Will you vote for independence?

[DairyQueen]

YG's last poll before the SNP landslide was:
SNP: 45
LAB: 32
CON:10
LD:8

The result was:

SNP:45
LAB: 26
CON: 12
LD: 5

Where did you find that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Scottish_Parliament_election,_2011 - look at the regional vote in particular.

 

[butchersapron]

From uk polling reports archive of historical polling can't do link right now. Will edit in tmw

Tonight :

A Survation/Daily Record Scottish women only poll was carried out from Fri - Tues & is first of its kind. 16 point lead for no. After DKs excluded NO 20% ahead
34/50
40/60

 

[Quartz]

There was a debate in Inverness last night. The recording of the debate is here.

 

[DairyQueen]

From uk polling reports archive of historical polling can't do link right now. Will edit in tmw

Tonight :

A Survation/Daily Record Scottish women only poll was carried out from Fri - Tues & is first of its kind. 16 point lead for no. After DKs excluded NO 20% ahead
34/50
40/60

That's better than YouGov for the whole population.

 

[DairyQueen]

You're being ridiculously partisan here, and that's going to lead to a world of dissapointment further down the road. Don't you think there's a good reason that real politicians keep a very close eye on polling and take it very seriously - in every country in the world?

You're missing the point here. First of all, the Yes campaign has been tremendous. There has been full houses at socialist meetings. People are actually getting engaged. The media bias that has accompanied this referendum has been so obvious that only the most ardent No campaigners deny it. Whether that extends to polling companies, who knows? Maybe we won't know for sure. It's true that the latest round of polls have not been great.

However, this campaign has shown, at least to me, that there is genuine interest in politics but that there is also strong pressure from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties to silence enthusiasm at all costs. Any type of progressive change is dismissed out of hand. We get neoliberals like Jim Murphy getting glowing reviews in the press.

Personally, I hope that the Yes campaign keeps its enthusiasm. Not just for the referendum but beyond. One thing that is evident is that the British establishment is terrified by the prospect of Scottish independence. This has nothing to do with 'what is best for the people', but their own narrow political interests. What I hope is that Scots tell Labour politicians, who will no doubt campaign on some ludicrously hypocritical platform to fuck off. If no take it, and as s time goes by, as oil revenues come in, I hope even the most ignorant no voter realises just how badly they have been fucked here.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Scotland would be a net exporter. It already is. It is not as simple as that though, sometimes Scotland actually imports electricity from England. However, it would be a net exporter as it is now. The nuclear plants, AFAIK, are replacing existing plants. Someone could correct me here.

I don't know the exact import/export figures between England and Scotland, but this site shows the UK National Grid status, updated in almost real time from official figures.

There is one interconnector shown - Scotland to NI, but unfortunately it doesn't include data on transfers between E-S. The 250MW link tops up the NI grid, but it doesn't specify where that energy was generated. There is a 500MW link between Wales and the Irish Republic. Also, the UK can pull around 3GW from France and the Netherlands.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

 

[redsquirrel]

We're talking about this issue though. I have explained my problem with their methodology and their results.

We'll I'm still not sure what your problem with YouGov's methodology is, you've said that you don't trust their panel and that you don't believe it is reliable but not why. Their methodology appears to work for other polling what is it about the Scottish Independence question that makes it inaccurate? Or do you believe that all their polling has the same problem?

If they really cared about their polling on this issue (no-one will give a shit after), all they need to do is change their sampling population and apply the same methodology.

Sorry I must be missing something here, the same methodology to what?

Ipsos Mori have had much more random variation around their estimates than YouGov.

Survey End Date Yes No Wouldn’t vote D/K Yes Lead
YouGov/Times (3) 10/08/2014 35 55 ? ? -20
YouGov/Times (3) 29/06/2014 35 54 2 10 -19
YouGov/Sun (3) 16/06/2014 36 53 2 9 -17
YouGov/Channel 4 (3) 28/04/2014 37 51 2 12 -14
YouGov/Times (3) 24/03/2014 37 52 1 10 -15
YouGov/Sun (3) 28/02/2014 35 53 1 11 -18
YouGov/Sun (3) 5/02/2014 34 52 2 12 -18
YouGov (3) 27/01/2014 33 52 3 12 -19
YouGov/Times (3) 9/12/2013 33 52 2 13 -19



Ipsos MORI/STV (1) 1/06/2014 36 54 n/a 10 -18
Ipsos MORI/STV (1) 25/02/2014 32 57 n/a 11 -25
Ipsos MORI/STV (1) 5/12/2013 34 57 n/a 10 -23


