Doomsday dawns for distraught Dugdale as splendidly sadistic Survation survey extinguishes all hope for Scottish Labour

The latest poll in Survation's monthly series for Cleggy and the Vow-Meisters is now out, and it shows Labour slumping to joint all-time lows for Survation polls in both the constituency and list ballots.

Constituency ballot :

SNP 54% (n/c)
Labour 20% (-1)
Conservatives 16% (n/c)
Liberal Democrats 7% (+2)

Regional list ballot :

SNP 42% (-1)
Conservatives 18% (+4)
Labour 18% (-1)
Greens 10% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-1)
UKIP 5% (-1)

The Record bills this poll as predicting that Labour will finish third in terms of seats behind the Tories, but that isn't strictly true - even leaving aside the fact that polls don't make predictions, all that the poll itself says is that the Conservatives have drawn level with Labour on the list vote.  Pumping the figures into one particular prediction website may give the Tories one more seat than Labour, but it's debatable whether any prediction model can say anything meaningful about what would happen in the event of a dead heat.  The outcome would mostly depend on the regional distribution of each party's list votes.

There are also two important facts we know to be true - a) the list vote for major parties is generally very strongly correlated to their constituency vote, and b) polling for the constituency ballot tends to be more accurate than polling for the list ballot.  So it could well be that Labour's 4% advantage over the Tories on the constituency ballot tells us more about what is likely to happen on the list than the list figures themselves do.

Predictably, the Greens' spin machine has cranked into gear over their showing on the list, but actually this poll isn't as great for them as it appears.  Survation have consistently been the most favourable pollster for both the Greens and UKIP, and that appears to be due to the inadvisable way in which respondents are asked for their list voting intention.  10% is well within the Greens' recent 'normal range' with Survation - they were as high as 11% in September.

Explanatory note : As a fond tribute to the mainstream media's restrained take on the GERS report, Scot Goes Pop headlines will contain 50% added hysteria for an indefinite period.

Drama as Leave take the lead for the first time in a telephone poll

In spite of the lavish coverage of Lynton Crosby's grandiose musings on yesterday's EU referendum poll from ORB, I didn't actually pay a huge amount of attention to the poll itself, because at first glance the numbers looked fairly routine.  But as soon as you realise that it was conducted by telephone and not among a volunteer online polling panel, suddenly it looks a hell of a lot more significant.

Remain 47%
Leave 49%

This isn't quite the game-changer that it might have been if it was a ComRes, Ipsos-Mori or Survation telephone poll putting Leave ahead, because that would be fairly convincing proof that there has been a swing to Leave.  Since ORB haven't previously polled by phone during this campaign, it's possible that there's some kind of house effect that is favouring Leave in this poll, and that if the other telephone firms polled again, they'd produce much more familiar numbers.  But there's no getting away from it - the fact that it's even possible for any sort of telephone poll to put Leave ahead completely transforms our understanding of this contest.  Until now, the telephone leads for Remain have ranged from substantial to overwhelming, and that's been the comfort blanket that has reassured many pro-European commentators that Brexit is highly unlikely.  Suddenly it doesn't look quite so simple.

Probably the biggest health warning that needs to be slapped on this poll is that ORB don't seem to have asked the exact referendum question.  (I'm not 100% sure about that, because the datasets are quite difficult to decipher, but it looks that way.)  We know from Ipsos-Mori's research that the official question tends to produce better numbers from Remain - which is a bit odd, given that the wording is scrupulously neutral.  So perhaps Leave are being flattered slightly by ORB, but even allowing for that, it's hard to deny that this is the Outers' most encouraging phone poll to date by some distance.

Where does this leave us?  Completely in the dark, basically.

* YouGov haven't reported recently, but their most recent batch of polls seemed to suggest a significant swing to Remain among their online panel.  However, a more up-to-date full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov showed a big swing to Leave - it's unclear whether that's a Scotland-only effect, or whether it reflects a very recent shift in Britain-wide opinion that will only be picked up by the next UK poll from the firm.

