Sensational BMG poll reveals that 45% of Scots insist on "leaving the UK" even when a polling company abandons all pretence at objectivity and asks the most risibly biased question in years

I'm almost embarrassed for BMG Research.  For extremely good reasons, it's become the industry standard to ask the actual 2014 referendum question when polling on independence.  Although we don't know what the exact question will be in a future indyref, it's highly unlikely that the SNP government would ever sign off on a question that frames the issue in a radically different way, and there's absolutely no reason why they should - because the 2014 question was not only approved by the Electoral Commission, it was chosen by them! 

The other crucial point, of course, is that it's not possible to meaningfully measure whether support for independence has increased or decreased since 2014 if you depart too radically (or indeed depart at all) from the actual referendum question.  So answers on a postcard, folks, as to why BMG have asked this unspeakably moronic question and then attempted to innocently portray it as a routine poll on independence from which meaningful conclusions can be drawn -

If a referendum were held tomorrow, on whether Scotland should leave or remain a member of the United Kingdom, how would you vote?

To leave the United Kingdom : 45.3%
To remain in the United Kingdom : 54.7%

For the avoidance of doubt, this isn't strictly speaking even a poll on independence.  Even in the bad old days when YouGov were pushing their own agenda and trying to pejoratively reframe the independence question as being about "leaving the United Kingdom", they did at least get around at the end of the question to mentioning that it was also about Scotland becoming an independent country.  The BMG question doesn't even do that.  Leave the UK to do what?  Join a federation with Norway?  Become a province of Canada?  We're not told. 

And the question doesn't even make sense on its own terms.  It's presumably an attempt to mimic the EU referendum question, but the difference is that the EU is an organisation that actually has members.  The UK isn't like that - it's an incorporating political union in which Westminster claims total sovereignty.  We even have legal experts who argue that Scotland was technically "extinguished" when it became part of the UK.  When is the last time you can remember Nicola Sturgeon wielding her veto at the Council of Britain?  Yeah, exactly.

So the question is not only shockingly biased, it's also complete gibberish.  I'm struggling to remember the last time a question as bad as this was asked as a headline 'voting intention' question - I certainly can't think of one in the last five years. When YouGov finally made their own question more neutral in the run-up to the referendum, the Yes vote immediately shot up, which gave us an indication of just how sensitive respondents can be to the exact wording.  I'm afraid, therefore, that the BMG poll is hopelessly tainted and the results must be regarded as practically worthless.  Perhaps the only thing that can be taken from them is that it's pretty damn impressive that as much as 45% of the population insist on their wish to "leave the UK" even when confronted with such a stupid question.

What the hell is going on here?  The poll was commissioned by The Herald, so in theory it's possible that they requested a non-standard question to make some sort of point or other, but the fact that they haven't made more of an issue of it in their own reporting of the poll leads me to conclude that probably isn't what happened.  There's clearly some sort of agenda at play, and I think it may be at BMG.  One important clue is what we witnessed yesterday with the reporting of another result from the same poll.  As RevStu has already pointed out, the Herald bizarrely claimed that the poll found that a Hard Brexit would not be a "game-changer" for attitudes to a second indyref, when it fact it showed the complete polar opposite of that - a majority against holding a second referendum was transformed into a majority in favour of a referendum as soon as a Hard Brexit was assumed.  While it's easy (and to some extent fair) to bash the Herald for making a black-is-white propaganda claim of that sort, it looks to me as if they may actually have been taking their lead directly from BMG - because the 'expert analysis' on the BMG website contained almost identical spin.

Let's take a step back for a moment.  If a poll shows that Hard Brexit turns the answer to a question on its head, on what basis can BMG even pretend with a straight face that it doesn't constitute a "game-changer"?  What they seem to be arguing is that because only a relatively small percentage of the overall sample (5.4% by my rough calculation) change their minds and embrace a referendum when Hard Brexit is mentioned, it doesn't actually matter that this is sufficient to swing the balance of the overall result.  But just think about the implications of that logic.  There was a widely-publicised Britain-wide ICM poll the other day that gave the Conservatives a mammoth 17% lead over Labour.  If "only" 5.4% of the overall sample were to move directly from the Tories to Labour, that would slash the lead to around 6%.  Would BMG seriously claim that such a change is not significant?  If they did make that claim, people would laugh at them, and rightly so.

