This TNS poll is so God-awful for Scottish Labour that J K Rowling didn't even have a perfect response to effortlessly shut it down

The monthly TNS poll of Holyrood voting intentions came out earlier today, and the big news is that Labour have returned to their all-time low of 19% on the constituency vote.  They've only previously had one sub-20 showing on the constituency vote with TNS, and that was during the initial honeymoon period after the SNP's landslide victory in the UK general election last year.  To put it in perspective, they had recovered to as 'high' as 24% during the autumn, so it appears that something has gone seriously wrong since then.

Constituency ballot :

SNP 56% (-4)
Labour 19% (-2)
Conservatives 15% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 6% (+2)

Regional list ballot :

SNP 47% (-8)
Labour 21% (n/c)
Conservatives 15% (+2)
Greens 8% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 6% (+2)
SSP 2% (+2)
UKIP 1% (+1)

Is there any cause for concern in the apparent drop in support for the SNP?  Not necessarily on the constituency ballot, because 56% remains within the normal TNS range for the SNP, albeit at the lower end of it.  However, 47% on the list ballot is easily the lowest TNS have reported since before the general election, and perhaps more importantly, the disparity between the two ballots is much bigger than normal.  Unlike with Survation (who routinely show the SNP losing a big chunk of their constituency voters on the list), that can't be explained by an inadvisable question wording.  The explanation offered by TNS themselves is that, as the election approaches, more voters may be recalling that they do have an option of using the list vote for a different party.  I'm slightly sceptical about that, because almost half of SNP constituency voters who switch parties on the list in this poll end up in the column of an anti-independence party.  If it was simply a case of SNP voters being emboldened to be more adventurous on the list, you wouldn't expect them to be going to Labour.  I'm wondering if we're just looking at a slightly weird sample here, but future polls will tell us one way or the other.

All the same, this is a moderately good poll for two of the smaller pro-independence parties.  8% for the Greens isn't unusually high, but it's towards the upper end of their normal range with TNS.  2% for the SSP is still well below the level at which RISE can realistically expect to win even one seat, but it does mark the first time since heaven-only-knows-when that any firm other than YouGov have put the SSP or RISE higher than 1%.  Time will tell whether that's a freak result.  The news remains grim for Tommy Sheridan's Solidarity, though - they're listed in the datasets, but they failed to trouble the scorer.  In the weighted sample, not a single respondent was a Solidarity voter (although the presence of an asterisk implies that they probably had a solitary voter in the unweighted sample).

Incidentally, UKIP would have joined the SSP on 2%, but they lost two-thirds of their voters when the turnout filter was applied.  That might be a little clue as to why David Coburn and his delightful chums are highly unlikely to grace Holyrood with their presence after May.  The European election two years ago was effectively a 'home' game for them, with their supporters disproportionately motivated to turn out, but a Scottish Parliament election is very much an 'away' fixture for the Brit Nat ultras.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

I never got round to updating the Poll of Polls after the most recent Survation poll, so the percentage changes below take account of both Survation and TNS.  This is the first update in which Labour have slipped below 20% on the constituency ballot, although of course we're well used to seeing them below 20% on the list.

Constituency ballot :

SNP 52.4% (-0.8)
Labour 19.8% (-0.6)
Conservatives 16.6% (+0.4)
Liberal Democrats 6.2% (+0.8)

Regional list ballot :

SNP 45.8% (-1.8)
Labour 18.8% (-0.2)
Conservatives 16.8% (+1.2)
Greens 7.4% (+0.6)
Liberal Democrats 6.4% (+0.2)

(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.)

New EU referendum polls from ICM and YouGov show a virtual dead heat

The weekly ICM referendum poll is out, and on the face of it, the results look pretty routine, slotting in more or less in the middle of ICM's 'normal range' -

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

Remain 44% (-1)
Leave 43% (n/c)

However, for the second poll in a row, ICM have made a methodological change, so the headline numbers aren't directly comparable with anything that has gone before. In the last poll, it was possible to see that Remain would have been roughly four points ahead (without a distortion caused by rounding) under the old methodology, leaving open the possibility that there had been a genuine swing to Remain in the immediate wake of the Brussels attacks. This time, it's slightly tricky to work out the unadjusted trend, because the format of the datasets has changed to take account of the methodological shift, and there are one or two things there that don't really make sense. For example, we're told that the headline results are filtered by voter registration - and yet as far as I can see respondents aren't asked at any point whether they are registered to vote. Possibly ICM already have that information from questions previously asked to their polling panel - but in that case, why is that particular filter necessary? Why not simply invite only people who are registered to vote? I'm sure there's a straightforward explanation, but it's not immediately apparent. We're also told that two sets of results are filtered to only include those who are "certain to vote" - but a) that makes a nonsense of the whole concept of "turnout weighting", and b) the numbers don't tally up anyway. Only 1255 respondents say they are absolutely certain to vote, and yet 1819 respondents are left in the first filtered sample, and 1625 in the second.

