You might remember a couple of weeks back I posted a brief Twitter exchange I had with the English historian Tom Holland, who seems to be obsessed with preventing Scotland from governing itself, largely on the basis that independence would for some reason ruin his memory of a favourite jigsaw puzzle from childhood. Here's the sequel (it isn't in strict chronological order because otherwise it would be harder to follow) -
Tom Holland : Are the Scots morally superior to the English? A poll cited by Brian Wilson suggest we're all much the same.
Me : We're not morally superior to Canadians either, but that's not an argument for having Stephen Harper as our PM.
Tom Holland : You're not in a hugely successful 300 year old partnership with Canada, though.
Me : I presume you realise Yes voters don't share your view of it as being "hugely successful"?
Tom Holland : I do. Naturally, I think they're wrong.
Me : No wonder, you don't have to live with the nukes in your back-yard - and you almost always get the govt England votes for.
Tom Holland : Would the Tories have had to go into coalition without Scotland?
Me : No. Would we have noticed the difference?
Tom Holland : Probably - but that's not quite the point.
Me : What is the point? Scotland must be held hostage so that England can be dragged 0.03% leftwards by Nick Clegg?
Tom Holland : I'm sure people in Surrey were as resentful of Gordon Brown as people in Glasgow were of Margaret Thatcher. That's democracy.
Me : No, it's not democracy. It's a dysfunctional union. That problem can be sorted, and you don't seem to have a reason not to try.
Tom Holland : Nor do you share a small island with the Canadians.
Me : The UK isn't particularly small - it has almost 1% of the entire global population.
Tom Holland : Less than 1% sounds quite small to me!
Me : 1% of the world's population on a "small island"? As islands go, that's pretty big.
Tom Holland : No, by my reckoning, less than 1% is small.
Me : You need to get out more. There's a whole world of genuinely small islands out there.
Tom Holland : Your logic is devastating.
Me : But your sarcasm isn't. If Britain is a "small island", how many islands can you name with a bigger population?
Tom Holland : We are a small island relative to the large continental powers that dominate/will dominate the 21st century.
Tom Holland : The comparison is with China or the US, not Guernsey.
Me : I see. So "small island" is not a comparison with other islands, but with non-islands? We are therefore a large island?
Tom Holland : No. Australia is a large island. Greenland is a large island.
Me : Both with much smaller populations. Even in geographical terms, Britain spans one-ninth the length of the Northern Hemisphere.
Tom Holland : Your knowledge of geography is as impressive as your ability to miss the point.
Tom Holland : (responding to the 'dysfunctional union' tweet) Well, naturally, I disagree. Let's leave it at that.
Me : Yes, you always seem to leave it when the questions get difficult.
Tom Holland : You seem to me to be dealing in slogans, rather than substantive points. Doubtless you feel the same about me. So - enough.
Me : Rubbish. I asked you a substantive question about nuclear weapons last time and you instantly vanished.
Tom Holland : What question did you ask about nuclear weapons?
Me : "Inhuman weapons within 30 miles of where I live are not 'spin' - they're all too real. Who put them there, and why?"
Tom Holland : I grew up with a whole stash in my backyard. Didn't mean I wanted independence for Wessex.
Tom Holland : If any part of Gt Britain gets nuked, we're all in the s**t.
Me : The context of my question was your claim that Scotland already chooses its own govt. How can we veto nuclear weapons?
Tom Holland : Join CND?
Me : That's a pathetic response. Do you now accept that Scotland does not choose the way it is governed at present?
Tom Holland : Getting rid of nuclear weapons won't make Scotland any safer if they're simply removed to England. It's a British problem.
Me : Yes, it would make us safer. Neither is that the point - why should others choose whether Trident is located on the Clyde?
Tom Holland : It needs to be solved at a British level. I'm with you on getting rid of Trident. But it's a problem for us all in Britain.
Tom Holland : Of course Scotland chooses how it's governed. It has multiple layers of government, all elected.
Me : So how do we use those layers of elected [government] to eject Trident against London's wishes? That's my question. Joining CND won't help.
Tom Holland : I feel we're going round in circles, & TBH I can think of better uses of my time - such as doing the shopping. A bientôt.
Me : Translation: "Scotland cannot choose, I don't think it should be able to choose, but I can't admit that directly." Enjoy Tesco.
Tom Holland : A Parthian shot (at this point he links to a poll conducted by Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft purporting to show that Scots are not as opposed to nuclear weapons as we think - an odd tactic given that it actually shows Scots are opposed to Britain having nuclear weapons by a margin of 48% to 37%)
Me : Well, let's put it to the test, shall we, and actually let the Scottish people decide? As opposed to, y'know, deciding for them?
* * *
There were a few points that I deliberately didn't respond to, because asking three questions at once would have let him off the hook and allowed him to choose which ones to 'notice'. As far as the question of whether removing Trident to England would make Scotland safer is concerned, of course the literal answer is "yes it would" - if Glasgow was the direct target of a nuclear attack, the population would be annihilated instantly, as opposed to having at least some opportunity to protect themselves from the atmospheric fallout that would be produced by an attack across the border. But that's also not the point. Having the democratic right as a country to decide whether we possess nuclear weapons or not allows us to contribute to the global drive to eliminate the existential threat posed by nuclear warfare. It's even open to question whether it would be feasible for London to maintain an independent nuclear 'deterrent' without being able to host it on the Clyde.
In any case, does the fact that London is closer to France than it is to Scotland mean that British nuclear weapons are a "Franco-British problem"? Or does nuclear fallout do the polite thing and stop at the English Channel in Tom Holland's world? And what about French nuclear weapons? Does the fact that Paris is closer to Brussels than it is to Biarritz mean that the French arsenal is a problem that must be solved at "Franco-Belgian-Dutch-German-Swiss level"? After all, all of these countries and more would be "in the s**t" if France was attacked. Where does this logic end?
Oh, and in case you're wondering, Great Britain is the third most populated island in the entire world, behind only Honshu in Japan, and Java in Indonesia. It is also the ninth largest island in the world in terms of geographical area (excluding Australia, which should properly be considered a continent). Tom Holland may think that pointing this out is silly, but if he's going to use emotive George Galloway-esque language such as "partitioning this small island", he's got to be able to justify his definition of "small".