* ICM are the other most prominent online pollster, and you could make a case that they're either showing no meaningful recent change, or a small swing to Leave.  But there's certainly no sign at all of a YouGov-style swing to Remain.

* Neither ComRes nor Ipsos-Mori have published a telephone poll recently.  The last time they did, ComRes seemed to be suggesting that Leave had made some progress, while Ipsos-Mori showed no change of any significance.  But both firms still showed substantial Remain leads.

* And now we have the first telephone poll to put Leave ahead, but with no baseline figures from ORB to measure from.

It's as clear as mud, but on balance I'd suggest Leave have reason to be more confident than they were a few days ago.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 45.8% (-0.1)
Leave 39.7% (+1.1)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 41.2% (+0.3)
Leave 40.0% (+0.2)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 50.3% (-0.5)
Leave 39.3% (+2.0)

(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last month. The online average is based on ten polls - five from YouGov, three from ICM, one from ORB and one from BMG. The telephone average is based on four polls - one from ComRes, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from ORB and one from Survation.)

*  *  *

You learn something new every day - according to the Telegraph, members of the House of Lords will be allowed to vote in the EU referendum, but only if they live in Gibraltar.  That sounds eminently sensible.

*  *  *

Many thanks to the 227 people who voted in this blog's latest readers' poll.  It may be somewhat academic after Hillary Clinton's solid results overnight, but no fewer than 214 of you (that's 94.3%) reckoned that Scotland's favourite "centre-right socialist" Stephen Daisley would vote for Donald Trump in a hypothetical contest against Bernie Sanders.  Evidently you think "right" is the operative word, rather than "centre" or "socialist".

VOTE : What would Stephen do?

Alas, it's probably unlikely that Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination, although he does still have a genuine fighting chance if he can follow up his sensational Michigan victory with some good results tonight.  For a bit of fun, let's suppose that he does make it through, and that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.  I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering - what would Stephen Daisley do if he had a vote?  That's the subject of today's readers' poll.

There's not much doubt that Daisley would vote for Hillary Clinton given half a chance - she's like Liz Kendall with charisma, and that's a heady combination for our Stephen.  But could he bring himself to vote for Sanders over a madman like Trump?  Let's consider the evidence...

1) Stephen thought that Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader, on a very similar platform to Sanders, was a catastrophe on a par with the Black Death.

2) In a series of bizarre tweets a couple of weeks ago, Stephen seemed to indicate support for "constitutional originalism".  In other words, he thinks justices on the US Supreme Court should not interpret the constitution as a living document that adapts with the times, but should treat each word and phrase in the precise way that was intended in the 18th century.  That suggests he would prefer the sort of conservative justices that a Republican president might appoint, rather than the liberal justices that even Clinton might appoint.

3) In a jaw-dropping article published on the STV website in the wake of the Paris attacks, Stephen seemed to strongly hint that the torture of terror suspects might be morally acceptable in some circumstances.  Donald Trump has of course expressed his support for waterboarding, and for targeting the families of terrorists.

Using your skill and judgement, I want you to guess what Stephen would do if he had a vote in a hypothetical Sanders v Trump contest.  You'll find the voting form at the top of the sidebar (desktop version of the site only).

Desperate Dugdale reels in horror as apocalyptic YouGov poll prophesises the end for Scottish Labour

It seems that YouGov are once again ploughing their own furrow - today's new full-scale Scottish poll contradicts much of the narrative from recent TNS, Survation and Ipsos-Mori polls.

Constituency ballot :

SNP 49% (-1)
Conservatives 19% (-1)
Labour 19% (n/c)
Liberal Democrats 6% (n/c)

Regional list ballot :

SNP 43% (+1)
Conservatives 19% (-1)
Labour 17% (-3)
Greens 8% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 5% (n/c)
UKIP 4% (+1)

This is the first poll from any firm since the UK general election to show the SNP slipping below 50% on the constituency ballot, and is in sharp contrast to recent polls conducted by other firms which have shown the SNP vote going back up.  If we believe YouGov, the SNP are now performing just 4% better in the constituencies than they did in the 2011 election - when of course they required at least twelve list seats to win an overall majority.  This once again demonstrates the utter folly of assuming that the SNP are guaranteed to win a majority on constituency seats alone, and that the list vote represents some kind of 'free hit' for pro-independence voters.  It's also somewhat troubling to note that the SNP's list vote continues to be lower than the 44% achieved in 2011 - albeit only slightly.

