A (probably) freakish YouGov subsample marks the turn of the decade

The final YouGov poll of the decade produced some truly mad-as-a-bucket-of-frogs figures in its Scottish subsample, with Labour nudging close to 50%, the SNP slumping to fourth place, and the Conservatives somehow clinging onto (joint) second place despite plummeting nine points. Here are the full figures -

Labour 46% (+9)
Liberal Democrats 17% (+9)
Conservatives 17% (-9)
SNP 13% (-11)
Others 3% (-2)

No surprise to see a few leading members of the so-called Tory 'Herd' over at PoliticalBetting.com seize on these numbers, partly to nurse their schoolboy (or in one notable case, schoolgirl) fantasies of the SNP being "squashed" at the general election, and partly to delude themselves that they don't need to take the Labour recovery in the UK-wide headline figures seriously. The argument is that if the narrowing of the Tory lead can be principally explained by a Labour surge in Scotland, it doesn't actually matter, because there are so few Tory target seats north of the border. Curious, though, that Scottish subsamples never seem to be taken quite so seriously by these people when they show, as many have done, the completely opposite story - that Labour's vote has fallen further since 2005 in Scotland than in England. In truth, of course, polls are generally only weighted to the demographics of Great Britain as a whole, and so an oversample of Labour support in Scotland may well be offset by an equivalent undersample in England and Wales.

Talking of PoliticalBetting.com, a belated thankyou to everyone who voted me into (ahem) 27th place in the website's annual 'Poster of the Year' poll. May not sound like much of an accolade, but as an unashamedly left-of centre (not to mention Scot Nat, pro-Europe, pro-PR, anti-fox hunting, climate science accepting) poster on an overwhelmingly right-wing forum, I think I did not too bad! Having now posted there regularly for eighteen months or so, I've finally, finally decided to call it a day. As my fellow former poster Ezio pointed out in a comment here a few weeks ago, there really is very little point in the few remaining left-leaning posters continuing to plug away there, when all it really achieves is to give the site the veneer of remaining the 'broad church' it has now pretty comprehensively ceased to be. I agreed with Ezio at the time, but habits are difficult things to break, and I found myself drifting back. But after yet another round of personal abuse from the 'Herd' yesterday (this time I was a "chauvanistic t*sser"), not to mention the all-too-familiar late-night spat that followed with the most ubiquitous member of the Tory Lady Triumverate when I dared to stick up for myself, I think enough is finally enough. To remove all temptation for me to change my mind this time, I've even removed PB from my blog list here (yes, posting there really has proved that addictive!). I've replaced it with Anthony Wells' UK Polling Report, which is an equally useful resource for up-to-the-minute polling information.

Apart from anything else, I started this blog at roughly the same time as I began posting on PB, and it's sometimes wistfully occurred to me that if I'd spent as much time posting here as I have there (and making cameos on other sites such as Rachel Lucas) I could really have built up this blog by now. Ironically in saying that, I've somewhat lost my appetite for political blogging in recent weeks, but with a general election now firmly in the offing, perhaps that's only temporary. In the meantime, Happy New Decade to all - and I give you fair warning, the Eurovision season is already underway!

When is a compromise not a compromise?

I've already commented at length in previous months about the cynical attempts to stitch up the televised leaders' debates, the dispute over which now appears to be inexorably moving towards legal action, largely it seems due to the broadcasters' unwillingness to contemplate even the slightest compromise or negotiation over the issue. So I won't go round the houses again, but I can only shake my head in disbelief at the way this Scotsman article falls hook, line and sinker for the convenient spin from the other parties that the SNP are trying to 'censor' the debate in some way. If Nick Clegg was being denied fair access to the debate, and the Liberal Democrats sought to remedy that through the courts, would they be seeking to 'censor' the debate? No, they'd be seeking fair access. Same for the SNP. If the London-based parties lack the imaginative capacity to even conceive of a fair four-cornered debate, that's their own deficiency, and shouldn't lead to silly jibes about censorship. "A debate of four? What's "four"? Our counting system only goes up to three - anything else must mean the same as zero."

But, says Tavish, there is a sort of reason for shamelessly discriminating against one - just one - of Scotland's four main parties. The other three party leaders are all "candidates for Prime Minister". And, pray tell Tavish, what precisely is a candidate for Prime Minister in a parliamentary system? When does the ballot for electing the Prime Minister take place? I had naively thought that we elected members of Parliament and then the Queen appointed the parliamentarian best able to command a majority in the House. That parliamentarian could be the leader of a majority party, or of a minority party. He or she could be the leader of a party that stood in a majority of seats, or a minority. He or she could theoretically be the leader of a very small party at the head of a complex coalition, as happens in many other countries. Indeed, he or she need not even be the leader of a party at all (the most recent example being Winston Churchill when he was first appointed). That's the constitutional position. So on that basis Nick Clegg is no more or less a "candidate for Prime Minister" than, say, Angus Robertson.

