Poll of Polls : the long-term trend towards Yes

As the evidence mounts that journalists in the mainstream media (including the BBC, the Scotsman and the Guardian) have been letting their profession down all day by earnestly reporting the results of what is little more than a voodoo poll, I thought now would be an opportune moment to step back into polling reality and have a look at the long-term trend towards Yes that has taken place over the last few months. One or two people have asked me to provide some sort of graph for the Poll of Polls, which I would really like to do, but I've no experience of that kind of thing and I can't make head nor tail of the online chart generators that I've looked at. If anyone can point me in the right direction that will be great, but in the meantime I'll just give you the numbers. I'm hugely grateful to Ivan McKee of Business for Scotland, who retrospectively calculated the figures all the way back to September of last year and sent me his table.

The No campaign's lead in the Poll of Polls headline figures :

Sep 2013 - 20.2%
Sep 2013 - 20.0%
Sep 2013 - 18.4%
Oct 2013 - 17.9%
Oct 2013 - 17.5%
Oct 2013 - 17.4%
Nov 2013 - 17.5%
Dec 2013 - 17.1%
Dec 2013 - 16.3%
Dec 2013 - 16.2%
Dec 2013 - 15.8%
Jan 2014 - 14.2%
Jan 2014 - 14.8%
Feb 2014 - 14.8%
Feb 2014 - 14.7%
Feb 2014 - 15.1%
Feb 2014 - 13.6%
Feb 2014 - 14.0%

As you can see there was a very steady trend towards Yes until the start of this year, since when the position has oscillated somewhat, but we've nevertheless ended up right now with the second-lowest No lead to date - and that's from a sample that has a substantial post-Osborne chunk. Almost a third of the deficit (6.2% out of 20.2%) has been made up since September.

A small prediction for 2014...

If there's a Yes vote in September, the first we'll hear from John Rentoul, Euan McColm et al will be something along the lines of -

"OK, OK, so we've had the Nat-friendly Panelbase 'result'. Now let's get serious - when's the Ipsos-Mori declaration due?"

Happy Christmas when it comes - and don't forget to leave a carrot out for Santa!

UK government keeping it unreal

From the BBC yesterday -

"The new Scottish Secretary reckoned David Cameron should not take part in TV debates about the 2014 referendum with Alex Salmond as it would allow the SNP to present "a choice between a vision of Scottish social democracy and English Conservatism"."

You mean the SNP would rather have a debate that presents the choice faced by the electorate in its authentic form? The scoundrels! You tell 'em, Alistair - it's much more fun if we have a TV debate that pretends a No vote will somehow result in Alistair Darling replacing Cameron as UK Prime Minister, and will magically usher in a golden era of 'British social democracy' (now almost a contradiction in terms) for the first time since the 1970s.

"Alistair Carmichael said: "As prime minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron has an important part in Scotland's public life, but he's not a Scot.""

Er, yes, and that's kind of what we're deciding in this referendum, isn't it? Whether someone who does not represent a Scottish constituency, and who wouldn't get elected to government in Scotland in a million, gazillion years, should be allowed to continue playing an "important part in Scotland's public life"? Or to put it more bluntly, whether Cammo should be able to continue lording it over Scotland without a democratic mandate?

As Cammo's right (and the right of his Tory and Tory-lite successors) to rule Scotland is on the ballot paper in this referendum, shouldn't he be the one defending that system? Particularly, you know, as he once muttered something about "fighting with every fibre of his being" to keep Scotland firmly within Tory Britain? I'm beginning to have some doubts about just how many fibres were in his being in the first place...

* * *

And from Channel 4 News, a timely reminder that Cameron and his successors are not the only external menace that will retain a presence in Scotland in the event of a No vote -

"The Trident missile, which is the principle nuclear weapon that Great Britain has, has some safety issues that were revealed in a report to Congress more than twenty years ago...the warheads are not on top of the missile as they traditionally are. They surround the third stage rocket engine, and that rocket engine has a propellent, a fuel, that explodes very easily if it's dropped. So I hope in Scotland that they're very careful when they're loading and unloading the missiles."

Oh great. I live just thirty miles from Faslane. Given that each Trident missile carries several warheads, and given that each warhead is about eight times more powerful than the bomb that obliterated the city of Hiroshima and indiscriminately snuffed out the lives of tens of thousands of civilians (including countless children), I suddenly don't feel particularly safe. Let's crack on with winning over those undecided voters, if only in pursuance of that most basic of Tory principles - the right to protect our own homes from external threats.