In a sense, YouGov are in line with other pollsters in showing the Tory vote slipping a little.   But the huge difference is that they're also showing the Labour vote slumping on the list at the same time.  The Labour list vote now stands at a scarcely believable 17%, which beats the all-time record low reported by Survation a few weeks ago.  It's also the first time ever that any firm has shown the Tories ahead of Labour on the list - the famous YouGov poll a month ago had the Tories in second place in the constituencies, but only level-pegging with Labour on the list.  This is particularly grim news for Kezia Dugdale, because Labour are likely to be dependent on the list for the vast majority of seats they win.  So if they finish third in terms of list seats, it's fairly probable they'll finish third in terms of overall seats.  However, two crucial points should be borne in mind.  Firstly, polling for the list has tended to be somewhat less accurate than constituency polling over the years.  Secondly, there is now a very clear divergence between different pollsters - as things stand, all firms other than YouGov are showing Labour still fending off the Tories with a few points to spare.  So if I was gambling man, I'd still be betting with a reasonable amount of confidence on Labour finishing second and the Tories finishing third.

YouGov are also a little different from others in what they are saying about the Greens and UKIP.  Although the last Survation poll had both parties higher than we see today, we tended to discount that because the way Survation ask for regional list voting intentions seems to be more than a little suspect, and tends to flatter the smaller parties.  In any case, there was no sign of a recent boost for either the Greens or UKIP in the Survation poll, which in that sense was very much in line with what Ipsos-Mori and TNS have been showing.  YouGov, by contrast, are now putting UKIP on 4% for the first time since 2014, which puts Farage's delightful mob in contention to nick the odd list seat here or there.  The Greens are up to 8% - the first time that any firm other than Survation has had them that high since last summer.  We'll have to see whether that's the start of a trend or just a freakish one-off finding caused by sampling variation.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Constituency ballot :

SNP 53.2% (-0.2)
Labour 20.4% (n/c)
Conservatives 16.2% (-0.2)
Liberal Democrats 5.4% (n/c)

Regional list ballot :

SNP 47.6% (+0.2)
Labour 19.0% (-0.6)
Conservatives 15.6% (-0.2)
Greens 6.8% (+0.4)
Liberal Democrats 6.2% (n/c)

(The Poll of Polls is based on a rolling average of the most recent poll from each of the firms that have reported Scottish Parliament voting intention numbers over the previous three months, and that adhere to British Polling Council rules. At present, there are five - Panelbase, Survation, YouGov, TNS and Ipsos-Mori. Whenever a new poll is published, it replaces the last poll from the same company in the sample.)

Explanatory note : As a fond tribute to the mainstream media's restrained take on the GERS report, Scot Goes Pop headlines will contain 50% added hysteria for an indefinite period.

Question Time : It's Tayside, Jim, but not as we know it

I may have been in a small minority on this point, but I actually thought Question Time's attitude to Scotland in general and to the SNP in particular had improved somewhat over recent months.  We seemed to have moved on from the incredulous reaction a viewer received last spring when he dared to ask why the SNP weren't represented in an edition of the programme recorded in England.  Since then, a compromise seems to have been reached whereby the SNP do regularly feature in English-based episodes, but not every single week - which is perhaps fair enough given the unprecedented situation of Westminster's third-largest party being a Scotland-only outfit.