The introduction to Tarkovsky's classic sci-fi film Stalker describes the USSR as "our small country". I laughed at that one as well.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Why do ICM think that only 45% of Scotland's voting-age population is male?
This is something that I haven't really paid much attention to, so thanks very much to Calum Findlay for pointing it out. In the datasets for their referendum polls, ICM are absolutely explicit about where they get the targets for their weightings from -
"Data were weighted to the profile of all Scottish adults aged 16+. Data were weighted by sex, age, social grade and region. Targets for the weighted data were derived from Census 2011."
So what does the 2011 census say about the breakdown of Scotland's over-16 population by gender?
Female - 2,280,734 (52.08%)
Male - 2,098,338 (47.92%)
Essentially a 52-48 split in favour of women, then. It's therefore a touch hard to understand why ICM weighted their sample for last weekend's referendum poll so that it looks like this -
Female - 54.74%
Male - 45.26%
As I always say in these situations, "pollsters may have their faults, but they're not blithering idiots". ICM will have done this deliberately, and they'll have done it for a specific reason, but for the life of me I just cannot even begin to imagine what that reason could be. As far I can recall, every other pollster is using something very close to the more obvious 52-48 weighting. In case you're wondering, it's not because ICM think women are more likely to vote - these are the figures for the whole sample before turnout weighting was applied. (And indeed they found that men are in fact slightly more likely to vote anyway.)
Although men are currently more pro-independence than women, adjusting the weightings so that men make up 2.66% more of the sample normally wouldn't make much difference. But in the case of this particular poll, the roundings in the published figures worked against the Yes campaign, so simply getting the gender weightings right would be sufficient to reduce the rounded No vote after Don't Knows are excluded by 1%, and to increase the Yes vote by 1%. In other words, the figures should be Yes 43%, No 57%.
And that's before we even take account of the fact that for a second poll in a row, ICM have far too few respondents who were born in Scotland, and far too many who were born in England. Reweighting the sample to bring those numbers into line with the census data would reduce the No lead even further. (I make it Yes 44%, No 56%, although admittedly it was such a complicated calculation that my brain was turning to mush, so don't take those numbers as gospel!)
If I was going to hazard a guess, I would assume that ICM aren't even bothering to weight by country of birth, and although they've probably noticed that the figures don't tally up with reality, they're not addressing the problem due to 'institutional inertia'. But the gender issue is much harder to explain, because getting the right number of men and women is one of the most basic tasks of any pollster in any poll.
Then of course there's the even bigger issue of the bizarre introductory question that ICM used, which may have unsettled people and influenced how they responded to the referendum question in the first place. With almost every successive closer look, last weekend's poll comes across as even more of a shambles.
"Data were weighted to the profile of all Scottish adults aged 16+. Data were weighted by sex, age, social grade and region. Targets for the weighted data were derived from Census 2011."
So what does the 2011 census say about the breakdown of Scotland's over-16 population by gender?
Female - 2,280,734 (52.08%)
Male - 2,098,338 (47.92%)
Essentially a 52-48 split in favour of women, then. It's therefore a touch hard to understand why ICM weighted their sample for last weekend's referendum poll so that it looks like this -
Female - 54.74%
Male - 45.26%
As I always say in these situations, "pollsters may have their faults, but they're not blithering idiots". ICM will have done this deliberately, and they'll have done it for a specific reason, but for the life of me I just cannot even begin to imagine what that reason could be. As far I can recall, every other pollster is using something very close to the more obvious 52-48 weighting. In case you're wondering, it's not because ICM think women are more likely to vote - these are the figures for the whole sample before turnout weighting was applied. (And indeed they found that men are in fact slightly more likely to vote anyway.)
Although men are currently more pro-independence than women, adjusting the weightings so that men make up 2.66% more of the sample normally wouldn't make much difference. But in the case of this particular poll, the roundings in the published figures worked against the Yes campaign, so simply getting the gender weightings right would be sufficient to reduce the rounded No vote after Don't Knows are excluded by 1%, and to increase the Yes vote by 1%. In other words, the figures should be Yes 43%, No 57%.
And that's before we even take account of the fact that for a second poll in a row, ICM have far too few respondents who were born in Scotland, and far too many who were born in England. Reweighting the sample to bring those numbers into line with the census data would reduce the No lead even further. (I make it Yes 44%, No 56%, although admittedly it was such a complicated calculation that my brain was turning to mush, so don't take those numbers as gospel!)
If I was going to hazard a guess, I would assume that ICM aren't even bothering to weight by country of birth, and although they've probably noticed that the figures don't tally up with reality, they're not addressing the problem due to 'institutional inertia'. But the gender issue is much harder to explain, because getting the right number of men and women is one of the most basic tasks of any pollster in any poll.
Then of course there's the even bigger issue of the bizarre introductory question that ICM used, which may have unsettled people and influenced how they responded to the referendum question in the first place. With almost every successive closer look, last weekend's poll comes across as even more of a shambles.
Friday, May 23, 2014
UKIP surge : what now?
If nothing else, the success of UKIP in the English local elections has been a PR disaster for Labour. Without the emergence of a populist anti-establishment party led by a public schoolboy stockbroker, the routine protest vote against an incumbent government would have been hoovered up by Labour, who would have racked up a sizeable lead in the national popular vote. That would have been built on candy floss, but nevertheless it might have created the illusion in some Scottish minds that Ed Miliband was heading towards Downing Street. I haven't seen the BBC national projected vote shares yet (perhaps it's being revealed as I write this!), but if the changes reported in key wards are anything to go by Labour are going to have a lead over the Tories of somewhere in the region of 2%. That is an absolutely hopeless position for them at this stage in the electoral cycle.
