Just a reminder that we have hard evidence that the Scottish public want to be represented by Team Scotland at the Olympics, not Team GB

As we move towards the end of Tokyo 2020 and the accompanying #ButchApronFest, it's worth reminding ourselves of the result of a Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll from the start of this year, which asked in very straightforward, neutral language whether people wanted to be represented at the Olympics by Team Scotland or Team GB.

Currently, Scottish athletes represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games, and Great Britain at the Olympic Games.  Do you think Scottish athletes should represent Scotland or Great Britain at the Olympic Games?  (Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll, 11th-13th January 2021)

Scotland: 47%

Great Britain: 42%

With Don't Knows excluded...

Scotland: 53%

Great Britain: 47%

Some people expressed disappointment at the narrowness of that result, but I think that looks at the issue the wrong way round.  Team GB has been one of the very few propaganda successes for unionism in recent years.  Look at the medals table from the last three Summer Olympics - Great Britain finished fourth in Beijing 2008, third in London 2012, and second in Rio 2016.  There's no question that this means they punched above their weight - to finish second five years ago, they had to outperform countries with much bigger populations, such as China, Russia, Germany and Japan.  There's also no great mystery as to how or why that happened - it's the legacy of the sports-mad Prime Minister John Major setting up a National Lottery in the mid-90s that to a large extent helped to fund athletes from a wide variety of sports.  That's a template that an independent Scotland could quite easily follow if it had similar priorities, but in the meantime British nationalists have the opportunity to claim that Scottish sportspeople are hitched along to a Rolls Royce outfit and that we'd be foolish to give that up for also-ran status.

Not everyone is convinced by that argument, because far more Scottish athletes would be given the chance to actually compete at the Olympics if we had our own team.  But nevertheless, the GB medal haul in recent Games makes a powerful case for some, which I would suggest means it's actually quite remarkable and significant that there's still a majority among the public - however narrow - in favour of Team Scotland and against Team GB.

It may be that GB won't quite match their recent stellar performances in Tokyo anyway.  They're currently in fourth place in the medal table, which would equal 2008 but not 2012 or 2016.  And they also have Australia and the Russians breathing down their necks, so it's still possible that they could finish as low as fifth or sixth.

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I'm continuing to fundraise for forthcoming polling via the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser - please click HERE if you'd like to donate.

Le Royaume-Uni, nul points: Big majority of public demand a SCOTTISH ENTRY in the Eurovision Song Contest, in bombshell for the BBC from Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll

So you've got to allow me the occasional indulgence, OK? Out of a large number of questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, I asked just ONE about the Eurovision Song Contest.  Frankly, you should be praising me for my restraint, because I can think of at least two follow-up questions I could have asked.

At the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest, there will be a United Kingdom entry.  However, in 2019, Scotland and Wales both competed in the Eurovision Choir event as countries in their own right.  In future years, how would you prefer Scotland to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest?

By a Scottish entry: 60%

By a United Kingdom entry: 40%

That's much more decisive than the slim 53-47 majority in favour of a Scottish Olympic team in the Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll in January.  I can think of a few possible explanations for the difference: a) it could simply be caused by pollsters' house effects, ie. perhaps Survation have fewer people in their panel with a strong Scottish identity, b) it may be that people have more of an emotional attachment to Team GB at the Olympics due to specific memories from the past (Torvill & Dean, Linford Christie, Steve Redgrave or whatever), or c) people might have been deterred from abandoning Team GB because larger countries tend to win more medals.  The latter worry is irrelevant to the Eurovision, where smaller countries are not disadvantaged against larger ones.  (Ireland are still the most successful country in the contest's history with seven victories, although they now have Sweden breathing down their necks with six.)

Another difference with the Olympics is that there's no rule that would prevent Scotland competing without first having to become independent - as can be seen not only from the participation of Scotland and Wales in the Eurovision Choir event, but also from Wales having twice had entries in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.  BBC Alba are believed to have toyed with the idea of a Scottish entry in Junior Eurovision but decided against it - although whether that was because of pressure from London isn't clear.  The bottom line is that it's up to the BBC - if they tell the EBU they want a Scottish entry, it would almost certainly happen.  Now that we know what licence fee payers in Scotland want, will they listen?

As I always point out, no Scot has even represented the UK since Scott Fitzgerald in 1988.  Incredibly, Cyprus and France have both been represented by Scots more recently than that.  (Karen Matheson of Capercaillie fame sang for France in 1996.)  The lack of Scottish representation deprives us of a golden opportunity to promote Scottish culture and boost tourism.

I shall now embark on the unusual task of giving you the Eurovision preferences of various demographic and political groups.  Women are significantly keener on a Scottish entry - the majority is 64-36 among female respondents, compared to a narrower 55-45 among men.  Yes voters from 2014 are overwhelmingly in favour of Scottish representation, and among current Yes supporters there's near unanimity - only 7% want to be represented by the UK.  The position isn't quite so clear-cut among No voters - 34% of people who voted against independence in 2014, and even 25% of people who would vote No in a new referendum, would like a Scottish entry.  Labour voters are close to being evenly divided (44% for Scotland, 56% for the UK), which suggests that even the rump Labour vote still includes a decent number of people who strongly identify as Scottish.

There's a big age divide - under-35s prefer Scottish representation by a majority of almost 3-1, while over-55s are split right down the middle.  And fascinatingly, there's a narrow majority among English-born respondents (53-47) for a Scottish entry.

It's worth making the point that because the Eurovision question is to some extent a proxy for Scottish/British national identity, and because 40% of respondents plumped for the British option, it may well be that certain people in the SNP are over-optimistic about the prospect of Yes support rising consistently above 60%.  The idea that we should wait for that to happen before firing the starting gun on a referendum may be tantamount to giving up on independence completely.

Now, I'm not necessarily going to claim there's a strong thematic link here, but the next two questions in the poll are about nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons were banned by an international treaty that came into force in January this year.  However, the nine countries that are currently believed to possess nuclear weapons, including the UK, have so far refused to sign the treaty. Do you think the UK should join the treaty and dismantle its nuclear weapons?