But perhaps Tavish is not relying on constitutional theory (for his sake, let's hope not) and instead is more interested in a debate between the individuals who have a "realistic chance" of becoming PM. Just one rather large snag, though - that would also rule out Nick Clegg. Some might say it would rule out Gordon Brown as well.

At the end of the Scotsman article are a couple of peculiar observations from politics academic Thomas Lundberg. He suggests that the threat of legal action is a "bit silly" because there is a "reasonable compromise" already on offer - by which he means the additional debates for the Scottish leaders. Perhaps he is unaware that those debates have been taking place (from memory) at every election since at least 1992, and would undoubtedly have taken place again this time anyway? Offering that up as some kind of "compromise" is rather akin to offering someone a compensation payment - but then deducting it from his own wages. The only genuine compromise it seems to me is to allow the SNP and Plaid Cymru a right to reply to the main debates they've been excluded from in a special programme to which the other Scottish and Welsh leaders are not invited. The only credible way to correct the outrageous imbalance of one programme is with another programme that is unbalanced in the other direction.

Additionally, Thomas Lundberg suggests that the proposal for additional Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish debates is fully in line with what happens in Canada. I'd be very intrigued to know if that's actually true, because I can certainly recall hearing about nationwide leaders' debates in Canada in which Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois participated on an absolutely equal basis with all the other national political leaders (Conservative, Liberal, NDP). Simple question - if Gilles Duceppe is a national party leader in Canada, in precisely what sense is Alex Salmond (or Angus Robertson) not in the UK?

ComRes subsample : SNP narrow gap to just two points

The latest UK-wide ComRes poll shows Labour eating into the Tories' lead, but in the Scottish subsample the party has suffered a four-point drop, leaving them with just a two-point advantage over the SNP, and indeed only a four-point advantage over the Scottish Tories, who find themselves soaring to the giddily unfamiliar heights of 24%. Here are the full figures -

Labour 28% (-4)
SNP 26% (-)
Conservatives 24% (+7)
Liberal Democrats 19% (-3)
Others 3% (-)

As ever, it's worth bearing in mind that ComRes tend to have much smaller sample sizes than YouGov - the unweighted Scottish sample in this case was just 79.

Angus Reid subsample : support for both main parties drops

The latest in the new series of Angus Reid Strategies polls for PoliticalBetting.com has a Scottish subsample that could best be described as the 'resumption of normal service', after the previous one had shown implausibly dramatic gains for both Labour and the SNP. Here are the full figures -

Labour 37% (-5)
SNP 25% (-8)
Conservatives 18% (+4)
Liberal Democrats 15% (+8)
Others 6% (+2)

In spite of their four-point recovery since the last Angus Reid subsample, the Scottish Tories nevertheless remain on a dismal sub-20 figure, with little over four months to go until the likely date of polling day.

YouGov subsample : Tories in rare second place

In an abrupt break with the seemingly endless sequence of dismal poll findings for the Scottish Tories, the latest YouGov subsample places them at the giddy heights of 26%, marginally edging the SNP out for second place. Given the consistency of the recent low figures for the party, this looks very much like a statistical quirk thrown up by the inherently huge margin of error in subsamples (although of course you never know). There was a similar quirk earlier in the year, when a YouGov subsample had the Tories holding the joint lead in Scotland. Here are the full figures -

Labour 37% (+3)
Conservatives 26% (+7)
SNP 24% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-11)
Others 5% (-)

It's worth noting that, in spite of the SNP slipping into third place, the gap between themselves and Labour is - once again - lower than that shown by the last full-scale Scottish YouGov poll.

ComRes subsample : Labour edge back into lead

After the contrasting Labour leads in the recent Angus Reid and Populus subsamples, tonight's ComRes figures come in somewhere between the two. A Labour lead of six is also in the midway range between the two recent completely contradictory full-scale Scottish polls from YouGov (15-point Labour lead for Westminster) and Ipsos-Mori (2-point SNP lead for Westminster). Here are the full figures from ComRes -

Labour 32% (+4)
SNP 26% (-4)
Liberal Democrats 22% (+5)
Conservatives 17% (-)
Others 3% (-3)

Also of note is the unusually high showing for the Liberal Democrats, and - at the risk of sounding like a broken record - yet another dismal showing for the Scottish Tories.

Populus subsample : SNP close gap to just three points

A second Scottish subsample in the space of two days has put the SNP well into the thirties - but unlike Angus Reid yesterday, Populus suggests that the party has practically wiped out Labour's big lead from last month. Here are the full figures -

Labour 37% (-7)
SNP 34% (+8)
Conservatives 13% (-5)
Liberal Democrats 12% (+5)
Others 4% (-2)

The SNP's showing is even more encouraging when you bear in mind that it takes place in the context of the best UK-wide poll for Labour in some twelve months. And - it almost goes without saying - this is another terrible subsample for the Scottish Conservatives.

