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.

*  *  *

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.

*  *  *

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.

*  *  *

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.

Leave campaign receive big boost in landmark ComRes telephone poll

As you'll remember, the Leave campaign took the lead in a telephone poll last week.  That was a genuinely sensational result, because all previous telephone polls had put Remain ahead by either a substantial or enormous margin.  The snag was that the new poll was carried out by ORB, who hadn't previously conducted an EU referendum poll by telephone.  So there were no baseline figures to work from, and it wasn't entirely clear whether there was some sort of ORB 'house effect' favouring Leave, or whether Remain's big lead in telephone polls had genuinely evaporated.  The first evidence today from a non-ORB telephone poll suggests that it may be a bit of both.  ComRes still have Remain ahead, but the lead has slumped to its lowest level to date, and Leave now appear to be firmly within striking distance.

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

Remain 48% (-3)
Leave 41% (+2)

There's still a missing piece in the jigsaw, though.  ComRes first reported significant slippage in the Remain lead a good few weeks ago, and yet the only Ipsos-Mori telephone poll since then showed business as usual.  Logically, you'd think that the next Ipsos-Mori poll would be bound to finally start picking up the same trend as ComRes, but if it doesn't we'll be left scratching our heads slightly (and not for the first time).

Online polls have of course been showing much more favourable results for Leave all along.  That wouldn't necessarily stop them showing the same direction of travel as phone polls, but it's extremely unclear whether that's happening at the moment.  ICM appear to have detected a small swing to Leave in recent weeks, but the last batch of YouGov polls (which admittedly were quite a while ago now) suggested that it was Remain that had made some progress. 

And we don't have any post-Brussels polls yet, so for all we know the entire state of play may have been rapidly transformed by yesterday's horrific events.  It's hard to know which side that might benefit - if there's an urge to show solidarity with Belgium and France, that ought to work in Remain's favour, but of course anything that promotes irrational fear of immigration might be expected to boost Leave.  We'll just have to wait and see.

I'll calculate the Poll of Polls update later, but I've no doubt at all that the 50/50 online/telephone average will show the Remain lead at a new all-time low.

UPDATE : In fact, it's pretty extraordinary - the telephone and online averages have more or less converged.  That's very likely to be a freakish finding, because there are only two polls in the telephone sample, and one of them is the ultra-Leave-friendly ORB poll.  But the rules are the rules.

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 44.2% (-1.6)
Leave 42.6% (+2.9)

ONLINE AVERAGE :

Remain 40.9% (-0.3)
Leave 40.1% (+0.1)

TELEPHONE AVERAGE :

Remain 47.5% (-2.8)
Leave 45.0% (+5.7)

(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 - four from YouGov, four from ICM, one from ORB and one from TNS. The telephone average is based on two polls - one from ComRes and one from ORB.)

Bungling Sunday Express left red-faced after catastrophically misinterpreting research which shows a massive surge in support for independence

As long-term readers of this blog will know, the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey generally shows much lower support for independence than standard opinion polls.  That may be partly because of the data collection method, but the most obvious explanation is the fact that a straight 'Yes/No' question isn't asked - instead, respondents are invited to choose between independence, devolution, and no Scottish Parliament at all.  The reason that's done is to make the results comparable with surveys from previous years, but it inevitably has the effect of steering some respondents towards the "default middle" option of devolution.

Given the difficulty of obtaining a positive result for independence in this format, it's hugely encouraging to see that the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey shows support for independence surging by 6% over the last two years, and reaching its highest level ever in the series (and by quite some distance).  That's almost certainly a legacy of the Yes campaign's success.

Independence 39% (+6)
Devolution 49% (-1)
Full London Rule 6% (-1)

As you can see, the number of Don't Knows has also fallen significantly - again, that might be explained by the level of engagement during the referendum, although to be fair the undecideds were unusually numerous in the last survey.

So an all-round good news story for the pro-independence movement.  Spare a thought, however, for poor old Greg Christison of the Sunday Express, who humiliated himself yesterday by going through various contortions of pseudo-logic to try to portray the survey findings as somehow dreadful for both independence and the SNP.  His basic approach was to strip out the Don't Knows and lump together supporters of devolution and full London rule, and then treat them as if they were all directly equivalent to "No voters" in a straight Yes/No opinion poll on independence.  This voodoo method produces a split of Yes 42%, No 58%.  What Greg mysteriously fails to tell you, however, is that the equivalent figures in the last survey were roughly Yes 37%, No 63% - which means there has been an enormous 5% swing in favour of independence over the last two years.  The best result for independence appears to have been eleven years ago, when the equivalent figures were roughly Yes 38%, No 62%.  So, quite literally, the new survey shows that support for independence is higher than ever (or at least higher than at any point since the series started in 1999).

Greg's readers, however, may have taken away a somewhat different story.  They were presented with a fatuous apples-and-oranges comparison between the multi-option SSAS question and straight Yes/No public opinion polls, and were invited to believe that this means that support for independence has fallen to its lowest level since August 2014.  What's particularly nonsensical about this claim, of course, is that the SSAS figures are always way out-of-date by the time we see them - some of the fieldwork dates back to last summer, and all of it was completed by January.  That means we already have several independence polls that were conducted more recently than the SSAS - and the most recent one with a 'real world' methodology (either telephone or face-to-face) produced figures of Yes 52%, No 48%.  That was the Ipsos-Mori poll conducted in early February - just six or seven weeks ago.

I particularly love the bit where Greg hilariously claims that the supposedly awful results for independence in the SSAS came about in spite of the "selection process favouring the SNP", who had 543 of their supporters in the sample.  Er, Greg, I don't know how to break the news to you, but those 543 people made up just 42% of the sample of 1288.  That's considerably less than the 50% of the electorate who actually voted SNP in last year's general election.  As you'd expect, there are some people in the sample who don't identify with any party at all, but the breakdown between the parties looks pretty much bang in line with how people voted.  So no get-out clause for the unionists there.

My suggestion to Greg would be two weeks in a Buddhist retreat.  There's no better way of reminding oneself that the universe is actually a pretty simple sort of place, and that (outside the offices of the Sunday Express) two plus two does not equal eight hundred and seventy-three.

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.

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".