Yes: 47%

No: 33%

With Don't Knows removed -

Yes 59%

No 41%

There have been polls in the past that have purported to show support for Trident in Scotland, so this could be an early indication that the new treaty is a game-changing moment that will make it a lot easier for campaigners to make the case for disarmament.  As you'd expect, the figures for SNP and Tory voters are reverse mirror images of each other (71% of SNP voters support disarmament and 71% of Tory voters oppose it), but what's much more significant is that Labour voters break 46-37 in favour of joining the treaty and disarming.  That suggests the type of 'atomic unionism' espoused by Jackie Baillie has the potential to cost Labour a lot of votes.  Additionally, 30% of people who voted No in 2014, and 22% of people who would currently vote No, want to sign up to the nuclear ban - which highlights a possible means by which a future Yes campaign could win more converts.

The UK government argues that its nuclear weapons protect the public due to a 'deterrent' effect.  However, others argue that the presence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde puts the public in greater danger by making the area a target for nuclear attacks, and by creating a risk of serious accidents.  Do you personally feel more safe or less safe due to the presence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde?

More safe: 24%

Less safe: 42%

Makes no difference: 34%

After I saw this result, it occurred to me that some of the 34% who chose the "makes no difference" option may be people who live nowhere near the Clyde and are naive enough to think that makes them safe.  In reality, you'd probably need to be in Shetland to escape the effects of a nuclear attack on Faslane.

There's an age and gender divide on the nuclear questions as well.  Although a plurality of over-55s want rid of the UK's weapons and say they feel less safe because of them, it's a fairly tight result in each case.  And women are significantly less likely than men to think Britain should not disarm or that nuclear weapons make them safer.

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There are still more results to come from the poll.  If you'd like to be the first to know, feel free to follow me on Twitter HERE.

There's no particular reason to think opinion polls are overestimating the Yes vote

First of all, I have an analysis piece in The National today about the new Savanta ComRes poll which puts the Yes vote on 53%.  You can read it HERE.  

Elsewhere in the same paper, Shona Craven argues that the Yes lead in the polls might be misleading, and asks whether Yes voters are significantly more likely than No voters to join volunteer online polling panels.  To which the answer is: almost certainly yes, but it probably doesn't matter that much, because that's what political weighting is there to correct for.  Most polling firms start by asking respondents how they voted in the 2014 referendum, or in some cases it's already known how they voted due to responses in previous surveys.  If there are too many Yes voters in the sample, they are downweighted accordingly.  For example, in the recent Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times, the 494 Yes voters from 2014 were downweighted to count as only 471, and the 560 No voters were upweighted to count as 583.  If that adjustment hadn't been made, the Yes lead would have been higher than the 52-48 that was reported.  And in many other surveys, the correction has been a lot bigger than that.  

If anything, the greater concern ought to be that an over-correction is going on, and that Yes are actually being underestimated as a result.  That's exactly what happened to the SNP in the 2019 election - the polls underestimated them, because people who voted for them two years earlier were being downweighted by pollsters to a target figure that was too low, due to the disproportionate number of potential SNP voters who stayed at home in 2017.  

Don't get me wrong: I think there's no room at all for complacency about the current polling situation.  But that's not because I think there's any particular reason to suppose the polls are wildly overstating Yes at the moment.  The problem is more that the Yes lead is relatively modest, and public opinion can change in the blink of an eye.

The way forward

Should we be bracing ourselves for the sequence of twenty-in-a-row Yes majority polls to be broken? Even just from a purely statistical point of view, it's very possible that could happen - the most recent polls from both YouGov and Survation had Yes on 51%, and the most recent from Panelbase had Yes on 52%. Due to the margin of error, sooner or later you're likely to end up dropping to 49% in at least one poll. And that's before we even consider recent events, which may have checked the momentum behind the Yes movement. Nobody is free of responsibility for that. It's all very well for the SNP leadership to lecture the rank-and-file as if they're unruly schoolchlidren, but the building and maintenance of unity is a two-way process, and yesterday's sacking of Joanna Cherry was a monumentally idiotic unforced error that the leadership have no-one to blame for but themselves. None of the excuses we've heard from anonymous sources are remotely convincing. Even if you're hellbent on punishing a hugely popular frontbencher for alleged 'disloyalty', there are ways of doing it with subtlety and nous. Instead of sacking her, you could move her to a less prominent portfolio, and if she refused to take it, you could present it as a resignation. Or you could offer her a meaningful role away from the frontbench. And what you most certainly wouldn't do is sack two other promiment people from the same wing of the party at exactly the same time as sacking her. What happened yesterday looks like petty factionalism because that's exactly what it is. 

However, we are where we are, and in a strange way the results of independence polls aren't actually the most important thing in the very short-term. So close to an election, we normally set the independence numbers to one side and concentrate almost exclusively on the party political voting intention numbers. It's odd that hasn't happened yet, and it may be because an SNP win and a pro-indy majority at Holyrood look like foregone conclusions. But we know from the 2016 campaign that such an impression can be horribly deceptive. The election has to be taken by the scruff of the neck and won, whether by the SNP alone, or by the SNP and the Greens in combination, or by a three-way combination of the SNP, the Greens, and a Party X involving Alex Salmond. I've no idea whether Mr Salmond is even thinking along those lines, and I know some people are claiming it's impossible anyway because he'd be timed out by the Electoral Commission - but there are always ways and means. He could, for example, join forces with one of the small pro-indy parties that are already registered with the Electoral Commission. If he doesn't take the plunge, though, we have to be realistic and accept that the SNP and Greens are the only game in town and are the only pro-indy parties capable of winning seats. I know that's a bitter pill to swallow for people furious with both party leaderships for their stance on the trans issue and reluctance on Plan B, but it really is true - if we care about independence, this is an absolutely critical election, and in the absence of a Salmond-led party we'll need to set aside all reservations and make an SNP/Green majority happen. And, more ideally, an outright SNP majority. 

Some people are in love with the idea of building up the ISP and winning list seats that way, but without big name backing that simply isn't a viable option. We'll doubtless hear the usual misguided arguments over the coming weeks about how SNP supporters should vote "tactically" on the list for the Greens, and those siren voices should be ignored. But at the end of the day, if you vote Green in the erroneous belief that you're doing so tactically, you're at least voting for a party that has a chance of picking up list seats. That will not be the case if you vote for the ISP or another fringe party.

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Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll: Sensation as Scottish voters give their backing to the McEleny/MacNeil plan to use *this year's* Holyrood election to secure an outright independence mandate

Every time I've crowdfunded a poll, by far the most requested question has been on the subject of a 'Plan B' to secure an independence mandate if a Section 30 order is never granted.  To avoid duplication, I've taken a different angle for the question each time, and it might be worth starting this post with a reminder of the results from the previous three polls (all conducted by Panelbase) - 

January 2020: By a margin of 50% to 39%, respondents said the Scottish Parliament should legislate for an independence referendum in the absence of a Section 30 order, and then allow the courts to decide whether it can take place.