But as has now been well-documented, last night's show from Dundee was a monumental step backwards, and probably marked an all-time low - it was certainly even worse than the notorious Glasgow episode in 2010.  What escapes me is the mathematical formula or guiding principles that could possibly have resulted in an audience that was so comically unrepresentative of the city, region, and even the nation that the programme was being filmed in.  Were the BBC aiming for an audience that reflected the political views of the UK as a whole, and not of Dundee or Scotland?  Nope, that can't be it, otherwise a small number of SNP supporters would be bussed down to England every week to make up their 5% share of the Question Time audience - and we all know that doesn't happen.  Or perhaps the production team ignored the current state of Scottish public opinion, and simply aimed for a crude four-way split between SNP, Labour, Tory and Lib Dem supporters, with a smattering of Greens and undecideds thrown in?  That's perhaps more plausible, although it's hard to see how it can be justified, because it must have led to a roughly 65-70% anti-independence majority among the audience in a city that actually voted Yes to independence by a wide margin.  It wouldn't have been so bad if the discussion hadn't related to independence, but it clearly did to a significant extent.  And isn't it fascinating that the artificial quota for each party could seemingly only be reached by bringing in loads of people from far outwith the Dundee area, and indeed from far outwith Scotland?

It's also worth amplifying a point made by RevStu earlier - David Dimbleby's claim during the programme that everyone had known at the time of the indyref than an in/out EU referendum was on its way is a piece of utter nonsense.  Very few commentators anticipated an outright Conservative majority, which meant the odds actually seemed to be against an EU referendum - it wasn't going to happen if there was any form of Labour-led government, and whether it happened under a Tory-led government was expected to depend in large part upon the negotiating stance of the Liberal Democrats.  But even if it was true that an EU referendum had looked certain eighteen months ago, that would still miss the whole point.  The Better Together campaign claimed explicitly that only a No vote was a vote for continued EU membership - and they did that in spite of their knowledge that there was a very realistic scenario which could lead to Scotland being swiftly forced out of the EU against its will if it voted No.  In a nutshell, the No vote was won under false pretences - and the London media were complicit in that, because they failed to challenge a very obvious deception.  If the likes of Dimbleby had hounded the Tories over the contradiction of planning for an in/out EU vote at the same time they were inviting Scotland to vote No as the only way of guaranteeing EU membership, he might now have a point in saying that the Scottish people shouldn't be surprised by how things have panned out.  But he didn't, so he doesn't.

*  *  *

Without much fanfare, there was a huge moment in the EU referendum campaign earlier this week.  YouGov's recent batch of polling had seemed to indicate a significant swing towards Remain - so I was waiting with bated breath to see if the weekly ICM poll picked up the same trend.  In fact, it went in completely the opposite direction, and showed a Leave lead for only the second time.  That's unlikely to be a freak finding, because last week's poll was very similar (it was a dead heat).

If all of the online pollsters had agreed with YouGov, it might have started to look like the writing was on the on the wall for Leave - but instead the waters have been muddied further.  ICM, often regarded as the "gold standard" of UK polling companies, has simply swapped places with YouGov as the more Leave-friendly firm.  Why that has suddenly happened is anyone's guess.

Meanwhile, a new full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov suggests that the Remain lead north of the border has dropped sharply from 27 points to 17 points over the last month, which seems thoroughly counterintuitive given that the same firm has shown the opposite trend across Great Britain.  Support for independence is unchanged at 46% - which makes it more likely that the modest drop in the Yes vote in the last YouGov poll wasn't a fluke.  The most recent poll from Scotland's only regular telephone pollster (Ipsos-Mori) also showed slippage in the Yes vote - but still showed Yes in the lead.  So we're no closer to knowing whether there is currently a narrow pro-independence majority, or a narrow anti-independence majority - it depends on the data collection method, and perhaps on other aspects of polling methodology.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 45.9% (+0.1)
Leave 38.6% (n/c)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 40.9% (+0.2)
Leave 39.8% (n/c)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 50.8% (n/c)
Leave 37.3% (n/c)

(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last month. The online average is based on twelve polls - five from YouGov, four from ICM, one from ORB, one from BMG and one from TNS. The telephone average is based on four polls - two from ComRes, one from Ipsos-Mori and one from Survation.)

Another harrowing evening for the British establishment as their crackpot plans for Sunday slavery are left in tatters after noble Nat intervention

The result of the Commons vote on the anti-Sunday trading amendment...

