbell you'd be forgiven for thinking that SNP-voting respondents to opinion polls all get together in a room and decide what the collective line is by majority vote.  "Right, chaps, we've decided that the reforms put women at risk, so all further questions must be answered in that light."  Er, no, Stu.  Each SNP-voting respondent in an opinion poll is an individual, answering individually, from their own individual perspective.  The question on whether the reforms make people more likely to vote SNP is not a proxy for whether SNP voters hate women or are excited about putting women at risk, because 61% of SNP voters do not buy into that premise and are therefore not answering the question with that premise in mind.

But that doesn't stop Mr Campbell piling bogus assumption upon bogus assumption and wandering deeper into Narnia with this ludicrous statement:

"Indeed, less than one in five of the party’s supporters are troubled by the fact. 53% of them merely don’t care that women will be put in danger, while 28% of them are actively enthused by the idea. (And of that 28%, two-thirds say they’re MUCH more likely, not just a bit more likely, to vote SNP as a result.)"

Back in the real world, it can be safely assumed that most of those "two-thirds of the 28%" come from the substantial minority of SNP voters who DON'T think the reforms will put women at risk.

One thing I will say about the Panelbase poll is that it's a tremendous relief to discover that the gender recognition questions appear to have been commissioned by the Sunday Times and not by Wings.  That means the wording of the questions is much more neutral and the findings therefore have far more credibility.  They add to the vast weight of polling evidence we already have - including from the earlier Panelbase poll commissioned by Scot Goes Pop - that the public are opposed to the reforms which are expected to be passed by the Scottish Parliament this week.  As I've said before, it's not illegitimate in a parliamentary democracy for MSPs to legislate in defiance of public opinion.  But what is absolutely not OK is for them to gaslight us into thinking that they are acting with the support of the public when they are doing the reverse.  Thankfully, we now have enough polls with a clear enough message to make it very hard for them to get away with that.

*  *  *

If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue in some form, donations are welcome HERE.