June 2020: By a margin of 49% to 29%, respondents said pro-independence parties should consider using an election at some point in the future to double as an independence referendum.

November 2020: By a margin of 63% to 37%, respondents backed the general principle of a Plan B being used at some point over the coming five-year Holyrood term if the UK Government remains intransigent.

The June question was in principle fairly similar to what Chris McEleny and Angus MacNeil MP are proposing, but it wasn't quite as specific, because of course they don't just want to use an election to obtain an indy mandate at some point in the future - they essentially want to do it right now, in the Holyrood election that is only a matter of weeks away.  So as I'd already covered pretty much every other angle in previous polls, I thought I might as well throw in the kitchen sink this time, and use our new Survation poll to ask about the specific McEleny/MacNeil plan.  I was fully expecting this to be the first occasion on which we'd got a negative result on a Plan B question, because I thought that voters would think that we shouldn't rush our fences, and that we should at least go through the motions of making one last push for an agreed referendum before moving on to Plan B.  But I was wrong.

The UK Government has stated that it will seek to prevent a Scottish independence referendum taking place for several decades, regardless of whether Scottish voters elect a Scottish Government committed to holding a referendum.  In view of this stance, do you think pro-independence parties, such as the SNP and the Scottish Greens, should or should not include an outright independence pledge in their manifestos for this year's scheduled Scottish Parliament election, to give people the opportunity to vote for or against independence?  (Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll, 11th-13th January 2021): 

Should: 45%

Should not: 36%

With Don't Knows excluded, it works out as -

Should: 55%

Should not: 45%

I'd suggest this result poses a major problem for the Pete Wisharts of this world, who base at least part of their opposition to Plan B on the assumption that voters are intrinsically hostile to any way forward that does not involve the express permission of the UK Government, and that the SNP would thus pay a heavy electoral price for flirting with the idea.  But that's a difficult argument to maintain when voters have given the thumbs-up to what is just about the most 'extreme' variant of Plan B - ie. abandoning Plan A right away and going for an outright indy mandate in just four months from now.  SNP voters from the 2019 general election are behind the McEleny/MacNeil plan by the overwhelming margin of 74% to 10%, as are Yes voters from 2014 by a margin of 75% to 12%.  Unionists are naturally opposed on the whole, although substantial minorities of Labour voters (31%), Liberal Democrats voters (26%) and Leave voters (35%) are in favour.  

My own thinking is that once every option for a referendum is closed off, a plebiscitary election should not just be considered a possibility, but should become a default certainty.  However, we will not reach the point of every option having been exhausted until we've legislated for a referendum and the courts have adjudicated upon it - and that can't happen this side of the 2021 election.  On the other hand, Chris McEleny and Angus MacNeil do have a very good point in the sense that if we spurn the opportunity of using this election to gain a mandate, when will the next opportunity come?  We surely can't just twiddle our thumbs until the 2026 Holyrood vote.  In theory, we could easily engineer an early Holyrood election in 2022 or 2023, but there are strong grounds for thinking the current leadership are far too cautious to ever do that.  The only other possibility is the 2024 Westminster election, but I've always thought it would be a big mistake to try to use the 'away fixture' of a UK general election, during which the media would be shoving Britain-wide issues down our throats, to seek an indy mandate.  

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There are still lots more questions to come from the poll, most of them Brexit-themed.  If you'd like to be the first to know when the results are published, you can follow me on Twitter HERE.  

Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll: SNP on course to win 55 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, with the Tories slipping into a deep hole that could finish Douglas Ross' leadership

As I mentioned in the preview video earlier, I was planning to put out both the Holyrood and Westminster voting intention numbers from our new poll today.  However, I later spotted a small problem with the Holyrood tables which Survation are now in the process of resolving, so in the meantime I'll give you the Westminster numbers, which are nothing short of a horror show for Mr Douglas Ross Esquire.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll, 11th-13th January 2021):

SNP 48% (-3)

Labour 23% (+2)

Conservatives 19% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (+1)

Seats projection, with changes from the 2019 election: SNP 55 (+7), Conservatives 2 (-4), Labour 1 (n/c), Liberal Democrats 1 (-3)

In fairness, 19% is not the Tories' lowest ebb recently - they fell as low as 18% in polls from both Survation and JL Partners in the mid-autumn.  However, what is new is the four-point lead that Labour have opened up over their main unionist rivals - they haven't had an advantage as big as that since exactly three years ago, when they were still basking in the afterglow of Jeremy Corbyn's moral victory in the 2017 general election.  

I am seriously beginning to wonder if Douglas Ross is heading for the same fate that befell Jim Murphy in 2015 - ie. only lasting a few months as leader before a single unimaginably bad election finishes him off.  I don't think the Tories are even close to being psychologically ready for a return to third place - it just wasn't on the radar until very recently.  Even when they lost more than half their seats in the 2019 general election, they were still comfortably clear of Labour in terms of both seats and the popular vote.

It would be completely nuts to call the SNP's 48% vote share a poor result, given that it's three points better than they achieved in their 2019 landslide victory.  However, it's their first sub-50 result in any Westminster poll since last March.  Time will tell if that's just a little blip caused by sampling variation - although in the long run it's very difficult for any party to maintain support at quite such a high level.  

Independence supporters often give over-65s a bad rap for being the only age group that is solidly No.  But it's worth making the point that even they would elect an SNP majority if they were the only people allowed to vote.  Voting intentions among over-65s are: SNP 37%, Conservatives 26%, Labour 23%, Liberal Democrats 14%. As was the case for Yes on the independence question, the SNP's best age group is 25-34 year olds, where they enjoy phenomenal 63% support, with the Tories on just 7%.

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There's still lots more to come from the poll, including a big result tonight on whether the SNP and Greens should use the coming Holyrood election as a de facto referendum on independence.  If you'd like to be the first to know, you can follow me on Twitter HERE.  

CROWDFUNDER: A new opinion poll to test support for independence now that the Tories' Hard Brexit has become a cold reality

Click here to go straight to the fundraising page. 