For what it's worth, though, it's hard to see how Remain would be further than 2-3% ahead if the changes hadn't been introduced, so whichever way you cut it, this poll is slightly better for Leave than the last one from ICM.  The improvement is not statistically significant, but it somewhat reduces the chances that the apparent swing to Remain last time around was genuine.

The disparity between Scotland and the rest of the UK is particularly gigantic this week - the Scottish subsample figures are Remain 60%, Leave 28%.

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Sod's law - I was just about to hit 'publish', and then I suddenly noticed there's a new YouGov poll out as well...

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

Remain 39% (-1)
Leave 38% (+1)

This one does look potentially significant, because the razor-thin Remain lead is lower than the 2-5% range we saw in the last four YouGov polls.  Even if the slight progress for Leave is just an illusion caused by sampling variation, that could mean that YouGov's current 'normal range' isn't quite as good for Remain as we had thought until today.

The Scottish subsample figures are : Remain 51%, Leave 32%.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

I've been thinking for some time that I should reduce the time-frame covered by each update of the Poll of Polls, because one month seems a bit too long at this stage of the campaign.  Ideally, I'd like to cut it to a fortnight, but at the moment that would leave us with just one telephone poll in the sample.  So I'll compromise and go with three weeks for now, although at some point it'll hopefully be possible to bring it down to two, as polls are likely to become much more frequent as referendum day approaches.

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 45.2% (+0.9)
Leave 41.4% (+0.5)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 41.9% (+0.9)
Leave 42.4% (+2.2)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 48.5% (+1.0)
Leave 40.3% (-1.2)

(The Poll of Polls takes account of all polls that were conducted at least partly within the last three weeks. The online average is based on eight polls - three from ICM, two from TNS, one from ORB, one from YouGov 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.)

ORB telephone poll puts Leave just seven points behind - but what does it mean?

There does seem to be something about EU referendum polls.  Every time we need a particular type of poll to make things a little clearer, we kind of get it, but in a form that isn't actually of much use.  Here is the latest telephone poll -

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

Remain 51%
Leave 44%

In normal circumstances, a telephone poll putting Leave just seven points behind would be interpreted as a dreadful result for Remain. But this one is from ORB - who have only previously conducted one phone poll, and it stuck out like a sore thumb by putting Leave ahead. So there are a few possibilities - perhaps the last poll was a freak, and the new one can be seen as being in line with ComRes in showing a much reduced telephone lead for Remain. Or perhaps ORB have a Leave-friendly house bias, in which case this poll might indicate that Remain have bounced back over the last couple of weeks, meaning we should expect the Remain lead to return to double figures in the next ComRes and Ipsos-Mori phone polls. Or perhaps the apparent swing to Remain can be explained by a methodological tweak (it wouldn't be surprising if ORB have reviewed their phone methodology, given how unexpected the outcome of the last poll was).

To put it another way, we're none the wiser, and all we can do is wait for more information.

Ochone! Opinium's overnight offering is awfully ominous for pro-Europeans, as the Leave campaign opens up a four-point lead

Opinium have only conducted one previous voting intention poll over the course of the EU referendum campaign, and it showed a razor-thin Leave lead, so their new poll showing a four-point Leave advantage doesn't particularly indicate that anything dramatic has happened.  But assuming there haven't been any methodological changes, it further strengthens the evidence that Remain haven't made progress of any significance in the wake of the Brussels attacks.

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

Remain 39% (-1)
Leave 43% (+2)

The poll was commissioned by the Observer, who focus on the very familiar pattern of younger respondents backing Remain but being much less likely than their Leave-leaning seniors to actually cast their vote.  Irritatingly, though, we're not told whether the poll is filtered/weighted by turnout - if it is, the disadvantage for Remain is already factored into the headline figures.  If not, the poll could be implying that Leave are really ahead by a fair bit more than four points.  We'll presumably find out one way or the other when the datasets emerge.

