Thursday, December 1, 2022

WINGS-WATCH: Thousands mystified as blogger claims Yes vote has been flatlining on 52% for the last three years, only a week after he claimed it has been flatlining on 47% for the last six years

Even Agatha Christie would struggle to come up with a plausible-sounding resolution for this mystery.  It's only one week since Stuart Campbell informed his readers that support for independence has remained absolutely static on 47% since 2016, and even supplied a Lib Dem-style chart to 'prove' his point.  Today he's posted about the new Redfield & Wilton poll showing Yes on 52%, which you'd think he'd be compelled to say is indicative of a rather sudden and marvellous 5-point jump after all these years of supposed "flatlining".  But nope, the story is now that Yes has been absolutely static at 52% since February 2020, just under three years ago.  It's almost like the laws of physics work differently over at Wings - no matter how much the Yes vote may go up or down, it's somehow still flatlining.  Actually, it's a kind of retconning - whatever the Yes vote is today, that's what it's always been.  Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, Yes has always been on 52%.


Of course the explanation is simple enough - Mr Campbell is treating his readers as mugs who have the attention-span of goldfish.  But let's take a moment to put this new poll in a more appropriate perspective.  Somewhat ironically, in order to make his bogus point today, Mr Campbell had to give Scot Goes Pop an indirect plug, because the February 2020 poll he's using as his baseline was in fact a Panelbase poll commissioned by yours truly.  I remember it well, because on the Friday before publication I was told by Panelbase that the Yes vote would most likely be 49%.  This was a major disappointment for me, because my hope had been to demonstrate that the December 2019 general election (which made Brexit inevitable but also produced an SNP landslide) had pushed Yes into the lead.  So I spent the weekend trying to work out how to put a brave face on 49% - only to be told on the Monday that the preliminary figures had been wrong and it was actually 52%.  Suddenly it was front page material for The National after all.

But the fact that it was Panelbase I commissioned is the first clue as to where Mr Campbell is misleading people. Panelbase and Redfield & Wilton are different firms with different methodologies, and you can't directly compare a poll from one with a poll from the other.  I'd be all over any mainstream media outlet that attempted a stunt like that, so there's no reason why Mr Campbell should be held to a lesser standard. This in fact appears to be only the third Scottish independence poll Redfield & Wilton have ever conducted.  The previous two were both in the second half of 2021, and both showed Yes on 48% and No on 52%.  So by that measure, 52% for Yes represents substantial progress.

Across all firms, this is the twenty-second independence poll to be conducted since the start of 2022.  It's produced a higher Yes vote than all but two of the previous twenty-one - and those two exceptions were Ipsos-Mori polls which used a non-standard question.  So although it's not possible to make direct comparisons between polls conducted by different firms, this pattern could potentially suggest that Yes support is currently higher than it has been at any previous point during the year, with by far the most likely explanation being the Supreme Court's ruling that Scotland is a prisoner in an involuntary union.

Furthermore, 52% is significantly higher than the polling average for Yes in all but one calendar year in the past.  It's much higher, for example, than the average of 45.3% in 2017 or the average of 45.5% in 2018.  The only year in which the average was slightly higher than 52% (indeed the only year in which it's been higher than 50%) was the 53% recorded in 2020.

So whichever way you cut it, 52% is an unusually high Yes vote.  That doesn't mean, of course, that the vote will necessarily hold up at that high level, but it does mean that anyone who looks at 52% and shouts "flatlining!" is not being intellectually honest.


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30 comments:

  1. Lovin' this new wingswatch feature James!

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  2. The not too intelligent Wings has form for contradiction and inconsistency in his spurious output. Luckily for him his readers, contributors and donors are even dumber than he is: which, as you have recently illustrated, is really really dumb.

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    1. In the dumb stakes I raise you and present WGD numpty Alex Clark who says: " So far, as I make it out the Scottish Government's plan for an independence campaign following the post -2019 election was blown out of the water by the Covid pandemic." What a numpty. Sturgeon said in her speech in January 2020 that there would be no referendum because there was no sec 30. Covid was not a thing then and was not mentioned. Totally delusional numpty.

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    2. Why attack WGD who supports independence but don't attack Wings or Labour or the Tories or the Lib Dems who don't?