The flip side of all this, though, is the effect on the opinion polls of the UKIP surge in the coming days and weeks. We know that most UKIP voters are disaffected Tories, so a snowball effect would have the potential of harming the Tories disproportionately and leaving Labour with a bigger lead (albeit on a very low share of the vote). But the fact that UKIP have done so well against Labour in the north of England may mean that the rules of the game are changing rapidly. If Farage's mob are no longer being seen as the Tory B Team in places like Sunderland and Hull, Ed Miliband's (and Blair McDougall's) worst nightmares may all have come true at once.
The flip side of all this, though, is the effect on the opinion polls of the UKIP surge in the coming days and weeks. We know that most UKIP voters are disaffected Tories, so a snowball effect would have the potential of harming the Tories disproportionately and leaving Labour with a bigger lead (albeit on a very low share of the vote). But the fact that UKIP have done so well against Labour in the north of England may mean that the rules of the game are changing rapidly. If Farage's mob are no longer being seen as the Tory B Team in places like Sunderland and Hull, Ed Miliband's (and Blair McDougall's) worst nightmares may all have come true at once.
Scot Goes Pop crowdfunding appeal raises £3475
As the English local election results are proving so sluggish (although it's already clear they're an unmitigated calamity for Labour), I just thought I'd quickly take this opportunity to give you the final total for this blog's fundraiser. £3425 was raised on Indiegogo, and in combination with a very generous non-online donation that arrived by post yesterday, the grand total is an amazing £3475 - almost exactly £1000 more than the original target figure, which was reached within the first 24 hours.
It's testament to the genuinely organic grass-roots nature of the Yes campaign (as opposed to the utterly bogus "grass-roots" nature of Vote No Borders) that so many independent fundraisers like this are achieving their targets so quickly. I do still worry that this has been one of the less worthy ones, because to some extent it's simply funding me to continue doing exactly what I've been doing up to now without previously needing any funding. But as we all know, life does sometimes get in the way at the most inconvenient of moments, and the timing in this case has just been extremely unfortunate. Hopefully it isn't a zero-sum game, and bigger fundraisers such as the SNP's 'Double Your Donation' and National Collective's 'Yestival' won't have been adversely affected. As promised, I'll set aside some of the money for advertising, although I may now have to consider options other than Facebook - I got a shock two days ago when I tried to set up a second cheap ad, and was told that the expected reach was only a fraction of the figure for the first ad. I have a horrible feeling I was suckered in by the age-old "introductory price" wheeze! But I'll have a look around and see what the most cost-effective options are.
Once again, my heartfelt thanks to all 170 people who donated, and to the many people who publicised the fundraiser on social media and on other sites, and in particular to Tris, who did a big splash on Munguin's Republic about it. Thanks also to the people who sent supportive messages by email - I think (and hope!) I've responded to everyone. I'll put up the 'Backers' page as soon as possible, although I'll take my time over it, because I need to be careful that no-one who requested anonymity is accidentally included on the list.
So what have I learned from dipping my toes into the brave new world of crowdfunding? Mainly that there is no shortage of 'experts' and 'consultants' out there willing to help, simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Perhaps I shouldn't be too cynical - for all I know one or two of them may have been offering a genuine service. But I'm really not sure about this guy. If I ever hire a consultant, rest assured that he or she will be considerably less well-groomed than that. It's a point of principle.
It's testament to the genuinely organic grass-roots nature of the Yes campaign (as opposed to the utterly bogus "grass-roots" nature of Vote No Borders) that so many independent fundraisers like this are achieving their targets so quickly. I do still worry that this has been one of the less worthy ones, because to some extent it's simply funding me to continue doing exactly what I've been doing up to now without previously needing any funding. But as we all know, life does sometimes get in the way at the most inconvenient of moments, and the timing in this case has just been extremely unfortunate. Hopefully it isn't a zero-sum game, and bigger fundraisers such as the SNP's 'Double Your Donation' and National Collective's 'Yestival' won't have been adversely affected. As promised, I'll set aside some of the money for advertising, although I may now have to consider options other than Facebook - I got a shock two days ago when I tried to set up a second cheap ad, and was told that the expected reach was only a fraction of the figure for the first ad. I have a horrible feeling I was suckered in by the age-old "introductory price" wheeze! But I'll have a look around and see what the most cost-effective options are.
Once again, my heartfelt thanks to all 170 people who donated, and to the many people who publicised the fundraiser on social media and on other sites, and in particular to Tris, who did a big splash on Munguin's Republic about it. Thanks also to the people who sent supportive messages by email - I think (and hope!) I've responded to everyone. I'll put up the 'Backers' page as soon as possible, although I'll take my time over it, because I need to be careful that no-one who requested anonymity is accidentally included on the list.
So what have I learned from dipping my toes into the brave new world of crowdfunding? Mainly that there is no shortage of 'experts' and 'consultants' out there willing to help, simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Perhaps I shouldn't be too cynical - for all I know one or two of them may have been offering a genuine service. But I'm really not sure about this guy. If I ever hire a consultant, rest assured that he or she will be considerably less well-groomed than that. It's a point of principle.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Ignore the siren voices - it's the SNP who are best placed to stop UKIP today
Just a quick warning in case anyone is being taken in as we speak by James Mackenzie's latest attempts on behalf of the Greens to claim that only they can stop UKIP in Scotland. YouGov's "final Scottish poll" of which he speaks is no such thing - it's a subsample of a GB-wide poll. Yes, it's a larger than usual subsample, but it's still a subsample. So it's not possible to claim as James does that "the margin of error is bigger than with a normal 1000 person poll (up to 4.2%, rather than around 3%), but even so..." The margin of error is in fact incalculable, because the figures almost certainly won't have been weighted properly - ie. they'll only have been weighted on a GB-wide basis. What weightings were applied will have been based on YouGov's party ID system, rather than the 2011 vote recall they use for full-scale Scottish polls. That almost always leads to SNP identifying respondents being downweighted massively. In this poll, 165 SNP and Plaid Cymru identifiers were downweighted to count as just 104 'virtual' respondents.
The facts remain the same - not a single full-scale Scottish poll in this campaign has shown the Greens even close to winning a seat today. Most polls (including from YouGov) show that the SNP are best placed to stop UKIP, although there's certainly still a chance that Labour or the Tories could be the ones to pull it off. But if you vote Green you're not "voting tactically" at all - you're effectively abstaining on the question of whether UKIP should have a Scottish seat or not.