Assuming that differential turnout will on balance work in Leave's favour (which it probably will, although ComRes take the opposite view), it's worth pointing out that both polling evidence and past precedent suggests that we're heading for a comparatively low poll in June.  Turnout in the 1975 Common Market referendum was around 10 points lower than the norm for general elections of the period, so if history repeats itself we might be looking at a figure in the mid-50s, leaving plenty of scope for the greater motivation of Leave supporters to swing the balance.  That said, the result in 1975 was already a foregone conclusion by the time referendum day came around.  If the polling this time remains tight and/or contradictory, that in itself could galvanise Remain sympathisers into turning out (in much the same way that No voters were galvanised in the closing stages of the indyref campaign).

I'm going to hold off from updating the Poll of Polls, because there's been a flurry of half-breed polls published recently, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to decide which polls should be classified as 'proper' voting intention polls.  Hopefully the mists will clear shortly - but basically, any average of online polls would show a more or less deadlocked race, while telephone polls are for the most part continuing to show Remain ahead, but by a narrower margin than we've been used to.

UPDATE : The Opinium datasets have now been released, and as Roger Mexico points out in the comments section below, not only is there no turnout filter, but respondents who are not even eligible to vote have been eccentrically left in the headline figures.  Taking the elementary step of removing those people isn't quite enough to change the rounded voting intention result, but the unrounded numbers work out as -

Remain 38.7%
Leave 43.1%

As usual, the Scottish subsample is far more Remain-friendly : Remain 53%, Leave 30%.

Hmmmm. Doesn't Kenny Farquharson know the rules?

Fairly predictably, it's been confirmed that the SNP will use 'Nicola Sturgeon for First Minister' as their additional description on the regional list ballot in the May election.  Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson was quick out of the traps in claiming that they were getting it all wrong (again!), because they had absent-mindedly lost sight of the fact that the only reason they ever used 'Alex Salmond for First Minister' was because it got them to the top of the ballot paper, and that the same trick won't work for a leader whose name begins with 'N'.  How forgetful these people are!

Hmmmm.  You won't be surprised to hear that it's Kenny that's got it all wrong.  In fact, the rules were changed after 2007 to prevent parties jostling for position on the ballot paper by using alternative names beginning with 'A'.  So, in 2011, the SNP slotted into their customary position on the ballot paper under 'S' - and yet they still used 'Alex Salmond for First Minister' as an additional description, and it still seemed to work pretty well.  Given Nicola Sturgeon's current popularity, I suspect the mention of her name will work even better.

And you know what?  It's just possible that the SNP may know the rules, even if our most beloved journo trolls don't.

"David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland"

It's probably not unusual for political parties to commission private polling which tests how voters react to a set of fairly extreme propaganda statements.  However, it's certainly quite rare for us to ever get a look at that polling.  One of the few examples I can think of was a YouGov poll conducted for Archie Stirling's vanity project "Scottish Voice" in the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood election.  The decision to publish it was baffling, given that it showed only around 20% of voters were responsive to even the most absurdly leading questions.

Stirling did of course have the excuse of being a political amateur, but there's no such alibi for UKIP's extraordinary decision to allow Populus to publish a hugely embarrassing private poll that seemingly hoped to establish that the people of Scotland view David Coburn as the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Please read the following statements and tell us whether you agree or disagree with them.

I am personally very angry that David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland, has been excluded from the STV leaders' debate this week.

Agree 3%
Disagree 54%

David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland, hasn't received the recognition he deserves for helping secure a No vote in the independence referendum.

Agree 2%
Disagree 57%

I would despair of Scottish politics if it wasn't for the new hope provided by David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland.

Agree 2%
Disagree 68%

My admiration for David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland, has increased over the last twelve months.

Agree 3%
Disagree 63%

The world needs more strong leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland.

Agree 1%
Disagree 81%

I would be proud to walk down the street wearing a T-shirt featuring an image of David Coburn, leader of UKIP Scotland.