Hi, I'm James Kelly, and I write the pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop, which has a particular emphasis on opinion poll analysis. Over the course of 2020, I commissioned three Panelbase polls with your help. All three showed pro-independence majorities, and they were all landmark results in their own ways - the one at the start of the year put Yes on 52% for the first time since the summer of 2016, the one in June was the first to show that the events of the pandemic had pushed Yes back into the lead, and the one in November saw Yes soar to an all-time high in Panelbase polls of 56%. 

The time is now ripe for another poll. After four and a half years, the terms of Brexit are finally known and will become a harsh reality within just hours. Extraordinarily, and without a shred of evidence, the Conservatives are claiming that Boris Johnson's last gasp, minimalistic trade deal is some sort of monumental setback for the independence movement. They also seem to believe that the public have been successfully hoodwinked into believing that the SNP "voted for No Deal" - when in fact it was only the Conservatives themselves that put us all at severe risk of a catastrophic No Deal outcome. Who knows, perhaps the public are reacting in the way that the Tories want them to react - but that seems highly unlikely somehow, and they should probably be allowed to speak for themselves. 

As before, if the crowdfunder is successful, I will commission an opinion poll from a firm affiliated to the British Polling Council. It will ask the standard independence question, ie. 'Should Scotland be an independent country?', plus a number of supplementary questions of interest to the Yes movement. I'll ask for your suggestions before deciding on the final list of questions. Bear in mind that there's never any guarantee that we'll get the results that we want - but anything is better than unionist parties presuming to speak for the people of Scotland at such a critical juncture in our national story. 

Target figure: I've set a slightly higher target figure of £7500 this time - not because the poll is likely to cost any more than the previous ones, but simply to give us a head start for the spring. It would probably make sense to commission one more poll during the Holyrood campaign proper. 

Click here if you'd like to donate.

An average of all twenty-three polls conducted this year puts support for independence at more than 53%

By overwhelming popular demand (well, a couple of people asked) here is an update of this blog's Poll of Polls.  Just a reminder that rather than including all of the most recent polls, it includes only the most recent poll from each individual firm, to ensure that no 'house effect' is given too much weight.  There are six polls in the current sample - one from Savanta ComRes, one from Survation, one from Panelbase, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from YouGov and one from JL Partners.  The percentage changes are measured from the last published update on 10th November.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 54.8% (-)

No 45.2% (-)

So no change whatsoever!  Of course there's been movement underneath the surface, but it's cancelled itself out.  Panelbase and Savanta ComRes have shown a swing to Yes (a huge swing in the latter case), while YouGov, Survation and Ipsos-Mori have shown a modest swing to No.

It's entirely possible that we've now seen the final Scottish poll of 2020, in which case this is also a good moment to calculate an average of all the year's polls - I can always update it later if another poll unexpectedly turns up.  This isn't as straightforward an exercise as it appears, because there's a debate to be had over what should be considered a 'proper' independence poll.  Twenty-one polls this year have asked the standard independence question, while an additional two have asked about independence using non-standard questions.  There's also been a Scotland in Union propaganda poll asking about "leaving the United Kingdom", which as I always point out can't be considered a question about independence, because it's perfectly possible to leave the UK without becoming independent.  (For example, if Northern Ireland ever leaves the UK, it will almost certainly join another existing state rather than become independent.)  So I've excluded the non-indy propaganda poll, but included the two non-standard indy polls for the sake of completeness - which is hopefully fair enough, because one of the two was commissioned by an anti-indy client (Hanbury) and the other by a pro-indy client (Progress Scotland).

2020 average:

Yes 53.2%

No 46.8%

We've never come close before to a whole calendar year in which there was a majority for Yes, so we've broken that duck in quite some style.  (And in case you're wondering, including the Scotland in Union propaganda poll would have made only a minimal difference - Yes would still have been on 52.8%.)

A few people have also been asking already about future crowdfunded Scot Goes Pop polling.  Obviously I have to be careful not to go to the well too often, because there's always a danger of donation fatigue setting in, but if anyone has any strong feelings about timing, let me know in the comments section below.  The two obvious options are at the start of 2021 when people are coming to terms with the realities of Brexit, and at some point in April/early May, during the Holyrood campaign proper.

Analysis of yesterday's Survation poll: the fifteenth or sixteenth in a row to show a pro-independence majority

Apologies for not covering this yesterday, but I'm sure most of you are already up to speed with it.  A new Survation poll is the fifteenth in a row (or arguably sixteenth in a row depending on definition) to show a majority for independence.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 52% (-2)

No 48% (+2)

Three of the last four polling firms to report have now shown a small recent decrease in Yes support - so that might be significant, but it could still be happening by chance.  The exception was of course the Panelbase poll for this blog in November showing Yes climbing to an all-time high of 56%.  

Westminster voting intention:

SNP 51% (-1)

Labour 21% (+1)

Conservatives 20% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

The changes here don't appear to be of any great significance, as they just revert to the numbers in the last-but-one Survation poll.  Labour's second place seems to be a Survation 'house effect' - it's been seen in all of the last three Survation polls, but not in polls from other firms.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 53% (-1)

Labour 20% (+2)

Conservatives 20% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Greens 1% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 41% (-2)

Labour 20% (+1)

Conservatives 18% (+1)

Greens 10% (n/c)

Liberal Democrats 7% (n/c)

As I always point out, the list numbers from Survation polls need to be taken with a pinch of salt, because respondents seem to be influenced by the way the question is posed.  Some pro-indy voters seem to be left with the impression that they're being asked for a second preference, thus leading to a (possible) understatement of the SNP and overstatement of the Greens.

YouGov indy polling gossip

First of all, if you'd like to read more analysis of yesterday's Ipsos-Mori poll putting support for independence at 56%, I have an article in today's edition of The National HERE.  

I've also just received an email from a reader to let me know that another YouGov poll on independence is underway - which might be a cause for dismay, because I suspect that YouGov may be the firm most likely to break the long sequence of Yes majorities (they had Yes ahead by 'only' 51-49 in their last poll).  However, it remains to be seen whether the new poll is even intended for publication, because some of the supplementary questions are a bit odd and have the look of a private poll.  There's a question about how the army should be branded in Scotland, and also one about whether the unionist parties should form an electoral pact on the constituency vote in May.  (Seems a bit of a pointless query, because it's surely unthinkable that Labour in particular would be willing to go down that road.)

Make that fourteen/fifteen in a row: Ipsos-Mori shows yet another huge majority for Scottish independence

I wasn't sure if we'd see any more independence polls before the end of this calendar year, but today brings word of something really important - it's only the second telephone poll conducted in 2020, and it's another cracker.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos-Mori/STV)

Yes 56% (-2)

No 44% (+2)

This is the fourteenth poll in a row which has produced a Yes majority on the standard independence question - although many people will say it's the fifteenth by adding in one poll with a non-standard question.