Maggie Chapman is a very fine candidate (and an asset for the Yes campaign), and if your number one priority is to have her as an MEP representing Scotland, then by all means vote Green - even though the chances of success look very slim indeed. But just be aware that it isn't going to stop David Coburn or UKIP.
The facts remain the same - not a single full-scale Scottish poll in this campaign has shown the Greens even close to winning a seat today. Most polls (including from YouGov) show that the SNP are best placed to stop UKIP, although there's certainly still a chance that Labour or the Tories could be the ones to pull it off. But if you vote Green you're not "voting tactically" at all - you're effectively abstaining on the question of whether UKIP should have a Scottish seat or not.
Maggie Chapman is a very fine candidate (and an asset for the Yes campaign), and if your number one priority is to have her as an MEP representing Scotland, then by all means vote Green - even though the chances of success look very slim indeed. But just be aware that it isn't going to stop David Coburn or UKIP.
Smoke me a Kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
I'm increasingly optimistic (but far from complacent) that the "Kippers" and their repulsive lead candidate David Coburn are going to just about fall short of taking a Scottish seat in tomorrow's election - and the icing on the cake is that the SNP look like the party best placed to stop them (although it may yet be Labour or the Tories). South of the border, though, it's a very different story. Two eve-of-election polls tonight show that the rest of the UK is on the brink of entering into a veritable Farage à trois -
Opinium European election poll (GB-wide) :
UKIP 32%
Labour 25%
Conservatives 21%
Greens 6%
Liberal Democrats 6%
YouGov European election poll (GB-wide) :
UKIP 27%
Labour 26%
Conservatives 22%
Greens 10%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Others 6%
Although the latter figures look like a virtual dead heat, they're not filtered by certainty to vote (unless YouGov have changed their procedures at the last moment). With Farage's supporters being more motivated than others, it's highly likely that we'll be looking at some kind of UKIP victory at the weekend when the votes are counted. What strikes me about both of these polls, though, is the relatively narrow gap between Labour and the Tories. The traditionally low turnout in Euro-elections means there's a greater chance of an upset, and if the Tories do end up outpolling Labour (even if it's the Tories in second place and Labour in third) it could well have an electrifying effect on the referendum campaign. In the recent ICM poll, the No lead fell to just 3% when respondents were asked to imagine how they would vote if they expected a Tory victory in next year's general election.
As for the race in Scotland, if the SNP outpoll Labour by a significant amount, it will go a long way towards proving that YouGov's Scottish sampling and weighting for GB-wide polls is deeply flawed. Most of the firm's Scottish subsamples for the European election have put Labour in the lead, while their full-scale Scottish poll (which used a different if still dubious weighting procedure) had the SNP in a very narrow lead.
Ideally, if this election is to provide some supporting evidence that Yes-friendly pollsters like Survation are getting it broadly right, we'd be looking to see an SNP vote in the mid-thirties or above. That's admittedly a very tall order - it would be an all-time record (beating the 32.6% share of the vote in 1994), and it would mean doing significantly better than in 2009 when the main opponent was a Brown-led Labour party limping towards general election defeat. An SNP vote in the low thirties or below might be a sign that the methodology of No-friendly pollsters such as YouGov is closer to the mark. Having said that, the gap between the SNP and Labour will also be an important clue - a sub-30 showing for the SNP would be far less troubling if Labour were trailing several points lower.
Opinium European election poll (GB-wide) :
UKIP 32%
Labour 25%
Conservatives 21%
Greens 6%
Liberal Democrats 6%
YouGov European election poll (GB-wide) :
UKIP 27%
Labour 26%
Conservatives 22%
Greens 10%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Others 6%
Although the latter figures look like a virtual dead heat, they're not filtered by certainty to vote (unless YouGov have changed their procedures at the last moment). With Farage's supporters being more motivated than others, it's highly likely that we'll be looking at some kind of UKIP victory at the weekend when the votes are counted. What strikes me about both of these polls, though, is the relatively narrow gap between Labour and the Tories. The traditionally low turnout in Euro-elections means there's a greater chance of an upset, and if the Tories do end up outpolling Labour (even if it's the Tories in second place and Labour in third) it could well have an electrifying effect on the referendum campaign. In the recent ICM poll, the No lead fell to just 3% when respondents were asked to imagine how they would vote if they expected a Tory victory in next year's general election.
As for the race in Scotland, if the SNP outpoll Labour by a significant amount, it will go a long way towards proving that YouGov's Scottish sampling and weighting for GB-wide polls is deeply flawed. Most of the firm's Scottish subsamples for the European election have put Labour in the lead, while their full-scale Scottish poll (which used a different if still dubious weighting procedure) had the SNP in a very narrow lead.
Ideally, if this election is to provide some supporting evidence that Yes-friendly pollsters like Survation are getting it broadly right, we'd be looking to see an SNP vote in the mid-thirties or above. That's admittedly a very tall order - it would be an all-time record (beating the 32.6% share of the vote in 1994), and it would mean doing significantly better than in 2009 when the main opponent was a Brown-led Labour party limping towards general election defeat. An SNP vote in the low thirties or below might be a sign that the methodology of No-friendly pollsters such as YouGov is closer to the mark. Having said that, the gap between the SNP and Labour will also be an important clue - a sub-30 showing for the SNP would be far less troubling if Labour were trailing several points lower.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Wisdom on Wednesday : Popular sovereignty
"And what if that other voice WE ALL KNOW SO WELL responds by saying 'We say no, and we are the state'? Well, we say yes, and we are the people!"
Canon Kenyon Wright, chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, speaking at the body's opening meeting. The "we" was an ironic reference (and instantly recognised as such by the audience) to Mrs Thatcher's use of the royal "we" when announcing that she (they?) had become a grandmother.
Canon Kenyon Wright, chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, speaking at the body's opening meeting. The "we" was an ironic reference (and instantly recognised as such by the audience) to Mrs Thatcher's use of the royal "we" when announcing that she (they?) had become a grandmother.