Agree 0%
Diasgree 77%

That's not a typo, by the way - ZERO per cent of respondents fancied bearing an image of Coburn on their chest.  I am quite simply dumbfounded - what possible utility does anyone in UKIP think there is in letting people know that these barking mad questions were even asked in the first place, let alone what the answers were?  Perhaps someone just pressed the wrong button - we'll know for sure that's the case if the poll mysteriously disappears from the Populus website by mid-morning.

Magnificent Maryfield makes mincemeat of Dugdale's minions as classy SNP storm to by-election glory

Maryfield by-election result (31st March) :

SNP 49.5% (-1.3)
Labour 22.7% (-13.7)
Conservatives 10.5% (+3.2)
Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts 5.1% (+3.3)
Greens 4.1% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 3.0% (-0.7)
Independent - McLeod 2.6% (n/a)
UKIP 2.5% (n/a)

I almost always end up calculating by-election results for myself, because it's amazing how often the percentages reported on social media (even by normally reliable sources) turn out to be wildly inaccurate, probably because of the complexity of the voting system.  In this case, my calculation almost tallies up with the figures reported by Britain Elects, but some of the percentage changes differ by 0.1%.  I gather from Facebook that the snappily titled "Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts" are exactly the same outfit as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, who stood in the ward in 2012, so that's why I've listed a (rather impressive) 3.3% increase in their vote.

In a sense it's disappointing that the SNP's vote has slipped slightly, given that the baseline figure comes from an election in which the SNP were polling below 35% across the country.  A much more crowded field this time around can partly explain the drop, although admittedly it didn't prevent the Tories increasing their vote.  But the real story of this contest is a net 6.2% swing from Labour to the SNP, which is the rough equivalent of a 17% or 18% swing in the UK general election.  That's a bit less than the SNP typically achieved in former Labour heartlands last year, but is still a pretty dismal result for Labour given the difficult background against which the SNP were campaigning in the ward.

The downside of the SNP getting so close to 50% of the first preference vote is that we didn't get to see the full range of transfers, but we did find out how the small number of UKIP voters transferred : Conservatives 10, Independent 8, SNP 6, TUSC 5, Labour 3, Greens 2, Liberal Democrats 2.  I'm not sure that tells us a huge amount, although it's perhaps surprising the Tories weren't favoured more heavily.

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There have now been four EU referendum polls conducted since the attacks in Brussels.  Two (ICM and ORB) have shown a boost for Remain, one (BMG) has shown a boost for Leave, and the other (TNS) has shown no change.  So taking all of the available information together, it looks as if last week's tragedy hasn't fundamentally affected the state of play, although perhaps we shouldn't jump to conclusions until we see the first post-Brussels telephone poll.

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

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 44.3% (+0.2)
Leave 40.9% (+0.5)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 41.0% (+0.4)
Leave 40.2% (+0.9)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 47.5% (n/c)
Leave 41.5% (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 eleven polls - four from ICM, three from YouGov, two from TNS, 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.)

BMG bonanza for Bullingdon bore Boris as new poll puts Leave ahead

Last night saw another potentially significant development in polling for the EU referendum, as the second poll to be conducted since the Brussels atrocity suggested both an outright Leave lead and a swing to Leave.  As far as I can see, it's also the first time a poll from BMG has put Remain behind.

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

Remain 41% (-3)
Leave 45% (+4)

It's always interesting when a firm produces results outside its previous normal range (as long as there hasn't been any big methodological changes).  In this case, it may not necessarily mean that Leave have made further recent progress, but it certainly increases the chances that the first post-Brussels poll from ICM was leading us astray in suggesting a significant swing to Remain.  It could be that the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes, and that nothing much has changed at all.

Meanwhile, the Guardian have picked up on an analysis by Matt Singh (one of the few people to confidently predict that Conservative support was being significantly understated last year) suggesting that Remain-friendly telephone polls are closer to the truth than Leave-friendly online polls, and that the real state of play is roughly two-thirds of the way towards the telephone side of the divide.  That may or may not be the case, but even if it is, I'm not sure it's quite as important as it sounds, or even as important as it would have been just a few weeks ago.  There's been a fair bit of convergence between telephone and online polls recently, so moving the dial from midway to two-thirds currently makes less than a 1% difference to the Remain lead.