Unionists will of course point to the apparent small swing back to No, but the fact is that this is the second-highest ever Yes vote recorded in a telephone poll, and indeed the joint second-highest ever Yes vote recorded in any sort of poll.  What's more, the previous Ipsos-Mori poll in October contained significantly too many respondents who recalled voting Yes in 2014, and the new poll doesn't, so there's a genuine case to be made that the 56% in this poll is as good as, or better than, the 58% in the last one.  

The latter point makes it hard to read the general trend, because the last two polls from other firms gave a contradictory indication - YouGov suggested a small drop for Yes, while Panelbase reported a small increase, taking Yes to a new high watermark.  It still looks entirely possible that nothing much has changed since independence support reached its peak in the summer, but we'll have to await further polls to be sure.

Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:

SNP 55% (-3)

Conservatives 22% (+3)

Labour 14% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Greens 1% (n/c)

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:

SNP 47% (-1)

Conservatives 22% (+4)

Labour 16% (+2)

Greens 7% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Seats projection (with changes from 2016): SNP 73 (+10), Conservatives 27 (-4), Labour 19 (-5), Greens 5 (-1), Liberal Democrats 5 (n/c)

So a small apparent recovery for the two largest unionist parties since the last Ipsos-Mori poll, but again that can perhaps be partly explained by the fact that there were too many 2014 Yes voters in the sample for the previous poll.  Either way, the SNP remain on course for a comfortable overall single-party majority of 17 seats, with pro-independence parties in combination taking more than 60% of the seats.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll: Scottish public think Nicola Sturgeon has outperformed her fellow world leaders in her handling of the pandemic

Last but not least in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, we have an opportunity to see how Nicola Sturgeon shapes up in a league table of selected world leaders - and we all know how thrilled our unionist friends always are to see Ms Sturgeon receiving her due recognition alongside her fellow world leaders.  Bear in mind that this is a poll of voting-age respondents in Scotland.  

How good or bad a job do you think the following leaders are doing in their response to the coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE USA:

Very Good: 2%

Good: 5%

Bad: 13%

Very Bad: 68%

Neither Good Nor Bad: 9%

Total Good: 8%

Total Bad: 82%

Net Rating: -74

I know there appears to be a small discrepancy in the numbers, but that'll be due to the effect of rounding.  As you'd expect, Trump has an abysmal reputation across all demographics and partisan loyalties, and interestingly there's no difference between Yes and No voters on this one - he has a net rating of -75 among people who voted Yes in 2014, and -74 among people who voted No.  There is, however, a slightly bigger difference between people who would currently vote Yes and No, which is logical enough, because the No coalition has shrunk in recent months and has presumably been left with a bigger percentage of right-wingers.  Trump's least-worst rating is among Conservative voters, but that's not saying much - exactly half of Tories say he's done "very badly".

NICOLA STURGEON, FIRST MINISTER OF SCOTLAND:

Very Good: 29%

Good: 37%

Bad: 9%

Very Bad: 12%

Neither Good Nor Bad: 12%

Total Good: 66%

Total Bad: 21%

Net Rating: +45

What leaps out at me here are the differences between voters for the various unionist parties.  Ms Sturgeon has won over both Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, who give her net ratings of +28 and +51 respectively.  The die-hards who will presumably always say she's performing badly no matter what she does are mostly to be found among Tory voters, who give her a net negative rating of -21.

BORIS JOHNSON, PRIME MINISTER OF THE UK:

Very Good: 5%

Good: 14%

Bad: 21%

Very Bad: 43%

Neither Good Nor Bad: 15%

Total Good: 19%

Total Bad: 65%

Net Rating: -46

Ouch.  Would it be tactless of me to say these figures are a "disaster" for the unionist cause?  In a reverse mirror image of the results for Ms Sturgeon, only Tory voters give Mr Johnson a positive rating - although there are plenty enough Tories who hold him in disdain.  28% of them think he's handled the crisis badly or very badly.  The only other group where he gets even close to respectability is current No supporters, who give him a net negative rating of 'only' -13, but of course that'll be largely because such a significant percentage of current No supporters are Tories.

ANGELA MERKEL, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY:

Very Good: 18%

Good: 34%

Bad: 5%

Very Bad: 4%

Neither Good Nor Bad: 23%

Total Good: 52%

Total Bad: 9%

Net Rating: +43

You wouldn't think there'd be such an ideological and/or partisan element to people's appreciation of Ms Merkel's assured response to the crisis, but in fact it appears that anti-European prejudices are rearing their ugly head here.  No supporters are more grudging than Yes supporters, and her least good numbers are to be found among Tory voters - although even they give her a positive rating of +18.  

WORLD LEADER LEAGUE TABLE:

Nicola Sturgeon: +45

Angela Merkel: +43

Boris Johnson: -46

Donald Trump: -74

I'm sure Douglas Ross and George Foulkes will gladly confirm that this outcome makes us all feel incredibly proud to be Scottish.  

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You can read my comment piece in The National on the BBC results from the poll HERE.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll: Staggering three-quarters of voters think the BBC have failed to make the public aware of how the Internal Market Bill will reduce the Scottish Parliament's powers

As I mentioned the other day, one of the difficulties of polling about public attitudes to the Westminster power-grab contained in the Internal Market Bill is that most people aren't even aware of it, due to the mainstream media's abject failure to report it.  No-one would expect anti-independence newspapers to go out of their way to draw attention to something that would be unhelpful for their side of the debate, but what of the public service broadcaster that so many people look to and trust to give them impartial information?  I thought it might be worth asking respondents what they think about the BBC's non-reporting of the power-grab.   

Do you think the BBC have done enough to make the public aware of the changes to the Scottish Parliament's powers proposed by the Internal Market Bill?  

Yes 23%

No 77% 

I was actually quite staggered by that result - I thought we might see an even split, with independence supporters being critical of the BBC and unionists more content.  But in fact this is a rare example of literally every demographic or political group mentioned in the datasets reaching the same conclusion.  89% of SNP voters, 68% of Labour voters, 74% of Liberal Democrat voters, 62% of Conservative voters, 86% of Yes supporters, 63% of No supporters, 77% of people born in Scotland and 76% of people born in England all agree that the BBC have failed to properly inform the public. 