TNS-BMRB 13/08/2014 32 45 n/a 23 -13
TNS-BMRB 9/07/2014 32 41 n/a 27 -9
TNS-BMRB/Scotland Sept 18 23/06/2014 32 46 n/a 22 -14
TNS-BMRB 28/05/2014 30 42 n/a 28 -12
TNS-BMRB 2/05/2014 30 42 n/a 28 -12
TNS-BMRB 2/04/2014 29 41 n/a 30 -12
TNS-BMRB 9/03/2014 28 42 n/a 30 -14
TNS-BMRB 6/02/2014 29 42 n/a 29 -13
TNS-BMRB/Open Democracy (2) 20/01/2014 29 44 n/a 29 -15
TNS BMRB (2) 10/12/2013 27 41 n/a 33 -14

Those are the polls from both companies and TNS-BMRB since Dec 2013. Ipsos Mori do show a greater change than YouGov and TNS-BMRB but trying to extract any meaning from the fact is nonsense, there are only 3 IM polls and they have been taken over a 9 month period where opinions could/probably have changed anyway.

 

[danny la rouge]

the Yes campaign has been tremendous. There has been full houses at socialist meetings. People are actually getting engaged.

This is all true.

But the caveat to remember is that if 34% for Yes is accurate (and there's no reason to think it isn't), 34% of 5,000,000 is a huge number of people (1.7 million). You can easily get a false impression if you are only or mainly meeting those people. Personal experience is no guide to the population as a whole.

It is also true that Better Together activists are not so enthused. For example, Jim Murphy had a meeting on Tuesday night in Ayrshire (traditionally a strong Labour area where they weighed the votes rather than count them) that only Ruth Davidson turned up to. No members of the public. But that doesn't matter if they turn out to vote.

At this point, the best hope for Yes seems to be a differential turnout.

A lot can happen in the remaining weeks, but I'd caution against using personal experience as a measure of what support for Yes is going to be.

(That is not to say that the RIC canvas results aren't interesting. They've concentrated on areas where voter turnout has been very low, and found - and helped to create - big support for Yes. They've also had voter registration drives. If they are able to get people to actually vote Yes who traditionally don't vote, along with people who traditionally vote Labour, then we might have an interesting effect. Whether it will confound the polls is another question).

 

[DairyQueen]

We'll I'm still not sure what your problem with YouGov's methodology is, you've said that you don't trust their panel and that you don't believe it is reliable but not why. Their methodology appears to work for other polling what is it about the Scottish Independence question that makes it inaccurate? Or do you believe that all their polling has the same problem?
Sorry I must be missing something here, the same methodology to what?

I have said what my problem is. Their panel method. They have created their sampling population, I think it runs the risk of self-selecting samples. It is a very strange way to construct samples.

Those are the polls from both companies and TNS-BMRB since Dec 2013. Ipsos Mori do show a greater change than YouGov and TNS-BMRB but trying to extract any meaning from the fact is nonsense, there are only 3 IM polls and they have been taken over a 9 month period where opinions could/probably have changed anyway.

Eh? Random variation is not meaningful change. Even if there has been no change, you would expect some sampling variation every now and then. If I commission a poll every month (say, asking people if they like Renault), I would expect changes every month because you choose different people to take part change. I do not see that with YouGov.

 

[DairyQueen]

This is all true.

But the caveat to remember is that if 34% for Yes is accurate (and there's no reason to think it isn't), 34% of 5,000,000 is a huge number of people (1.7 million). You can easily get a false impression if you are only or mainly meeting those people. Personal experience is no guide to the population as a whole.

It is also true that Better Together activists are not so enthused. For example, Jim Murphy had a meeting on Tuesday night in Ayrshire (traditionally a strong Labour area where they weighed the votes rather than count them) that only Ruth Davidson turned up to. No members of the public. But that doesn't matter if they turn out to vote.

Sorry, I was not saying that was an indication of vote results. I am saying that it is very good for democracy. These people come out, to discuss important problems and politics. Very large numbers. That itself is very positive. I have not seen anything like it in recent years.

 

[redsquirrel]

I have said what my problem is. Their panel method. They have created their sampling population, I think it runs the risk of self-selecting samples. It is a very strange way to construct samples.

So you do think this is a problem with all their polling? In which case why is their record as good as other companies? If this effect exists it must pretty small.

Eh? Random variation is not meaningful change. Even if there has been no change, you would expect some sampling variation every now and then. If I commission a poll every month (say, asking people if they like Renault), I would expect changes every month because you choose different people to take part change.

Yes but how do you deconvolute that random variation from a "real" change in people's opinions. And the two effects could either reduce or increase any change in the overall polling. For example I think it's pretty likely that the 7 point change in the latest two Mori polls is due to a combination of both random noise and a slight movement towards yes. As such, I can't see how trying to use the variance in polls as a guide to the quality of the poll is a good idea.