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I got into a tetchy Twitter exchange the other night with "Johann Lamont", who I automatically assumed to be a parody or troll account.  It wasn't until quite an advanced stage that it occurred to me to check, and bizarrely, it turned out to be the Johann Lamont who used to be leader of the Scottish Labour party.  You'll be pleased to hear I didn't waste a golden opportunity to get in the standard "genetically programmed" jibe, even though I've always been a little more charitable than most about that gaffe - it seemed to me fairly obvious what she was trying (and spectacularly failing) to say.  Kezia Dugdale got herself into a comparable pickle last night during the STV leaders' debate - she was so fixated on emphasising her opposition to a second independence referendum that she somehow found herself giving one of the stupidest and most offensive answers to a straight question in Scottish political history.  Asked simply whether she would respect an electoral mandate for a second referendum if the voters chose to give one, she flatly replied "No".  Only time will tell whether that response will have an afterlife of "genetic" proportions, but it certainly deserves to.

Taking Dugdale's militant approach last night in combination with Labour's utterly bizarre new campaign video (which presents euphoric highlights of Labour people celebrating with the Tories after the No vote), it's very hard to escape the impression that the party's private polling must be suggesting that the Yes voters they've alienated are not coming back any time soon, and that the only real battleground this year is the rump No-voting Labour support who might now be flirting with other unionist parties.

Sensational Ipsos-Mori poll confirms that Remain's lead in telephone polling has dropped sharply

As you might remember, I had difficulty knowing what to make of the ORB telephone poll showing Leave in the lead, and the succession of ComRes telephone polls showing the Remain lead had slumped, because until now Ipsos-Mori's phone polling had failed to show any significant change.  That is no longer the case.

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

Remain 49% (-5)

Leave 41% (+5)

There have been some methodological tweaks since the last poll, so technically there's the possibility that the percentage changes listed above are not meaningful.  But in actual fact, one of the changes has worked in favour of Remain, not Leave.  If Ipsos-Mori hadn't introduced a 'squeeze' (an extra question pressing Don't Knows on how they're most inclined to vote) the Remain lead would be down to just six points.

What I find most extraordinary of all, though, is the revelation that if Ipsos-Mori had used the turnout-adjusted model which takes account of the polling errors at last year's general election, the Remain lead would have stood at just TWO points, essentially eliminating the previously huge divergence between telephone and online polling.  That flatly contradicts what we saw a few days ago from ComRes, who gave comfort to pro-European commentators by noting that their own turnout-adjusted model would have increased the Remain lead from seven points to fourteen (over the months, the ComRes model would have consistently boosted Remain).  I think all we can really say is that the pollsters have yet to reach a consensus on the correct lessons of last year's disaster - which may be just as well, because it was a self-reinforcing consensus that partly caused the problem in the first place.

The big health warning on today's poll is that the vast bulk of the fieldwork was carried out before the Brussels attacks.  The sole post-Brussels poll to date was an online ICM poll, which seemed to show a swing back to Remain, although as it's only one poll, the jury is still out on whether that was a real shift in opinion or an illusion caused by normal sampling variation.  On the headline numbers, Remain moved from being two points behind to take a lead of two points - but if it hadn't been for the introduction of a turnout filter, it would have been a five-point Remain lead (actually more like four points without a distortion caused by rounding).  On a like-for-like comparison, that's Remain's best showing in an ICM poll for many weeks, although admittedly it's still comfortably within the longer-term 'normal range' for the firm.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

The increase in the Remain lead in this update of the Poll of Polls is misleading - it's mostly caused by the quirk of the Leave-friendly ORB poll making up half of the telephone sample in the last update.

50/50 ONLINE/TELEPHONE AVERAGE : 

Remain 44.1% (-0.1)
Leave 40.4% (-2.2)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 40.6% (-0.3)
Leave 39.3% (-0.8)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 47.5% (n/c)
Leave 41.5% (-3.5)

(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 nine polls - five from ICM, three from YouGov and and one from TNS. The telephone average is based on four polls - one from ComRes, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from ORB and one from Survation.)

Hubristic Hothersall's hopes for happy Easter left in ruins as cruel Survation poll predicts pensioner carnage for Scottish Labour

Constituency ballot (pensioners only) :

SNP 43%
Conservatives 28%
Labour 19%
Liberal Democrats 6%

Regional list ballot (pensioners only) :

SNP 38%
Conservatives 27%
Labour 18%
Liberal Democrats 7%
Greens 5%
UKIP 4%

Analysis to follow if I can be Smithsoned to do it.  It's Easter Sunday, guys.

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.