My guess is this will have happened because of a straightforward logical process.  Having been just asked a question that summarised the changes to the devolution settlement that the Internal Market Bill entails, respondents will have come to the inescapable conclusion that what is happening is important enough that the public should know about it, and will also have realised that they've heard very little about it on the BBC.  Even for many Tory voters, that will have left only one possible answer to the question. 

So to summarise what we've learned from this poll: when the public know about the power-grab, they think it breaches The Vow and shouldn't happen without a referendum, but many of them don't know about it because the BBC haven't told them, and they think that's wrong.  I'm not sure that's a great look for the state broadcaster.

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There's still a little bit more to come from the poll - if you'd like to be the first to know, you can follow me on Twitter HERE.

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You can read my piece in The National about last night's results HERE.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll suggests strong backing for a Plan B: Almost two-thirds of voters want the Scottish Government to take decisive action to circumvent Westminster's attempts to 'veto' an independence referendum

Quite a number of you specifically asked me to use the new Panelbase poll to ask about support for a Plan B option for securing an outright independence mandate if the UK Government continues to refuse a Section 30 order. I was initially sceptical, because I had posed questions about the two main Plan B ideas in the earlier polls this year. The January poll found backing for the Scottish Parliament going ahead with legislation for a referendum, and allowing the courts to decide whether the vote can take place. And then the June poll found even stronger support for the option of using a scheduled election to obtain an indy mandate. I wasn't sure there was much to be gained from repeating those questions. However, it was pointed out to me that with big votes coming up very soon at the SNP conference, it was important to have up-to-date information about the public's wishes. So on this occasion I decided to simply ask about the general principle of pressing ahead with a Plan B. 

Imagine that the pro-independence parties win a majority of seats in next year's Scottish Parliament election, but the UK Government still refuses to agree to an independence referendum. In that scenario, do you think the Scottish Government should ensure the Scottish people are given a choice on independence over the course of the next parliamentary term, or should it accept that the UK Government has a veto on an independence referendum? 

The Scottish Government should ensure the Scottish people are given a choice on independence: 63% 

The Scottish Government should accept that the UK Government has a veto on an independence referendum: 37% 

If I had been writing the question a week later than I did, I might have worded it slightly differently, because 'accepting a veto' closely echoes language used in the SNP leadership's draft motion for conference, which is based on the questionable assumption that simply saying "we don't accept the veto" will by some metaphysical means force the UK Government to grant a Section 30 order. It's important to stress that the result of this question indicates that the overwhelming majority of the public want the Scottish Government to actually take action to circumvent the veto, rather than continuing to talk impotently about how "unsustainable" the situation supposedly is. 

60% of Labour voters think that there should be a democratic choice on independence, regardless of Downing Street's wishes, as do a very healthy 46% of Liberal Democrat voters. However, I couldn't help but think it's richly ironic that a slender majority of people who vote for a party with the words "liberal" and "democrat" in its name think there should be a Westminster veto on the democratic process in Scotland! (Admittedly the subsample of Lib Dem voters is pretty small.)  As you'd expect, the strongest support for the veto comes from Tory voters (86%), people who voted No in 2014 (61%), and people who would still vote No in a second indyref (82%). 

Tonight's second question is a little different from the others. When I ran the poll in June, Dr Tim Rideout of the Scottish Currency Group asked me to add on a question about currency, and offered to provide funding to cover the additional cost. It was already too late in the day by that point, but he made the same request this time, and I agreed. So this question was written by Tim (or at least he was the one that sent it to me), although I did tweak the wording just slightly before submitting it to Panelbase. 

The SNP's policy is that if Scotland becomes independent, a new Scottish currency would be introduced as soon as practicable after Independence Day, to ensure that Scotland has control over its own monetary and fiscal policy, and interest rates. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this policy? 

Completely agree: 30% 

Somewhat agree: 29% 

Somewhat disagree: 12% 

Completely disagree: 29% 

TOTAL AGREE: 59% 

TOTAL DISAGREE: 41% 

Bear in mind that what is described in the question as the SNP's policy is what was passed at conference last year, and is somewhat more radical than the leadership's own wishes in calling for a new currency "as soon as practicable". Naturally the strongest backing for the policy comes from current Yes supporters (89%), people who voted Yes in 2014 (86%), and SNP voters (87%). But intriguingly half of Labour voters want a Scottish currency in the event of independence, as do a significant minority of 2014 No voters (37%). 

You'll doubtless have spotted that this result appears to directly contradict the recent Survation poll for Progress Scotland, which showed support for retaining Sterling in the long-term. The reason for the difference is probably that the new question briefly explained the rationale for a change of currency. It looks like respondents were convinced by the need for Scotland to be able to control its own monetary policy and interest rates.

Speaking personally, I'm a tad ambivalent on this subject, because polls that specifically mention the pound (as the Progress Scotland poll did) tend to find there's an emotional pull for voters towards retaining a currency they're familiar with.  But the experience of 2014 suggests that having a credible policy that doesn't depend on Westminster acting reasonably may ultimately be more important than having a policy that is superficially popular.  So on balance I'm inclined to think that moving towards a new currency with a degree of urgency is the correct approach.

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There's still more to come from the poll over the coming days - if you'd like to be the first to know, you can follow me on Twitter HERE.

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You can read my piece in the Sunday National on last night's results HERE.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll: More than three-quarters of voters expect the Tories to take more powers away from the Scottish Parliament or abolish it completely - and if that happens, almost 70% will be "more likely" to support independence

Last night's results from the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll suggested that voters think the removal of powers from the Scottish Parliament that is currently underway is in breach of "The Vow" that was so pivotal to the No side in winning the 2014 indyref.  But what of the future?  Do voters have confidence that the UK Government will nobly draw a line after the current power-grab and leave Holyrood in peace after that?  Unsurprisingly, the answer is no.

If Scotland does not become an independent country over the next ten years, and if the Conservatives remain in power at Westminster, which of the following three outcomes do you think is most likely?

The UK Conservative government will substantially increase the Scottish Parliament's powers: 23%

The UK Conservative government will substantially reduce the Scottish Parliament's powers: 55%

The UK Government will abolish the Scottish Parliament altogether: 22%

TOTAL REDUCE/ABOLISH: 77%

What ought to be of greatest concern to unionist strategists is that the fears over the future of devolution very much extend to the coalition of support that delivered the No vote in 2014, presumably including many voters who were swayed by the bogus assurances that the Scottish Parliament was permanent and would become much more powerful.  74% of Labour voters, 77% of Liberal Democrat voters, 67% of No voters from 2014, and 59% of people who are currently minded to vote No again, expect that Holyrood will be diminished or abolished over the coming decade. 