I do not see that with YouGov.

look at the figures I posted above, while there's not been a large variance in the Yes lead YouGov's polls have found it's clearly there.

 

[geminisnake]

YG's last poll before the SNP landslide was:
SNP: 45
LAB: 32
CON:10
LD:8

The result was:

SNP:45
LAB: 26
CON: 12

Those figures don't add up. There are 129 seats in Holyrood, the SNP won 69 seats, giving them an overall majority, which is 20 more than those figures.

 

[danny la rouge]

Sorry, I was not saying that was an indication of vote results. I am saying that it is very good for democracy. These people come out, to discuss important problems and politics. Very large numbers. That itself is very positive. I have not seen anything like it in recent years.

Oh, OK. It’s just that people have been questioning the polls on this thread (and indeed many Yes grassroots activists do, too). My apologies if you weren’t doing this.

I accept your point, though. There is a lot more political engagement because of the indyref than there has been for years. People discuss it everywhere. Much more than the Iraq War even. I was involved in the miners’ strike and in the anti-poll tax movement, and although there was high levels of activist engagement in both, I don’t think there was the same general public engagement, was there? Hard to gauge. But we’re talking those time-scales anyway – 20, 30 years.

I was just in Ireland for a couple of weeks, even there people wanted to talk about it when they heard my accent.

And what’s interesting is that the debate I’ve found in the population hasn’t been about voting for reasons of identity. People are voting Yes in this referendum for issues like the welfare state, the NHS, WMD, and so on. Food banks come up far more often than flags.

In my experience (and I accept that’s anecdotal and all that), the people most interested in identity are those determined to vote No. That’s their prime reason. The other issues are incidental. For those determined to vote Yes, the prime reasons are those I’ve listed. Their sense of national identity seems more fluid and less tied to where the government sits. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, given Scotland’s constitutional position.

The thing about all this enthusiasm, though, is where it will go. Either way, politicians will end up running the show. If people’s expectations of what we can get out of this – win or lose – are too high, that will lead to disappointment and disillusionment.

I’m old enough to remember the 1979 devolution referendum. I was beginning to take an interest in politics at the time. We know that the devolution bill was not of the SNP’s making – it was the Callaghan government’s. But Callaghan didn’t put any enthusiasm behind it. Not only was the bill itself half hearted, so was Labour’s support for it. Many big names campaigned for No. The SNP, who were not that enthusiastic about the measures, ended up being the mainstay of the Yes campaign. And when the votes cast failed to meet the Cunningham quorum, the SNP paid the price. They were punished in the polling booths, and they fell into internal despondency and strife. It took them a decade to recover.

People this time sometimes say “all these previously unengaged people aren’t going to go anywhere after the referendum”. How can we be sure? Why are we so sure? If there’s a No vote, won’t they be as disgusted and dejected as the pro devolution movement was after 1979?

Maybe not. But where would their energies be directed? The political analysis behind the Yes movement is fairly flaky. People may have honourable and decent objectives, but they are ultimately putting faith in parliamentary democracy to deliver. You have to be realistic about exactly what it can deliver, why it delivers it, and in which circumstances. The Welfare state and its dismantling is exactly where you need to look for those lessons.

 

[Combustible]

Eh? Random variation is not meaningful change. Even if there has been no change, you would expect some sampling variation every now and then. If I commission a poll every month (say, asking people if they like Renault), I would expect changes every month because you choose different people to take part change. I do not see that with YouGov.

The standard deviation of the yougov polls posted above is 2%. The margin of error in the yougov polls for the sample sizes they use is about 3%, that is if there is no variation you expect 95% of polls to lie within +/- 3%. Therefore the variation shown in the YouGov polls seems perfectly reasonable.

 

[butchersapron]

Those figures don't add up. There are 129 seats in Holyrood, the SNP won 69 seats, giving them an overall majority, which is 20 more than those figures.

That's not the seats, that's the % of votes. Which was, as you can see, predicted spot on for SNP and very close to 100% for the other parties.

 

[butchersapron]

Sorry, I was not saying that was an indication of vote results. I am saying that it is very good for democracy. These people come out, to discuss important problems and politics. Very large numbers. That itself is very positive. I have not seen anything like it in recent years.

Not sure quartz would have liked that if you hadn't edited the socialism bit

 

[redsquirrel]

The thing about all this enthusiasm, though, is where it will go. Either way, politicians will end up running the show. If people’s expectations of what we can get out of this – win or lose – are too high, that will lead to disappointment and disillusionment.

