Yesterday an opinion poll gave a result that was previously unthinkable. The vanity party of Nigel Farage, the hard right racist bloviator who has been a plook on the face of British politics since the 1990s, overtook the Tories as the second most favoured party in the Westminster general election. According to a YouGov poll, Labour is still far ahead on 37%, Reform is on 19%, and the Tories are trailing in third place on 18%.
This is a single poll, other polls continue to put the Conservatives ahead of Reform and even in this poll the Reform lead over the Tories is well within the margin of error, but it’s an alarming result nevertheless. The fact that Nigel Farage’s hard right wing English nationalist populist party is neck and neck with the governing Conservatives represents a seismic shift in the electoral landscape.
Nigel Farage is already crowing that his party is the real opposition to the Conservatives. Farage has made no secret of the fact that he wants to take over the Tories. On Friday Farage proclaimed himself the “real leader of the opposition” and demanded that he be included in next week’s leaders’ debate on the BBC with the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP, he also demanded a one on one debate with Keir Starmer on immigration.
Farage tells voters that Britain is broken, and so it is. Farage wants us to think that it’s immigrants who broke it, but the real reason it’s broken is because a bunch of absolute shysters whipped up fear and racism in a country battered by austerity, aggressively silenced opposition and lied their arses off to impose a Brexit that promised control but inevitably delivered chaos. Shyster number one was Farage himself, he turned the Tories into Ukip, but that wasn’t enough. The Tories allowed Farage to pull them further and further to the right over the years, and now they are being eaten alive by the far right authoritarian English nationalist populism which he embodies.
According to The Guardian Tory leadership hopefuls are already on the move for the leadership contest which will take place after 4 July. The paper reports that the early favourites for leader include former secretaries of state Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps. However depending on the magnitude of the Tory defeat some of them might lose their seats in the general election. It is notable that all those named are on the right of the party.
A Tory wipeout would be a glorious sight to behold, the epitome of political karma, were it not for two things. Firstly there’s the matter that the immediate short term beneficiary of the well deserved political demise of the Conservatives is the Labour party of Keir Starmer, a centre-right corporatist project that fully supports the Tories’ hard Brexit, denies Scotland its right to self-determination, wraps itself in the British flag, and denies that it is nationalist.
Starmer will almost certainly become the next Prime Minister, and will probably do so with a record majority, but he will rapidly become deeply unpopular as he will no longer be able to escape the consequences of his many lies. Starmer will not bring about the change that he is being elected to deliver, all we will get is the same arrogant and high handed contempt for the opposition parties and for peaceful protest that characterised Tory rule. His government will usher in a new era of austerity and continued decline.
This brings us to the second issue, the devastated Tories, whether or not they are taken over or merge with Farage’s party, will move even further to the right, whipping up hatred of immigrants of minorities and stoking up culture wars as they seek to capitalise on the rapidly growing unpopularity of Starmer’s government and turning themselves into the English version of Trump’s odious MAGA Republicans. When there is another general election that hard right authoritarian English nationalist party will be poised to sweep into power. It could even be led by Nigel Farage. That party could win an absolute majority on a minority of the popular vote because the very last thing that Starmer is going to do is to make meaningful reforms to the House of Commons, its unfair electoral system, and its inability to hold the Prime Minister to account. Starmer could end up with a landslide majority even though he wins fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019. The upshot of this insult to democracy is that we could even face the appalling prospect of Prime Minister Nigel Farage within a few years.
During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign Better Together contemptuously dismissed as scaremongering by Yes campaigners the warning that we could end up with Boris Johnson as prime minister and be taken out of the European Union. Now the prospect that Farage could end up as leader of the Tory party or a merged Tory-Reform party is an all too real and sobering possibility.
What we know all too well is that where the Tories go, Labour is sure to follow. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign Better Together also claimed that Scotland would fall prey to political extremism if it became an independent country. Now we see that the real threat to Scotland from political extremism comes from a resentful English nationalism. You can be quite certain that independence supporting Scots will rank amongst the minorities that the Faragised Tory party will demonise and castigate, they already routinely defame independence supporters as anti-English racists. It is not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that they would seek to criminalise ‘separatism’.
The good news is that in a couple of years time the Scottish independence movement will be turbo-charged. The not so good news is that we are in for a rough few years in the intervening period and a British state that is moving further to the right will not make this easy for us. But history and demographic reality is on our side. The rise of Farage means the fall of the UK
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Wee Ginger Dug 
Great piece, as ever. Just one suggestion: mightn’t “plook on the face” better read as “plook on the airse”?
“Nigel Farage is already crowing that his party is the real opposition to the Conservatives“
Are you sure? I thought it was Labour, and he’d be the Opposition, not the Tories.
Farage is trying to make out that this election is not a contest between the Conservatives and Labour – the official opposition, but between the Conservatives and his vanity party.