What we have, then, is a situation where a polling company puts an indefensible partisan spin on their own results on Thursday, and then on Friday publishes a poll which uses a leading question to produce a desired result.  It's depressingly clear that we can no longer regard BMG as a politically neutral actor, at least in respect of Scottish polling.  Precisely what their objective is, though, is harder to say.  By breaking ranks on the consensus in favour of using the question "Should Scotland be an independent country?", and by doing so in a casual way without feeling any apparent need to justify or even explain such an extraordinary step, they may be trying to 'normalise' the use of leading questions in the future.  Perhaps there's nothing more to it than a simple attempt to artificially suppress the reported support for independence, or perhaps they're also trying to influence people's thinking on what the actual referendum question 'should' be next time around.  Either way, it's a nakedly political and partisan act, and one that brings shame upon a firm that - remarkably - is a member of the British Polling Council.

A 'Hard Brexit' means a second independence referendum. In other news, the Pope is still a Catholic.

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the International Business Times about what we learned from Nicola Sturgeon's speech today : that SNP MPs will vote against Brexit, that the draft bill on a second indyref will be launched for consultation shortly, and that in the event of a Hard Brexit, the SNP will seek a special status for Scotland within the UK that will allow us to remain inside the Single Market.  The BBC's Brian Taylor seemed to interpret the latter point as Sturgeon floating an alternative to a referendum (and the audience failing to pick up on the significance of it), but I must say I think he's wrong.  Sturgeon is asking for something that May has already completely set her face against, and the inevitable formal refusal will simply bolster the casus belli for Indyref 2.

You can read the article HERE.

Tommy Tommy Too-Tah, I said Too-Tah Too-Tah Tommy

Which is my way of saying that, after changing my mind about five times, I eventually voted for Tommy Sheppard in the SNP depute leadership election.  I have to say it was so much easier to make a choice two years ago - although we all knew that Nicola Sturgeon was about to take charge, she wasn't yet in harness, so that left the depute candidates some space to differ with each other on policy, and particularly on constitutional strategy.  Stewart Hosie's emphasis on making the SNP's 2015 general election campaign all about The Vow and Devo Max (which interestingly isn't quite what happened in the end, in spite of his victory) was very much in line with my own thinking at the time, so that was basically why I voted for him.

By contrast, there's been no vacancy at the top during this year's contest, so all of the candidates have had to be much more guarded about any differences they may privately have on strategy.  As you know, I'm on the hawkish end of the spectrum as far as the timing of a second independence referendum is concerned, so at the very least I'd like to know that I'm not voting for a depute who will be arguing behind the scenes for what I believe to be counter-productive caution.  But notwithstanding a hysterical article from James Millar in the New Statesman a couple of months ago which, on the basis of seemingly zero evidence, branded Sheppard a reckless 'separatist' and Angus Robertson a boringly realistic 'gradualist', I'm struggling to put a cigarette paper between the two men's stated views on a second indyref.  I did discover that Chris McEleny had rehearsed the theory of 'we need to have already won the referendum before we even dare hold it', which I consider to be completely misguided, so that put me off him somewhat.  But as far as the frontrunners were concerned, I was clearly going to have to use different criteria to decide.

Sheppard's pitch was mainly a series of suggestions about organisational reform, which all sounded attractive, but in all honesty I'm in no position to judge how feasible or wise they are.  One or two alarm bells rang in my head when he pledged to spend 10% of the party's income on the changes.  The obvious question is : would some of that money otherwise be better spent, perhaps on campaigning?  I simply don't know.

Although Sheppard is undoubtedly the candidate whose views on policy matters other than independence align most closely with my own, I also worried that he mainly appeals to the left-wing voters that Nicola Sturgeon already reaches, and that Sturgeon/Robertson might be the more balanced ticket.  And I certainly didn't take seriously the notion that Robertson would have too much on his plate if the burdens of the depute leadership were added to his duties as Westminster group leader.  It's entirely normal for parliamentary leaders to have other responsibilities, and in a sense Robertson currently has it quite easy in comparison to his counterparts in the other Westminster parties.

But in the end, I decided I was over-thinking things.  Sheppard is the most charismatic of the candidates, in my view, and as I agree with him about so much anyway, it would have been very odd not to vote for him.  Here is how I ranked the four candidates -

1. Tommy Sheppard
2. Angus Robertson
3. Alyn Smith
4. Chris McEleny

I'm sure most of you who are SNP members will already have voted, but if you haven't, you'd better get your skates on - voting is about to close!

GAIN! Gallus SNP gallop to greatness in gorgeous Garscadden as lousy Labour limp to latest lamentable loss

The exact result from the Garscadden and Scotstounhill by-election hasn't been published anywhere yet as far as I can see, but if Twitter is to be believed it's roughly as follows...