Nice try, George Eaton, but it's time to reacquaint you with referendum polling reality
Well, we might as well all pack up and go home, chaps. An oracle walks among us, and he has decreed that the best the Yes campaign can hope for is a narrow defeat leading to Devo Max. And the name of this new rival to Nostradamus? Er, well actually it's George Eaton, the tediously tribal Labour hack who also declared two months out from the 2011 Holyrood election that his party were coasting to victory, and that Iain "the Snarl" Gray was about to become our First Minister. Result? SNP landslide.
Someone asked me earlier today if I could respond to Eaton's latest fairy-tale reimagining of the opinion polls. It turns out that comments on his New Statesman piece are already closed (after one day!) so I'll do it here instead.
"Labour MPs might be increasingly anxious about their party's performance in the national polls (today's Populus survey has them a point behind the Tories) but their spirits have been lifted by the latest numbers on Scottish independence. After narrowing for months, the polls have begun to move in the No campaign's favour."
Nope. "The polls" have not done any such thing. With the sole exception of the ICM poll, every single poll that has been published recently has either shown movement to the Yes campaign (extremely big movement in the case of Progressive Scottish Opinion), no movement at all, or movement to No that is so tiny that it is most likely to be margin of error 'noise'. As for the ICM poll itself, that could easily be one of the more extreme examples of 'noise' - if the true No lead according to ICM's methodology is roughly 7% or 8% (and two polls from the firm so far this year have shown exactly that sort of lead), then it would be quite possible for the standard margin of error to produce a 3% lead one month and a 12% lead the next without there having been any actual movement in opinion. And that's before we even mention ICM's bizarre methodological change which we only found out about more than 24 hours after the poll was published, and which means that it's impossible to make a direct comparison with previous polls in the series. To put it in a nutshell - without corroboration from at least one other pollster, the sensible assumption is that the trend shown by ICM is not real. Two pollsters have already had the opportunity to back ICM up - Panelbase and Survation both conducted polls that partially overlapped with ICM's fieldwork, and neither showed statistically significant change. Other pollsters will have the same opportunity in the days to come, but as of this moment there is literally no convincing evidence of any movement back to No whatever.
"while another by Panelbase (the Yes campaign's pollster of choice) put it [the No lead] up from five points to seven."
Which is precisely one of the statistically insignificant changes I referred to earlier, but as it happens even that is exaggerated. As I pointed out yesterday, if you look at the unrounded Panelbase numbers the No lead has actually only increased by 0.8%, from 5.7% to 6.5%. I don't know if there's a word for something that is even more insignificant than an utterly insignificant thing, but if there is, that word very neatly describes the statistical irrelevance of the increase in the No lead that Panelbase have just reported.
"Across the six main pollsters, the No campaign's average lead now stands at 14 points."
Actually, on a point of pedantry, it stands at 13 points. Eaton helpfully shows his working in inflating the number - he links to a tweet from "Jackanory" Jim Murphy that once again peddles the brazen lie that the recent Progressive poll showing a 9 point drop in the No lead was not in fact a Progressive poll at all, but was instead a YouGov poll showing a 6 point increase in the No lead. Just to reiterate the truth for the umpteenth time - the most recent polls from BOTH Progressive and YouGov show a DECREASE in the No lead, not an increase. YouGov's last poll was for Channel 4 News, and it showed the No lead narrowing from 15 points to 14 - a new low for the campaign. Progressive's poll was for the Sunday Mail, and it showed the No lead plummeting from 29 points to 20 - again, easily a new low for the campaign from the firm that used to be by far the most No-friendly pollster.
As for Eaton's unspoken implication that the average No lead has just dramatically solidified, in fact it has only recovered to a position that is 2.1% higher than its all-time low, which it sunk to just a few weeks ago. That very limited recovery is almost entirely due to the changes in the ICM poll, which as already stated must be regarded with suspicion - a) because no other pollster has replicated the trend, and b) because of the big alteration in methodology. In other words, the balance of probability is that No are in fact still stuck at their lowest level of support so far, and that Yes have successfully consolidated the gains they made during the winter.
"A narrow defeat might allow the SNP to press for devo max (and even to revisit the independence question at some point) but a defeat it will be."
Hmmm. Do you think we should ask First Minister Gray for a second opinion before we abandon hope completely?
* * *
I haven't been able to track it down again (I may be looking on the wrong thread) but there was a comment on Wings last night from someone who claimed to have it "on very good authority" that the unweighted results of the UK government's notorious secret Ipsos-Mori mega-poll were Yes 36%, No 48%. If the weighted figures are close to that (and if anything Ipsos-Mori's weightings have tended to boost Yes slightly), then it would mean that the No lead of 25 points in the last published Ipsos-Mori poll has more than halved. Obviously there's no way of telling if the claim is true, but it certainly has the ring of plausibility to it - the rumours that Yes were in the lead never seemed very likely given Ipsos-Mori's track record as the most No-friendly BPC pollster, but this kind of whopping reduction in the lead would be entirely consistent with Westminster's determination to keep the poll under wraps.
Such a big turnaround from this campaign's only telephone pollster would mean one thing and one thing only : Game On.
Someone asked me earlier today if I could respond to Eaton's latest fairy-tale reimagining of the opinion polls. It turns out that comments on his New Statesman piece are already closed (after one day!) so I'll do it here instead.
"Labour MPs might be increasingly anxious about their party's performance in the national polls (today's Populus survey has them a point behind the Tories) but their spirits have been lifted by the latest numbers on Scottish independence. After narrowing for months, the polls have begun to move in the No campaign's favour."