To me, this speaks to the strategic blunder that the Conservatives made in abandoning the so-called "respect agenda" under Ruth Davidson's leadership.  Having spent years trying to convince voters that Tory rule was not a threat to the Scottish Parliament, they suddenly noticed that devolution - or at least devolution under SNP control - was unpopular with a militant core of unionist support, and that it was therefore possible to win a few extra Tory seats by reverting to the old anti-devo or devo-sceptic posture.  But they've lost sight of the fact that the militant core of unionism is only a minority of the Scottish population, and that the pro-devolution majority are listening to the rhetoric as well.  

If the UK Conservative government substantially reduces the powers of the Scottish Parliament or abolishes the Scottish Parliament altogether, would you be more likely or less likely to support Scotland becoming an independent country?

More likely: 69%
Less likely: 31%

Once again, it's not just the Yes die-hards who are saying they would be more likely to back independence in that scenario - so are 71% of Labour voters, 59% of Liberal Democrat voters, 50% of people who voted No six years ago, 32% of those who would currently vote No, and even 27% of Conservative voters.  

Put these results together, and what have you got?  Voters believe the UK Government is likely to follow a course of action - either abolition of Holyrood or a further significant power-grab - that would clearly make a bigger Yes majority much more attainable.  That expectation may be all that is really needed, if Yes campaigners can constantly remind voters of the ongoing threat to devolution and point to the power-grab in the Internal Market Bill as an example of what may be yet to come.

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There's still more to come from the poll over the coming days - if you'd like to be the first to know, you can follow me on Twitter HERE.

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You can read my piece in The National on last night's results HERE.

Day of despair for Douglas Ross as the Tories go backwards in Aberdeen by-election, and are on course to lose TWELVE SEATS in next year's Holyrood vote

I didn't get round to updating my post about the Survation poll yesterday, so for the sake of completeness here are the party political voting intention numbers, with more good news for the SNP and the Yes movement.

Scottish voting intentions for Westminster: 

SNP 52% (+1) 

Labour 20% (-1) 

Conservatives 18% (-2) 

Liberal Democrats 8% (+2) 

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 54% (+1) 

Conservatives 19% (-1) 

Labour 18% (-) 

Liberal Democrats 8% (+1) 

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 43% (+2) 

Labour 19% (+1) 

Conservatives 17% (-1) 

Greens 10% (-) 

Liberal Democrats 7% (-1) 

Brexit Party 2% (-) 

UKIP 1% (-) 

Holyrood seats projection (with changes from 2016 result): SNP 69 (+6), Labour 25 (+1), Conservatives 19 (-12), Greens 11 (+5), Liberal Democrats 5 (n/c)

For anyone who still doubts that the list vote is generally the more important ballot, please note that the Tories are in second place in the constituency ballot, Labour are in second place in the list ballot, and that translates firmly into Labour being in second place in the seats projection.  The exact reverse occurred in 2016 - Labour clung onto second place in the constituencies, but were pushed into third place in terms of seats due to what happened on the list.  

The phenomenon of the Tories' status as the largest opposition party being seriously threatened should perhaps be seen as a 'house effect' of Survation's methodology, because the last Survation poll showed something similar, but other firms have not corroborated those findings in the meantime.  That said, there's no doubt that the Tories are now performing much more poorly than at the peak of the revival under Ruth Davidson.  The new leader Douglas Ross must take his share of the blame for that, because the position seems to have worsened slightly since he took over, and that's coincided with dire personal ratings for him being reported in a couple of polls.

The situation the Tories now find themselves in is arguably reminiscent of where the SNP were just after they elected John Swinney as leader twenty years ago.  They had it all worked out - Alex Salmond, for all his qualities, had supposedly been too abrasive to make the ultimate breakthrough, whereas John Swinney was more like a friendly older brother, impossible to dislike, a bit of a reassuring bank manager figure in the mould of John Smith.  There was just one snag - the voters didn't react to him in the way they were supposed to react, and polls consistently showed that he commanded less confidence than all three of the other main party leaders.  The SNP weren't deterred - they thought the public just hadn't had enough of a chance to get to know Swinney, and he would become popular with time.  But after four years they finally had to admit to themselves that the dial wasn't moving, resulting in the unexpected comeback for Alex Salmond that changed Scottish politics forever.

Same story with Douglas Ross - the public are supposed to like him, but the public haven't read the script provided for them, and my suspicion is they won't change their minds.  How long will it take for the penny to drop?

More evidence that the tide has gone out on the Conservatives can be found in the result of the Kincorth, Nigg & Cove by-election, which although a routine SNP hold, showed a swing of approximately 4% from Tory to SNP.

Kincorth, Nigg & Cove by-election result (first preferences):

SNP 47.4% (+6.7) 

Conservatives 20.2% (-1.3) 

Labour 12.2% (-5.3) 

Independent - Finlayson 10.5% (-0.4)

Liberal Democrats 3.6% (-1.6)

A bit more on that incredible JL Partners poll

Just a quick note to let you know I have a piece in The National about yesterday's JL Partners poll, which showed the pro-independence vote at an all-time high (in online polling) of 56%.  You can read the article HERE.

History made again as Yes vote soars to 56% - the highest ever in an online poll

Today brings word of something of an oddity - the first ever poll on independence conducted by a firm called JL Partners, which doesn't seem to be affiliated to the British Polling Council (or not yet, at any rate).  However, the pedigree of the people running it appears to be beyond question.  How and why the poll was commissioned is unclear, because the fieldwork took place well over a month ago, meaning it is less recent than the Savanta ComRes poll that put Yes on 53%, or the legendary Ipsos-Mori telephone poll that had Yes on an all-time high of 58%. For some reason the results have been held back until publication today in Politico, who don't appear to have been the clients.  

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (JL Partners, 17th-21st September 2020)

Yes 56%

No 44%

As far as I can see this is the highest ever Yes vote in an online poll, slightly exceeding the 55% recorded in a Panelbase poll commissioned by Business for Scotland in August.  I would usually add the caveat that it's difficult to find records of polls conducted in the early days of devolution, when TNS/System Three quite often reported pro-independence majorities.  However, to the best of my recollection those were all face-to-face polls, and I don't think there was anything quite like this anyway.