I think this is a really important point danny, I know I'm on the other side of the world but it does look like the Radical Indy campaign has managed to get a lot of momentum, it'd be a massive pity if after the vote, whichever way it goes, this was just lost. I remember all the involvement of people in opposition to the Iraq War just going nowhere because of the mistakes of the StWC (not the only reason of course but a significant one). Hopefully RIC won't fall into the same trap.

 

[butchersapron]

This was one of the key things i learnt from the poll tax - contact, contact contact - and contact on a respectful adult open basis i.e not i have all the answers, why don't you agree with me, have you heard of a a man called trotsky etc. Contact often becomes participation, participation builds communities, communities build movements . Looking at the wider stuff around the referendum that would be a great result regardless of the votes outcome.

 

[danny la rouge]

This was one of the key things i learnt from the poll tax - contact, contact contact - and contact on a respectful adult open basis i.e not i have all the answers, why don't you agree with me, have you heard of a a man called trotsky etc. Contact often becomes participation, participation builds communities, communities build movements . Looking at the wider stuff around the referendum that would be a great result.

One of the things that the RIC has tapped into is the fact that many communities feel that local government is remote and unconnected to them. Decisions are made about people, not by them. They don’t vote, not because they’re apathetic, but as a result of the experience-borne hard facts that it makes no difference to them, the powers that be do what they want anyway.

These are exactly the areas that have been traditionally Labour since the 1920s and longer. But distant and indifferent council leadership has abandoned these people. (A leading Labour figure in Scotland recently said “We’re the Labour Party, not the unemployed party”). And the communities have responded by abandoning voting.

The idea that communities long beaten down can start to take things into their own hands is exactly, in my view, what should come out of this.

It's about the health of communities.

 

[Quartz]

FFS! I wrote to the Electoral Commission about what would happen if the votes were tied last week. I've just had a response:

If the number of votes cast for Yes and No in the Scottish Independence Referendum were to be equal then it would be declared as a tied result.

I hope this answers your query.

What a fucking useless response.

 

[butchersapron]

That's an excellent response to that a daft almost vexatious question. They've just told you to knob off. I'm warming to them.

 

[danny la rouge]

FFS! I wrote to the Electoral Commission about what would happen if the votes were tied last week. I've just had a response:



What a fucking useless response.

What were you expecting, though? A tiebreaker?

 

[8ball]

What were you expecting, though? A tiebreaker?

Penalties!

 

[ddraig]

he wants the casting vote!!

 

[DairyQueen]

Oh, OK. It’s just that people have been questioning the polls on this thread (and indeed many Yes grassroots activists do, too). My apologies if you weren’t doing this.

In my experience (and I accept that’s anecdotal and all that), the people most interested in identity are those determined to vote No. That’s their prime reason. The other issues are incidental. For those determined to vote Yes, the prime reasons are those I’ve listed. Their sense of national identity seems more fluid and less tied to where the government sits. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, given Scotland’s constitutional position.

The thing about all this enthusiasm, though, is where it will go. Either way, politicians will end up running the show. If people’s expectations of what we can get out of this – win or lose – are too high, that will lead to disappointment and disillusionment.

I do question the polls. I think if we can get back up to mid-forties, we could take it. I think this is paramount, getting people out to vote yes.

The establishment want to crush activism, and it will probably work. I think Britain is slowly becoming a one party state. At least, this is what I have seen from the referendum. We have three parties that are now more-or-less the same, that's UK politics. The press and intellectual classes like it that way. The personalisation of politics and political figures is the most tragic thing about this whole thing. Better Together and Labour are trying to debase any argument to very narrow issues because they know they have nothing else. Why are they not using this referendum to challenge one or two sacred cows in the UK? Admit the UK is becoming unbearably right-wing? I am not sure I will ever vote for a Westminster party. Personally, I see Labour as almost completely useless, borderline insane. The Tories are basically idiots. I don't know what the Liberal Democrats are any more.

About identity. I do think this is a common theme of no. The way they have used the military in this campaign is really terrifying. I can see the far-right making inroads into Scotland because that is what the emotional appeal of no is. We're British, we have guns and boats. I can also see a Westminster party, once they get the reigns of power in Holyrood, making decisions that are not in the interests of Scotland, play into the hands of British nationalists and really denigrate any type of Scottish identity. It is already happening.

 

[DairyQueen]

 

[Supine]

It's only ever the losing side who question the polls

 

[butchersapron]

I do question the polls. I think if we can get back up to mid-forties, we could take it.

What do these two things have to do with each other?

 

[butchersapron]

Is it possible to show how the vote on here has changed (if it has) since the thread was started?

 

[DairyQueen]

What do these two things have to do with each other?

I think that support for yes is being underestimated in the polls.