Nope. "The polls" have not done any such thing. With the sole exception of the ICM poll, every single poll that has been published recently has either shown movement to the Yes campaign (extremely big movement in the case of Progressive Scottish Opinion), no movement at all, or movement to No that is so tiny that it is most likely to be margin of error 'noise'. As for the ICM poll itself, that could easily be one of the more extreme examples of 'noise' - if the true No lead according to ICM's methodology is roughly 7% or 8% (and two polls from the firm so far this year have shown exactly that sort of lead), then it would be quite possible for the standard margin of error to produce a 3% lead one month and a 12% lead the next without there having been any actual movement in opinion. And that's before we even mention ICM's bizarre methodological change which we only found out about more than 24 hours after the poll was published, and which means that it's impossible to make a direct comparison with previous polls in the series. To put it in a nutshell - without corroboration from at least one other pollster, the sensible assumption is that the trend shown by ICM is not real. Two pollsters have already had the opportunity to back ICM up - Panelbase and Survation both conducted polls that partially overlapped with ICM's fieldwork, and neither showed statistically significant change. Other pollsters will have the same opportunity in the days to come, but as of this moment there is literally no convincing evidence of any movement back to No whatever.
"while another by Panelbase (the Yes campaign's pollster of choice) put it [the No lead] up from five points to seven."
Which is precisely one of the statistically insignificant changes I referred to earlier, but as it happens even that is exaggerated. As I pointed out yesterday, if you look at the unrounded Panelbase numbers the No lead has actually only increased by 0.8%, from 5.7% to 6.5%. I don't know if there's a word for something that is even more insignificant than an utterly insignificant thing, but if there is, that word very neatly describes the statistical irrelevance of the increase in the No lead that Panelbase have just reported.
"Across the six main pollsters, the No campaign's average lead now stands at 14 points."
Actually, on a point of pedantry, it stands at 13 points. Eaton helpfully shows his working in inflating the number - he links to a tweet from "Jackanory" Jim Murphy that once again peddles the brazen lie that the recent Progressive poll showing a 9 point drop in the No lead was not in fact a Progressive poll at all, but was instead a YouGov poll showing a 6 point increase in the No lead. Just to reiterate the truth for the umpteenth time - the most recent polls from BOTH Progressive and YouGov show a DECREASE in the No lead, not an increase. YouGov's last poll was for Channel 4 News, and it showed the No lead narrowing from 15 points to 14 - a new low for the campaign. Progressive's poll was for the Sunday Mail, and it showed the No lead plummeting from 29 points to 20 - again, easily a new low for the campaign from the firm that used to be by far the most No-friendly pollster.
As for Eaton's unspoken implication that the average No lead has just dramatically solidified, in fact it has only recovered to a position that is 2.1% higher than its all-time low, which it sunk to just a few weeks ago. That very limited recovery is almost entirely due to the changes in the ICM poll, which as already stated must be regarded with suspicion - a) because no other pollster has replicated the trend, and b) because of the big alteration in methodology. In other words, the balance of probability is that No are in fact still stuck at their lowest level of support so far, and that Yes have successfully consolidated the gains they made during the winter.
"A narrow defeat might allow the SNP to press for devo max (and even to revisit the independence question at some point) but a defeat it will be."
Hmmm. Do you think we should ask First Minister Gray for a second opinion before we abandon hope completely?
* * *
I haven't been able to track it down again (I may be looking on the wrong thread) but there was a comment on Wings last night from someone who claimed to have it "on very good authority" that the unweighted results of the UK government's notorious secret Ipsos-Mori mega-poll were Yes 36%, No 48%. If the weighted figures are close to that (and if anything Ipsos-Mori's weightings have tended to boost Yes slightly), then it would mean that the No lead of 25 points in the last published Ipsos-Mori poll has more than halved. Obviously there's no way of telling if the claim is true, but it certainly has the ring of plausibility to it - the rumours that Yes were in the lead never seemed very likely given Ipsos-Mori's track record as the most No-friendly BPC pollster, but this kind of whopping reduction in the lead would be entirely consistent with Westminster's determination to keep the poll under wraps.
Such a big turnaround from this campaign's only telephone pollster would mean one thing and one thing only : Game On.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Who will weep for the Liberal Democrats this week?
As long-term readers may remember, I've voted for a whole array of weird and wonderful political parties in American elections (including a Vermont "separatist" party, you'll be thrilled to hear). But in this country, rather boringly, I've only ever voted for the SNP. I have a feeling that only independence offers the slightest chance of "liberating" me from that habit, because until and unless it happens the SNP will always look like the most rational choice.
However, I did once vote for the Liberal Democrats in a school mock election. It may seem a rather quaint idea now, but back in those days I had the genuine impression that the Lib Dems were the most radical party on constitutional reform, more so even than the SNP. I remember hearing Russell Johnston speaking about the state effectively withering away within Europe, being replaced by tiers of governance enjoying equal prestige, of which none would have absolute sovereignty vested in them, even on a theoretical basis. So in Scotland that would mean four tiers of government sharing sovereignty - local government, Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels. To the idealistic teenage me, that sounded like a more modern and forward-thinking vision even than independence within an interdependent Europe.
Although I moved away from the Lib Dems long ago, it's actually only been relatively recently that I've realised that they don't actually believe in any of this stuff - it's all just words. (I'm only talking about the party leadership, by the way. I'm sure that many of the activists and rank-and-file members have much stronger convictions.) With the enviable position of holding the balance of power in a hung parliament for the last four years, they've actually had the chance to do something to bring their vision closer to fruition, but almost every step they've taken has had the opposite effect. They've propped up the most anti-European government this country has seen since entering the Common Market, one that is doing what would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago - inching us closer to the EU exit door. They moved heaven and earth to block a second question in the independence referendum, meaning the only option voters aren't allowed to choose in September is the one the Lib Dems are supposed to support. And having achieved that perverse objective, they haven't taken the nuanced stance on the straight Yes/No independence question that the logic of their "federalist" beliefs demands, but have instead gone gung-ho for a No vote irrespective of consequences.
Their actions betray them. When it really comes down to it, tribalistic British nationalism trumps everything for the Lib Dem leadership - it trumps federalism (a Yes vote would produce an outcome much closer to federalism than a No vote), it trumps electoral reform (a Yes vote would ensure that every tier of government in Scotland is elected by proportional representation), it trumps repugnance at an unelected second chamber (a Yes vote would lead to a wholly elected national parliament for Scotland, with no equivalent to the House of Lords), it trumps support for a written constitution and reform of the royal prerogative (only on offer with a Yes vote). Almost every constitutional reform that Lib Dem activists have pounded the streets to evangelise for over the last few decades is on the ballot paper this September - and their leadership is telling them to turn it all down. Forever.