SNP 43% (+16)
Labour 39% (-23)
Conservatives 10% (+7)
Greens 5% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 2% (+1)

That's just under a 20% swing - higher than in most recent by-elections.  And unlike some of the recent so-called "Labour gains from the SNP", this one is a genuine SNP gain, because Labour won the popular vote in the ward last time around, and by an enormous margin.

So there still doesn't seem to be the slightest grounds for hope that Labour can head off the arrival of a historical landmark next May that will be (almost) on a par with the fall of Byzantium - the long-overdue loss of control of Glasgow City Council.  The now-familiar pattern continues - Labour are haemorrhaging left-wing support to the SNP, and centre-right/unionist support to the Tories.  How strong Labour have been in an area in the past continues to be a perversely strong predictor of how well the SNP will do now.  Much of working-class Scotland has simply switched wholesale from one default choice of party to another over an astonishingly short period of time.

As far as the direct swing to the SNP is concerned, it's not really to any great extent a rejection of Jeremy Corbyn or Kezia Dugdale - most of the switchers had already moved on (to coin a phrase) from Labour before either took up office.  But the current leadership may have to shoulder more of the blame for the swing to the Tories, which wasn't yet happening under Ed Miliband or Jackanory Jim.

Why Theresa May's hard Brexit makes a second indyref almost inevitable

Just a quick note (another one) to let you know that I have a new article at the International Business Times, about how the recent ugly hardening of the Tory stance on Brexit has vastly simplified Nicola Sturgeon's decision on whether to call a second independence referendum.  You can read it HERE.

Theresa May and her Little Empire of Leftovers

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article on the TalkRadio website about Theresa May's new (and doomed) imperial zeal, the richly satisfying failure of the Labour coup, and the mind-boggling fact that Nigel Farage is somehow still UKIP leader, nineteen days after being replaced by Diane James. You can read it HERE.

53% of public demand that a second independence referendum should be held within just THREE YEARS, according to landmark Panelbase poll

Apologies for taking several days to write about Sunday's Panelbase poll - I'm still in southern Europe (not for much longer, alas!).  The delay may be just as well, though, because it appears that the wrong numbers were originally reported.  The definitive results are now available within the Panelbase datasets, and for my money the most important finding is on whether a second independence referendum should be held in the near future...

Want another independence referendum within three years : 53%

Do not want another independence referendum in the next few years : 47%

Regular readers might recall that I pulled YouGov up a few weeks ago for falsely claiming that one of their polls showed a majority were opposed to an independence referendum.  In fact, they had only asked whether a referendum should be held before Brexit.  The Panelbase poll helpfully demonstrates just how sensitive respondents are to the specifics of the question asked, because only 32% say they want a referendum while Brexit negotiations are ongoing, but a further 21% want a referendum in two or three years when negotiations have been completed - bringing us to a grand total of 53%.  It's possible the three-option format of the question was helpful to the pro-referendum position (it arguably steers people towards subconsciously regarding the middle option of the three as the 'moderate' one).  But nevertheless, if you confront people with a time-frame of just THREE YEARS, and a majority still say they want a referendum, it is clearly nonsensical to claim (as YouGov attempted to) that Scotland is opposed to Indyref 2.

It was convincing, it was captivating...and it was Corbyn (again)

Apologies for recycling my John Motson-inspired headline from last year, but it seems appropriate because Labour have just recycled last year's leadership election result...

Labour leadership election 2016 :

Jeremy Corbyn 61.8% (+2.3)
Owen Smith 38.2% (n/a)

Survation sing a song of satisfying solidity as support for independence remains above September 2014 level

Mr George Eaton's recent musings on Scottish opinion polling are an excellent example of how certain journalists, through either laziness or malice, constantly misrepresent polls to favour their own political agenda.  The first YouGov poll on independence to be conducted after the EU referendum showed a small increase in the Yes vote, but according to our George, it actually showed a "fall".  How so?  Well, presumably he was comparing apples with oranges, and arguing that the Panelbase and Survation polls in the early summer had shown a temporary surge for Yes, which had then receded.  But there wasn't the slightest shred of proof for that.  It could just as easily have been that the different YouGov methodology had failed to pick up the mini-surge for Yes detected by Panelbase and Survation.  For the same reason, the TNS and Ipsos-Mori polls that followed, and that put Yes support just below 50%, did not provide definitive proof of a receding surge.  It was certainly plausible that the shock of the EU referendum result had led some people to briefly switch to Yes, before switching back when the complacency of the 'phony Brexit'/'Team GB' period set in.  But a plausible theory is not the same thing as evidence.  We needed a follow-up Panelbase or Survation poll before we could say anything with confidence, and that arrived earlier this week in the shape of an online poll from Survation.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47%
No 53%