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    3. Alex Clark really thinks there was going to be a referendum in 2020/2021 if it wasn't for Covid but in his next paragraph he goes on to say that the London court saying no was all part of Sturgeons master plan. The latter contradicts the former but being a WGD numpty Clark just cannae see it. This numpty thinks Sturgeon has a super duper master plan. It truly is incredible the lengths numpties go to to try and make sense of Sturgeon's actions and retain their belief in her to deliver independence.

      I've got news for you Alex - Sturgeon never intended to have a referendum but raised over £600k for office refurbishments on the back of this lie way back in 2016/2017.

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    4. Anonymite - WGD supports the political party called The Surrendering National Party and is a charlatan.

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  3. Yes. Keep it up. Might make him make a bit more sense in the future even if he never admits it affects him it might.

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  4. I check in with wings most days, have done for years, but it’s quite clear the Rev is praying for a No if we get our vote in 2 years.

    A life long Indy supporter but he doesn’t want the SNP or Sturgeon to deliver.

    Don’t get me wrong, the SNP have become a sham but we need to band together and give them one last chance.

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  5. Blackford resigns. Blowhard blown out like a candle in the wind.

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    1. But unlike Marilyn Monroe, we never wanted to see him naked.

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  6. The new poll used the Holyrood franchise - ie it included 16 and 17 year olds

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    1. Fabulous point, Nick - you've correctly identified that it's just like every other independence poll. (For anyone detecting a touch of sarcasm, it's because Nick is one of the Wings fans who have been sending me abusive messages for weeks.)

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  7. You have to wonder whether the Wingnuts really are that gullible, or whether the fake "Rev" just THINKS they are.

    Maybe they really are. The vocal ones anyway, the usual suspects.

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  8. Please make Wings Watch a permanent feature. It's an invaluable corrective.

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  9. Wingswatch absolutely invaluable, but let's not forget Skier watch, different graphs, different ideas, different people.

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    1. Skier Watch has crossed my mind once or twice, but it would be quite a niche audience.

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    2. I'd be in that niche.

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  10. You are very entertains! Ta xxx

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  11. Sorry..typo that was entertaining was bursting ma sides

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  12. IF (!) we do manage to gain our independence in the next few years the SNP is likely to still be the largest political entity in the country. It will no longer include me.
    We need to have a strategy to deal with the immediate, post independence, government being made up of cliqueish, managerial careerists likely to be subverted by the greedy and callous via 'inducements' and lobbying.
    Forming, in the here and now, a broader based equivalent campaign to the RIC of 2014 may be the answer.
    Working alongside the SNP but with it's own material and a strong commitment to a new Scotland where a significantly fairer distribution of wealth and power prevails.
    Seems to me that the 'supreme' court ruling is already beginning to generate such a movement. It will need grown up attitudes of being able to work closely with people of differeing political views to make it work.
    Let's be optimistic - managerial cliques don't actually have much to offer to most people. Get ready to fight the first, post independence, general election !

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  13. A challenge to all the SNP backing numpties. Tell me one thing the SNP MPs have achieved in Westminster apart from improving their bank balances, expanding their waistlines and giving their liver a hard time.

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    1. Do you think the SNP backing numpties which are half the voting population of Scotland will be delighted to hear that's what Alba supporters think of them and maybe another reason why they won't vote Alba

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    2. Anonymous - so you couldn't think of one thing could you. If you want independence but keep voting for a party that does SFA to deliver independence that makes you a numpty in my book. I'm guessing that sums up you.

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  14. James on the previous thread:

    What's clearly going wrong here is that the SNP are losing pro-independence votes to Labour at Westminster, because people can see that Labour are on the brink of power and (wrongly) think that voting Labour is the best way to finish off the Tories. That problem isn't going to go away, unless Labour's mammoth GB-wide poll lead collapses over the next two years.

    If the Labour lead falls, wouldn't that make the problem worse? At the moment, Scots who regard a Labour government as the lesser of two evils can vote how they like, safe in the knowledge that the Tories are done for anyway. That's no longer the case if it starts looking like an actual contest at UK level. Right?

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  15. Broxburn Uphall and Winchburgh B-election:
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fi993CrXkAAVeBd?format=jpg&name=medium
    First preferences deficit of 207 votes reported as reducing to 14 after 8(!) rounds of transfers for narrow Lab victory.
    8.5 % SNP->Lab swing on first prefs

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