There's an opinion poll out from Opinium today suggesting that the Lib Dems will take just 5% of the vote in the European elections on Thursday. That would probably be just about enough to ensure that they win no seats at all across the UK, and move them closer to the fringe status throughout this island that they've already been reduced to at Holyrood (Willie Rennie leads a parliamentary group that is smaller than the Scottish Socialist Party had in 2003). Unfortunately, their relative strength at Westminster means that they won't become an out-and-out fringe party this side of the referendum, but anything that moves the morale-sapping voices of these phony "radicals" further to the margins can only be a good thing.
* * *
For what it's worth (not very much), here is the result of Opinium's small and unweighted Scottish subsample in the European election poll -
SNP 43%
Labour 23%
UKIP 14%
Conservatives 11%
Greens 5%
Liberal Democrats 3%
In terms of seats, that would work out as three for the SNP, two for Labour and one for UKIP. Under this rather improbable scenario, the best hope of stopping UKIP would be to vote Tory - which hopefully illustrates further why attempts at "tactical voting" under a pure list PR system are soul-destroying and counter-productive.
However, I did once vote for the Liberal Democrats in a school mock election. It may seem a rather quaint idea now, but back in those days I had the genuine impression that the Lib Dems were the most radical party on constitutional reform, more so even than the SNP. I remember hearing Russell Johnston speaking about the state effectively withering away within Europe, being replaced by tiers of governance enjoying equal prestige, of which none would have absolute sovereignty vested in them, even on a theoretical basis. So in Scotland that would mean four tiers of government sharing sovereignty - local government, Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels. To the idealistic teenage me, that sounded like a more modern and forward-thinking vision even than independence within an interdependent Europe.
Although I moved away from the Lib Dems long ago, it's actually only been relatively recently that I've realised that they don't actually believe in any of this stuff - it's all just words. (I'm only talking about the party leadership, by the way. I'm sure that many of the activists and rank-and-file members have much stronger convictions.) With the enviable position of holding the balance of power in a hung parliament for the last four years, they've actually had the chance to do something to bring their vision closer to fruition, but almost every step they've taken has had the opposite effect. They've propped up the most anti-European government this country has seen since entering the Common Market, one that is doing what would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago - inching us closer to the EU exit door. They moved heaven and earth to block a second question in the independence referendum, meaning the only option voters aren't allowed to choose in September is the one the Lib Dems are supposed to support. And having achieved that perverse objective, they haven't taken the nuanced stance on the straight Yes/No independence question that the logic of their "federalist" beliefs demands, but have instead gone gung-ho for a No vote irrespective of consequences.
Their actions betray them. When it really comes down to it, tribalistic British nationalism trumps everything for the Lib Dem leadership - it trumps federalism (a Yes vote would produce an outcome much closer to federalism than a No vote), it trumps electoral reform (a Yes vote would ensure that every tier of government in Scotland is elected by proportional representation), it trumps repugnance at an unelected second chamber (a Yes vote would lead to a wholly elected national parliament for Scotland, with no equivalent to the House of Lords), it trumps support for a written constitution and reform of the royal prerogative (only on offer with a Yes vote). Almost every constitutional reform that Lib Dem activists have pounded the streets to evangelise for over the last few decades is on the ballot paper this September - and their leadership is telling them to turn it all down. Forever.
There's an opinion poll out from Opinium today suggesting that the Lib Dems will take just 5% of the vote in the European elections on Thursday. That would probably be just about enough to ensure that they win no seats at all across the UK, and move them closer to the fringe status throughout this island that they've already been reduced to at Holyrood (Willie Rennie leads a parliamentary group that is smaller than the Scottish Socialist Party had in 2003). Unfortunately, their relative strength at Westminster means that they won't become an out-and-out fringe party this side of the referendum, but anything that moves the morale-sapping voices of these phony "radicals" further to the margins can only be a good thing.
* * *
For what it's worth (not very much), here is the result of Opinium's small and unweighted Scottish subsample in the European election poll -
SNP 43%
Labour 23%
UKIP 14%
Conservatives 11%
Greens 5%
Liberal Democrats 3%
In terms of seats, that would work out as three for the SNP, two for Labour and one for UKIP. Under this rather improbable scenario, the best hope of stopping UKIP would be to vote Tory - which hopefully illustrates further why attempts at "tactical voting" under a pure list PR system are soul-destroying and counter-productive.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Concerns mount over ICM's sudden change in methodology
The datasets for ICM's referendum poll have been published, and as a result it's become clear that the methodological changes have gone way beyond the one flagged up by John Curtice and trailed by Martin Boon last month, namely the introduction of a likelihood to vote filter. In the April poll from ICM that produced a virtual dead heat (a No lead of just 3%), the referendum question was asked first. But in this new poll showing a bigger 12% No lead, the referendum question was asked third - which ought to set alarm bells ringing immediately, because we know that responses to later questions can be substantially influenced by the wording of earlier ones. Indeed, John Curtice has spent a fair bit of the last few months rubbishing a poll conducted last summer by the BPC-affiliated firm Panelbase, simply on the basis that it asked the referendum question third. That poll of course showed Yes in a 1% lead. A few cynics might wonder why he pounced on methodological bad practice in a poll that showed movement towards Yes (and in retrospect he was probably right to do so, because it was completely out of line with other polls), but hasn't said a word about the same problem in a poll that appears to show a favourable trend for No.
"Thinking about the referendum on independence for Scotland, do you feel comfortable or uncomfortable being asked which way you might vote?"
Frankly it's hard to think of a dodgier question to ask right at the start, because when respondents come to the referendum question a few seconds later they'll be thinking to themselves, "ah, this is what some people are uncomfortable about being asked", which is bound to influence their reaction in at least some cases. Indeed, a fair chunk of people will have already indicated that they ARE uncomfortable about being asked, which arguably gives them implicit permission to do one of two things - to answer 'Don't Know' even though they do know how they will vote, or to give a completely dishonest answer.