Calling all believers in rational climate science...

Since the blogger 'Plato Says' (now a favourite at the court of James, the Great Pretender - Delingpole, that is) is urging her readers to email their 'spontaneous' thoughts on "climategate" (yawn) to the Met Office's Chief Scientist, I thought I might try to balance things up slightly by also providing Julia Slingo's email address here.

julia.slingo@metoffice.gov.uk

I'm guessing the readers of a left-of-centre, pro-SNP blog might be slightly more persuaded by rational climate science than Plato's audience, so feel free to take her advice and tell Ms Sligo exactly what you think. Perhaps something along the lines of Michael Mates' legendary parting words to Asil Nadir might be in order - "don't let the b*****s get you down..."

And yes, this is, as you may have deduced, a shameless (if nominal) act of retribution on my part against the said Ms Plato, who launched into a bizarre unprovoked personal attack on me yesterday afternoon at PoliticalBetting.com, before in her trademark fashion reverting instantly to passive-aggressive mode. Perhaps being accused of lacking a sense of humour ought to be water off a duck's back, but in this case it's a touch galling a) because it comes from someone who evidently thinks of herself as a great wit on the basis of no discernible evidence whatsoever (yes, the similarities to Mr. James 'How to Be Right' Delingpole himself are indeed striking), and b) because as any long-term readers of this blog will know, while I admittedly lack the capacity for brilliant one-liners, I do regularly indulge myself in the whimsical and the ridiculous. (And if AM2 feels his ears burning, it's just a coincidence.) Indeed, if anything, I've probably indulged that habit much more often over on the pages of PB.com than I have here. Having thought about it yesterday, I think the example I'm most proud of is this one from just over a year ago, in response to an exhaustive list of occasionally mis-spelt Labour "achievements in office" -

"'Develotion' - that sounds like what Peter Andre would come up with if he put the words ‘devolution’ and ‘devotion’ together for a song title.
'Scraping hereditary peers in the House of Lords' - Sounds painful but it's all they deserved. I imagine William Hague had a ringside seat when it was Lord Cranborne's turn to be scraped."

So why have my best efforts apparently gone so shamefully unnoticed all this time? My guess is that posters on the now rabidly Tory-dominated PB.com (it wasn't always thus) have truly come to believe that the term 'sense of humour' is indistinguishable in meaning from the finding of ever-more-inventive ways of pointing out that Gordon Brown 'is a retard' and only has sight in one eye. We've heard a lot about the 'Cybernat' problem recently - but if we were to put together a "Comedy of PB.com - Classic Jokes from the CyberTories" compilation...well, what can I say. In the immortal words of Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder, "if I appear not to be laughing, it's only because I fear my sides would split".

The most generous thing I can say is that it might turn out to be rather reminiscent of Peter Serafinowicz's 'James Bond - Licence to Tell Jokes' DVD.

Angus Reid : SNP soar to 33%

After three successive Scottish subsamples from the new series of UK-wide Angus Reid polls that showed remarkable consistency, the fourth has produced completely different - and in some respects frankly implausible - figures. The Liberal Democrats have slumped nine points to a totally unrealistic 7%. An additional significant fall for the Tories opens the way for a dramatic increase in support for both Labour and the SNP, although with the gap between the two parties staying virtually unchanged from last time. Here are the full figures -

Labour 42% (+9)
SNP 33% (+8)
Conservatives 14% (-4)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-9)
Others 4% (-4)

Although the figures have to be taken with a huge dose of salt, the fact that this fits into a pattern of recent dismal showings for the Scottish Tories cannot be ignored. At this stage, it really does look like the next party of government could have a sub-20% mandate from Scots.

SNP up with ICM, but down with YouGov

The detailed figures from Saturday evening's two UK-wide polls have been released, and once again there are mixed fortunes for the SNP. The YouGov Scottish subsample curiously shows a decline of support for Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats enjoying a six-point jump. Here are the full figures -

Labour 34% (-2)
SNP 22% (-3)
Liberal Democrats 19% (+6)
Conservatives 19% (-3)
Others 5% (+1)

The raw 22% share is clearly disappointing for the SNP, although the overall Labour lead is once again notably more modest than the most recent full-scale YouGov poll indicated. After the previous YouGov subsample had offered a rare glimmer of hope to the Scottish Tories, they once again return to a more familiar sub-20 rating.

ICM do not provide a specific Scottish breakdown, instead lumping the country together with northern England. Here are the latest subsample figures for that highly artificial 'region' -

Labour 38% (-1)
Conservatives 27% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 16% (-2)
SNP 10% (+1)
Others 10% (+4)

This is much better news for the SNP, with 10% being at the upper end of their normal range of support in the ICM 'northern region'.