That represents a 6% swing back to No since the extraordinary Survation online poll in early summer, and takes us back to the sort of numbers that have been typical over the last couple of years.  So it does appear that the theory of a temporary Yes boost in late June was probably correct, which means that if YouGov, TNS or Ipsos-Mori polls had been conducted at that time, they might well have shown an outright Yes lead.

Crucially, though, while it's true that the early summer mini-surge has been reversed, it's absolutely NOT the case that the gains Yes have made since the 2014 independence referendum have been lost.  Survation have consistently shown Yes above 45% since the indyref, and continue to do so in this poll.  We can be very confident that the increase is real, because Survation weight by recalled indyref vote, which in this case has had a very dramatic effect - 416 No voters in the raw sample have been upweighted to count as 476.  That means that the superficial similarity to the high 40s Yes figures that Survation generally reported before the indyref is totally misleading - there has been a significant improvement since then (ie. if there was no weighting by recalled indyref vote, the reported Yes vote would now be above 47%).

Not that you'd be aware of any of this if you listened to the lazy spin that Survation themselves put on the poll.  Oh no.  According to them, we have a becalmed electorate who never change their minds about independence (the recent extreme volatility in Survation polls is a tad mysterious, then!), and who are more than happy to settle for the "compromise" (!) between independence and union represented by the half-delivered "Vow" (in which case why did the passing of the Scotland Bill not produce a boost for No?).

Back in the real world, support for Yes remains so high that we practically have a statistical tie, and Brexit hasn't even happened yet.  Free movement of peoples hasn't ended yet.  Visa-free travel to the continent hasn't stopped yet.  The economic hit hasn't been felt yet.  None of these mini-disasters are even on the horizon for most people, but they soon will be.  I used the phrase 'phony Brexit' earlier, because in a very loose sense, the current period can be compared to late 1939/early 1940 when people were still playing rounders and kidding themselves that nothing much was going to happen.  But when the realisation dawns, it will dawn with a vengeance - and we know from the early summer surge that there are enough people out there concerned about Brexit to potentially produce an outright Yes majority.  The depressing reality for the London establishment is that we can't be distracted with Olympic gold medals every month.

Although I'm abroad at the moment, I'm in close proximity to a Scottish Tory couple who reckon that Ruth Davidson is "brilliant", and that recent polls have shown that both Davidson and Theresa May are more popular than Nicola Sturgeon.  So Ms Sturgeon is "not going down well!", apparently.  Well, whichever way you cut it, this poll begs to differ.  Sturgeon has significantly better personal ratings than either Davidson or May (and every other politician asked about), and indeed May has an outright negative rating.  That honeymoon didn't last long.

Curiously, Survation have replicated the counterintuitive finding from TNS that women are now more supportive of independence than men are.  It may just be a coincidence that two polls close together are both producing a misleading finding, but who knows?  Perhaps Brexit has turned the gender divide on its head.

Off on my travels

Good morning from the beating heart of the Evil Empire, aka Victoria Station in central London.  God, it's grim here, and there are Tory voters everywhere.  I should really sit a few of them down and demand that they explain themselves to the readers of Scot Goes Pop.

So I just thought I'd better let you know that, barring mishaps at the Take Back Control Brexit Means Brexit border, I'll be on the continent until the start of October.  I know that blogging has already been light for the last few weeks - I've had the most manic summer/early autumn I can remember in a long time.  That culminated, as you may know, in me camping myself at the Emirates Arena for all three days of the Davis Cup semi-final, where I did my civic duty and interrupted the Union Jack Fest by waving my £2 saltire at strategic Murray Moments.  It certainly wasn't an attempt to get on TV - as we all know, saltires are camera-repellents in designated Brit Zones, but I did feel it was important to give Simon Reed a visual clue by which he could identify me as an "English supporter".

Anyway, by the wonders of modern technology, it's possible to blog on the go, so although blogging will probably continue to be light over the next couple of weeks, it hopefully won't be non-existent.  If a Scottish poll appears and I haven't said anything about it for 48 hours, you can safely conclude that I've dropped my phone in the sea (as I've done before).