Ayes (against extended Sunday trading) : 317 
Noes (in favour of extended Sunday trading) : 286

Although the SNP have effectively forced several U-turns on flagship Tory policies since last year's general election, this is the first time the SNP and Labour have successfully combined to inflict a major defeat on the government on the floor of the House of Commons.  It's bound to cause a bit of a re-evaluation of the idea that the Tories' narrow majority win in the general election headed off the unspeakable horrors of the SNP having some influence over English affairs in this glorious "United" Kingdom of ours.

Explanatory note : As a fond tribute to the mainstream media's restrained take on the GERS report, Scot Goes Pop headlines will contain 50% added hysteria for an indefinite period.

"Virtually no chance..."

Speaking as a Bernie Sanders voter (and not wanting to pull rank on anyone, but I've now voted for him four times in various elections), I'm obviously delighted that America's only socialist senator managed to pull off a win against all the odds in Michigan.  The most important thing is that it keeps him in with some kind of slim chance of winning the Democratic nomination, but there's another aspect of the story that we shouldn't lose sight of.  Have a look at the verdict FiveThirtyEight were offering just a few hours ago...

"According to our final polls-plus forecast, Hillary Clinton has a greater than 99% chance of winning the Michigan primary."

Even more embarrassingly, the site's live-blog was still talking about how boring the evening was and how Clinton was cruising to victory when over a third of precincts were already reporting and she was trailing by thousands of votes.  Just what does it take for the alarm bells to start ringing?

It might be worth bearing this latest howler in mind the next time that Nate Silver or one of his fellow 'mystics' blunder into another country's referendum campaign, and ludicrously declare with over a year still to go that there is "virtually no chance" that one side or another is going to win.  Once they can get their predictions right on home soil with just hours to go, perhaps they can branch out into the much trickier long-term foreign stuff, but they're clearly not there yet.  OK, Silver can claim that he wasn't technically proved wrong about Scotland, but given what we know about how the indyref campaign panned out in the closing weeks and months, it's very difficult to see how he can credibly justify such an extreme statement with the benefit of hindsight.

Uncertainty may be scary to a stats guy, but that's the world we live in.

How will the Greens' inclusion in the TV debates affect the other parties?

Although inclusive leaders' debates are undoubtedly the fairest outcome, I can't help feeling that the broadcasters have copped out somewhat. Past precedents and the logic that previously justified those precedents should have led us to three-cornered (and indeed all-female) debates this year between Nicola Sturgeon, Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson. Willie Rennie should have been excluded because the Liberal Democrats have fewer MSPs than the Greens did going into the 2007 election, when Robin Harper didn't receive an invitation to the debates. The Liberal Democrats also received a lower percentage of the list vote in 2011 than the Greens did in 2003. Rennie can't even pray in aid his party's results in recent non-Holyrood elections, because they were reduced to fringe party status in the 2012 local elections and the 2015 UK general election, and were completely wiped out in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Nor is it the case that one solitary Westminster MP is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card - if it was, George Galloway would have been involved in the UK debates last year.

Consciously or unconsciously, I would guess what's happened here is that the broadcasters couldn't even conceive of excluding the Lib Dems, so they've brought the Greens in to give themselves cover for what would otherwise be the unjustifiable presence of Rennie. If the Lib Dems' support hadn't collapsed, we'd be looking at the traditional four-way debates and Patrick Harvie wouldn't have had any hope of a look-in. You might think that what we've ended up with is the right outcome and it doesn't really matter how we got here, but I'd say it does - there has to be some kind of objective criteria for inclusion and exclusion. The starting-point can't be "party X has to be included, no matter how little support they have, so we'll shape the rules to justify that outcome". Nor can it be (as it was in 2010) : "party X has to be excluded, no matter how popular they are". If the Greens have earned a place as of right in the 2016 debates, they must have more than earned a place in the 2007 debates - so where were they? If, on the other hand, the Greens fell short of the threshold in 2007, then both the Lib Dems and the Greens must have fallen even further short of the threshold this time - so what are Willie Rennie and Patrick Harvie doing there?

For better or worse, though, Harvie has secured his place, and that could have an impact on the prospects of the other parties. Here's how I think it could work out...