If there's been an explanation offered for the introduction of the 'comfortable' question, and for its positioning within the question sequence, I haven't been able to track it down so far. My best guess is that this constitutes ICM's 'investigation' into the possibility of 'Shy No Syndrome', which Martin Boon revealed last month was on its way. It was already a matter of huge concern that ICM distrusted their results simply because they were so favourable for Yes, and seemed to be actively looking for excuses to adjust the Yes vote downwards, rather than open-mindedly testing for any bias that might be occurring in either direction. Even so, I naively assumed that they would be able to carry out their 'investigation' in a manner that did not compromise the integrity of this month's poll, but sadly that does not seem to have been the case.
So what did this experiment discover? If the point of asking for people's comfort levels is the assumption that some of them are answering dishonestly due to social pressure, what ICM would have been looking for to prove their theory about 'Shy No Syndrome' is evidence that a greater number of people who say they are voting Yes are uncomfortable about being asked the question. In fact, it turns out that the opposite is true. No fewer than 70% of people who say they are voting Yes are "very comfortable" with being asked the question, compared to just 52% of people who say they are voting No. Just 5% of people who say they are voting Yes admit to being uncomfortable, compared to 9% of people who say they are voting No. Whether this disparity came about because ICM effectively gave people 'permission' to feel uncomfortable, and as a result a chunk of respondents who would otherwise have said Yes switched to No (thus distorting the headline referendum figures), is anyone's guess. But given that this very peculiar methodological change coincides with an increase in the No lead that two other pollsters have failed to replicate, it's an obvious suspicion to raise.
Scottish Skier suggested that I should remove the ICM poll from the Poll of Polls due to this bad practice. I can't really do that, because the whole point of the exercise is to throw all the wildly varying methodologies from BPC pollsters into a pot and see what the blend produces. And this certainly isn't the first time that a BPC pollster has used dodgy methodology - remember YouGov's embarrassingly biased preamble about Scotland "leaving the United Kingdom"? But it's undoubtedly a big concern, and it may well be distorting the trend in the Poll of Polls. The best way of judging the real trend for now is to look at recent polls conducted without a change in methodology - and TNS-BMRB, Panelbase and Survation are all showing a relatively stable position, with Yes consolidating the big gains made over the winter.
Incidentally, there are a couple of pieces of good news from the ICM datasets - the Yes vote on the unrounded figures after Don't Knows are excluded is 42.4%, which is obviously a touch higher than the rounded figures for publication suggested. And as seems to be the case every month, the Yes vote rises a touch (this time to 43.2%) after Don't Knows are asked how they are leaning.
It is of course necessary to look at the wording of the two questions that precede the referendum question before jumping to the conclusion that they might be distorting the result. The second question is entirely innocuous - it simply asks how certain people are to vote, and as that's a dry, technical question there's no problem with asking it before the main question (other pollsters do the same). But the first question is a different matter entirely. It asks -
Frankly it's hard to think of a dodgier question to ask right at the start, because when respondents come to the referendum question a few seconds later they'll be thinking to themselves, "ah, this is what some people are uncomfortable about being asked", which is bound to influence their reaction in at least some cases. Indeed, a fair chunk of people will have already indicated that they ARE uncomfortable about being asked, which arguably gives them implicit permission to do one of two things - to answer 'Don't Know' even though they do know how they will vote, or to give a completely dishonest answer.
If there's been an explanation offered for the introduction of the 'comfortable' question, and for its positioning within the question sequence, I haven't been able to track it down so far. My best guess is that this constitutes ICM's 'investigation' into the possibility of 'Shy No Syndrome', which Martin Boon revealed last month was on its way. It was already a matter of huge concern that ICM distrusted their results simply because they were so favourable for Yes, and seemed to be actively looking for excuses to adjust the Yes vote downwards, rather than open-mindedly testing for any bias that might be occurring in either direction. Even so, I naively assumed that they would be able to carry out their 'investigation' in a manner that did not compromise the integrity of this month's poll, but sadly that does not seem to have been the case.
So what did this experiment discover? If the point of asking for people's comfort levels is the assumption that some of them are answering dishonestly due to social pressure, what ICM would have been looking for to prove their theory about 'Shy No Syndrome' is evidence that a greater number of people who say they are voting Yes are uncomfortable about being asked the question. In fact, it turns out that the opposite is true. No fewer than 70% of people who say they are voting Yes are "very comfortable" with being asked the question, compared to just 52% of people who say they are voting No. Just 5% of people who say they are voting Yes admit to being uncomfortable, compared to 9% of people who say they are voting No. Whether this disparity came about because ICM effectively gave people 'permission' to feel uncomfortable, and as a result a chunk of respondents who would otherwise have said Yes switched to No (thus distorting the headline referendum figures), is anyone's guess. But given that this very peculiar methodological change coincides with an increase in the No lead that two other pollsters have failed to replicate, it's an obvious suspicion to raise.
Scottish Skier suggested that I should remove the ICM poll from the Poll of Polls due to this bad practice. I can't really do that, because the whole point of the exercise is to throw all the wildly varying methodologies from BPC pollsters into a pot and see what the blend produces. And this certainly isn't the first time that a BPC pollster has used dodgy methodology - remember YouGov's embarrassingly biased preamble about Scotland "leaving the United Kingdom"? But it's undoubtedly a big concern, and it may well be distorting the trend in the Poll of Polls. The best way of judging the real trend for now is to look at recent polls conducted without a change in methodology - and TNS-BMRB, Panelbase and Survation are all showing a relatively stable position, with Yes consolidating the big gains made over the winter.
Incidentally, there are a couple of pieces of good news from the ICM datasets - the Yes vote on the unrounded figures after Don't Knows are excluded is 42.4%, which is obviously a touch higher than the rounded figures for publication suggested. And as seems to be the case every month, the Yes vote rises a touch (this time to 43.2%) after Don't Knows are asked how they are leaning.
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