I think there may well be something in the suspicion that has been expressed in the comments section that this was originally an internal poll - maybe for the UK government, maybe for a political party, or maybe for a very well-financed unionist organisation.  The giveaway is the sheer number of supplementary questions that were asked.  I can imagine a pollster self-funding a poll on independence to advertise its services, but there's no way it would go to quite these lengths.  So the million dollar question is: why would a unionist client want to belatedly publicise some extremely negative results? Perhaps there's some kind of internal battle going on, and someone wants to change the narrative.  The poll has been framed as reflecting very badly on Boris Johnson's leadership (and in fairness it objectively *does* reflect very badly on Boris Johnson's leadership), so that may be a little clue.

Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election: 

SNP 56%

Conservatives 18%

Labour 15%

Liberal Democrats 7%

Greens 3%

This appears to be the SNP's best ever vote share in a Westminster poll - even in the run-up to the 2015 election they didn't exceed 54%. It's also the Tories' worst showing, and their first sub-20 showing, in a Westminster poll since last year's election.  Labour, meanwhile, have equalled their lowest share since last December.

Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions: 

SNP 58%

Conservatives 18%

Labour 12%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 2%

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:

SNP 54%

Conservatives 18%

Labour 13%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 5%

Those are obviously catastrophic results for the Tories, but it gets worse.  There's also a question on public attitudes towards the Conservative party, and it brutally unmasks the extent of hatred among people who don't vote Tory.  73% have a negative view, and only 22% have a positive view - just barely above the actual current Tory vote, which is already down to the abysmally low levels John Major was receiving in the mid-to-late 90s.  The whole Ruth Davidson circus might as well never have happened.

A good - if obvious - tip for the US presidential election

As I've mentioned before, I have a winning track record on political betting, albeit based on a very small number of bets over the years...

* A few months before the 2010 general election, I was bullied (all right, badgered) into a supposed mug's bet by a certain "international thriller writer" on Stormfront Lite.  He was convinced the Conservatives would win an overall majority, I begged to differ.  I won.  (He then sent me his latest novel in lieu of my winnings.)

* A couple of years before the 2014 indyref, I was bullied (all right, badgered) by another Stormfront Lite poster into another three "unwinnable" bets - a) that Yes would win, b) that Yes would not lose by more than a 15% margin, and c) that 16 and 17 year olds (or "children" as someone sneered) would have the right to vote.  I won two of the three, and made a net profit.

* At some point prior to the 2015 general election, I made a final private bet with a Stormfront Lite poster (Antifrank, no less), although there wasn't any bullying involved this time.  He thought Labour would gain more seats from the Scottish Lib Dems than the SNP would, and I took the opposite view.  I won.

* On the day of the 2016 EU referendum, although I still thought Remain were the most likely winners, I placed a bet on Leave because it seemed to me the odds were ludicrously out of kilter with opinion polls that were still very tight.  In retrospect people's reasons for being so certain of a Remain victory were extremely circular - one group of people was convinced because another group of people was convinced.  There were always dark murmerings about private polls, but the reality is those would have been showing much the same as the public polls.

* Six months later at the US presidential election, I toyed with a bet on Donald Trump on a similar basis to my Leave bet.  In the end I held off until well after the polls closed, but remarkably, even after it started to become clear that things were going Trump's way, Hillary Clinton remained the clear favourite and it was possible to get extremely good value odds on Trump.  I've noticed that when surprise election results occur, there often seems to be a 'lag' effect on the betting markets.  It's as if punters can't quite accept what they're seeing with their own eyes.  The same thing happened in the EU referendum, and also when Bernie Sanders won Michigan.  

* On the day of the run-off for the 2017 French presidential election, I spotted an opportunity for a value bet on Macron securing between 65% and 70% of the vote.  The provisional exit poll figures suggested he could go very close to 65%, yet the odds on that outcome remained very steep.  As soon as the official exit poll predicted he'd be slightly above 65%, I cashed out and took a partial profit straight away to be on the safe side (although obviously with hindsight I wish I hadn't).

* In this year's Polish presidential election, I placed a bet against Andrzej Duda, who was mysteriously the strong odds-on favourite in spite of being more or less level in the polls.  I lost, but I'm still convinced it made perfect sense as a value bet.

So, armed with that track record, let me point out something that should be blindingly obvious - there is overwhelming evidence that Joe Biden is heading for a convincing victory next month, and yet the odds on the betting exchanges imply that Trump still has a roughly 1 in 3 chance of winning.  It just doesn't add up.  I'm not saying that a bet on Biden is 'free money', there's still an element of risk, but for Trump to win something pretty improbable would have to happen - either there would have to be a systemic polling error of a magnitude much greater than was seen in 2016, or a random event would have to occur to totally change the trajectory of the campaign, and it would have to be a dramatic enough event to overcome the substantial lead Biden presumably already has as a result of early votes that cannot now be changed.

The bottom line - if you don't mind your money being tied up for a couple of weeks, a bet on Biden (or perhaps a lay bet against Trump for extra security) is just about the most clear-cut value bet you'll ever see.

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Click HERE for the Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser - just £300 away from reaching its target!

Your suggestions for poll questions, please

First of all, thank you to everyone who has donated to the crowdfunder so far.  I was particularly grateful to Paul Kavanagh for spontaneously helping to promote it, literally just a couple of days before he was taken ill.  It was great to see him in such good form in his telephone interview with The National the other day, and I know that all our thoughts and good wishes continue to be with him as he recovers.

After just over a week, £5208 has been raised of the £6000 target.  As always happens, the rate of donations has slowed as time has gone on, so there's no guarantee we'll make the target, but with a bit of luck it should now be possible to commission another opinion poll of some description.  I'm still mulling over the timing - it'll be at some point between now and mid-December.  But now is certainly not too early to be thinking about possible questions, so if you have any brilliant suggestions, please leave them in the comments section below.

On a completely unrelated subject, someone raised concerns the other day about the supposedly unappealing range of candidates for President of Scotland we'd be faced with if we became independent and then abolished the monarchy.  So I'd also like to ask for your nominations for President, and then maybe I'll run a strictly unscientific internet poll about that.  I'm looking for serious nominations, mainly - I'll be interested to see if we can demonstrate that we can produce Presidents that are just as good as Ireland has managed of late.  (And remember that even if we retain the monarchy, we'd probably still need a Governor-General, which amounts to the same thing apart from the lack of democratic accountability.)