SNP : Bad news. Nicola Sturgeon could well need list seats to retain her overall majority, and she'll be fishing in the same pond as the Greens for some of her list votes.

Labour : Bad news. Labour are going to be mostly (perhaps even totally) dependent on list seats for their representation, so even if they lose fewer left-wing votes to the Greens than the SNP do, it could actually cost them a greater number of seats.

Conservatives : Unclear, but possibly good news. There are only so many list seats available, so a good Green showing could in theory harm the Tories. But it could also help them relative to Labour's performance, which may be all they really care about at this stage.

Liberal Democrats : Bad news. It's completely irrational, because the Lib Dems and Greens don't have a huge amount in common, but the same type of voter often seems to be attracted to both parties. The Lib Dems' status as the fourth-largest party could therefore be seriously threatened by Patrick Harvie being seen to be on an equal footing with Willie Rennie.

RISE and Solidarity : Unmitigated disaster. Harvie's inclusion will make the Greens look like the only credible radical left option on the list.

Having said all that, there's no guarantee that the Greens will actually make a telling breakthrough on the back of this. It's hard to see that Natalie Bennett's inclusion in the UK debates last year helped the Greens all that much. This is a golden opportunity for Patrick Harvie, but no more than that for now - it remains to be seen whether he will take full advantage of it.

* * *

Is our old friend Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson the least self-aware political commentator in Britain? He returned to a familiar theme today -

"The Corbynistas are more than ready to use the term “Red Tories” to describe those in their party who oppose them. This is bull***t. The real Red Tories are those whose actions will lead to another Conservative majority and they are, of course the followers of Corbyn and McDonnell."

Smithson, of course, is the man who penned a rare editorial in May 2010 begging his party (the Lib Dems) to go into coalition with the Tories, in order to avoid the terrible "mistake" of keeping Labour in power. Well, they successfully avoided that "mistake", and were rewarded with near-extinction five years later. Yeah, Mike, with a track record like that, good luck with your efforts to brand Labour's most left-wing leadership in history as "the real Red Tories".

Would it be terribly unkind of me to point out that it was the Labour right that lost the last two elections to the Tories, not the Labour left? And if the heirs to Blair and Brown couldn't even "be arsed" (to use Smithson's favourite phrase) to put up a remotely credible candidate for leader after last year's defeat, that's ultimately their own responsibility, not Jeremy Corbyn's. It's occurred to me more than once that Bernie Sanders' biggest problem at the moment is that he isn't running against Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall.

Will Europe make a "big and generous offer" to Scotland in the event of Brexit?

It's been a long time since I last braved the unparallelled horrors of the comments section at Stormfront Lite, but for some reason I decided to do so today.  I happened to stumble across this comment from "Charles", which I thought might be worth bringing to the attention of a wider audience...

"Just had a very amusing conversation with my man in France.

The French are spitting with how Cameron f**ked up the negotiations. They wanted him to propose something sensible that worked for everyone - on immigration, on benefits and everything else. They would have then ganged up on Germany and delivered it.

But Cameron went for the "I'm alright, Jack, approach" and tried to wing the whole thing. Result - in their view - is there is a real chance that Brexit may happen. (But he confirmed that they will make a big and generous offer to Scotland.)"

SL has always had more than its fair share of out-and-out fantasists, so I've no idea if this chap really does have "a man" in the upper reaches of the French government or civil service. But his account certainly has the ring of truth to it. Keeping the lesser-populated northern third of the island of Great Britain within the EU would clearly only be a consolation prize, but I suspect it's one that European governments (with the obvious exception of Spain) might well be interested in chasing if all else fails. It would arguably steady the ship slightly at a moment of maximum danger for the European project. Could an independent Scotland be offered a fast-track to membership, and perhaps even the chance of inheriting the UK's opt-outs?

New podcast

Just a quick note to let you know that myself and Carolyn Scott are the guests on this week's edition of the Newsnet Scotland podcast, presented by Derek Bateman.  Topics discussed include council tax reform, the EU referendum, the Scottish Tories' rapidly fading hopes of replacing Labour as the largest opposition party, and the future of the Liberal Democrats.  You can listen to the podcast HERE.