Yeah, probably both true. He said Labour have already won. According to the Grun:
“The election is over. Labour has won … but perhaps more importantly who is going to be the opposition voice to Labour in the House of Commons and in the country? I’m putting it to you that I believe that I can be that voice of opposition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/14/reform-leader-nigel-farage-says-he-is-now-leader-of-the-opposition
Not Far(age) removed from reality …
Today on the BBC, it’s NIGEL FARAGE (youtube.com)
i saw somewhere that an Opinium poll is due at 8 tonight for those interested in such things. It will be a UK one but interesting to see if Fandango’s hubris is generating more support or whether frightened Tories are returning to the fold from Reform.
Brilliant 😂
Racial stereotyping employed as humorous sarcasm but never at their own expense
Racism is baked into the DNA of England/Britain’s population and they don’t even know it
Spain V Croatia, a substitute for a Croatian player comes on and the English commentator laughingly says “He looks more like a Scottish player than a Croatian” the player in question was a large heavyset white lad with a big brownish bushy beard, no kilt in sight btw
Do English people not have beards?
Some folk will just not even think about this as in any way meant offensively, why? he was white and not one of them so it’s OK
Out of date MRP from Survation just released has the SNP winning an epic landslide 65% of seats in Scotland. 37(+11) seats, with change in 9 days.
https://archive.is/Vtq5Q
The bulk of the survey work for this will be 10 days old now.
Graph updated with new polls (Opinium, Savanta, Survation MRP) and corrections to past polls based on wiki updates / corrections.
Trend suggests SNP + Green + Alba could now be on 45% of the total VI, just 1% short of 2019.
Turnout still on record low 57% with 11% SNP2019 still silent.
Farage is the creation of the British (sic ) media which has carefully cultivated and nurtured his seemingly all-pervading Media presence , providing him with endless exposure of his rancid views , but without any real condemnation of same .
The BBC has even donated a prime TV program for him to air his populist excreta – called Question Time ! Well , it has seemed like it was HIS show for a long time now , despite his endemic failure to win a Parliamentary seat in election after election . Never before has a serial loser been accorded such overpowering adulation from the media , not even the England Football team .
So it is no surprise that , after decades of uncritical publicity , with political pundits reporting his every movement , whether bowel or latest failed political party , he should now be talked of as a future UK leader . I am only surprised that he has not been listed as in line of succession – but then he wouldn’t want to associated with those people from an immigrant background inhabiting the royal palaces .
Sir Nigel, Lord Nigel, King Nigel
Everybody scoffed at the idea Boris Johnson could ever be elected to any kind of office, then England did it
Scotland Wales and Ireland were horrified, which once again shows England rules without giving a shit about what any of the rest of us think
How many times does Scotland have to vote against the Thatcher’s theCameron’s the May’s and the Johnson’s, we weren’t even afforded the opportunity to vote against the Truss’s and the Sunak’s and now England will vote for the Starmer’s and the Farage’s
If each of these people wore a uniform with a union flag wrapped around their armpits with a policy to expel Scots from their Britain because we don’t subscribe to their *values* England would vote for them
And still there are people in Scotland who think they count
Meanwhile, thousands of Harry Lauder Jocks in kilts, wrapped in the Saltire with the skirl of the pipes in the background, behave like clowns in Germany amusing the locals as though they were members of a quaint tribe of savages. Half of them will vote for unionist parties too. As for Clarke, he should be sacked immediately.
However it’s only to be at English euro matches that low alcohol beer is to be served, and restrictions on amounts sold, also restrictions to cafes and restaurants, for fears of violence!
Think I’d rather be a Scotland fan tbh, and I have relatives (english) who live in Munich and have said the atmosphere with the Scottish fans has been great and non threatening, as they’re well know for the music, song and fun,… and that they’ll be staying away from the English fans who are well known for being hooligans
A vast amount of those fans along with the German public attended a march for Scottish independence through Munich
The people of the world know well that the comedy dressing up is just part of the show that all nations do when attending these big football events
The real opponents of Scottish independence who dress up for real are the Highland show Royal turnout folk who dance on shortbread tins for the English Royals to show their deep and abiding loyalty to the crown, or how about the imported OO nut jobs and hate filled Church of Ibrox supporters who wouldn’t be seen dead supporting our national football team
My guess is that most Scotland supporters are independence supporters too, including Steve Clarke
We should be directing our ire at people like British Nationalists McCoist and Souness who given the chance in their careers would’ve played for team British if they’d ever had half a chance, and sod Scotland
Aye Paul, the planets are aligning for the end of the union. What once held it together is falling apart.
https://archive.is/YN9Hh
Tories and Labour on course for lowest share of the vote since 1945
Labour and the Tories are on course for their lowest combined vote share since the second world war, as the latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows a shift away from the main parties.
And that share is likely to keep getting lower on approach to voting day based on polling trends.
As part of the post war consensus, the peoples of the UK were united in (mainly) voting Lab/Con. That is about to all fall completely apart. Labour are struggling to even to hold onto the same number of real voters they got in the ‘worst defeat since 1935’ disaster that was 2019. The Tories – the party of British unionism – are toast.
HMS Britannia is full steam ahead towards the looming iceberg, with nobody at the helm while Sunak and Starmer vie for this, arrogantly oblivious to the danger ahead. In Scotland, Labour are dancing around excitedly at the prospect of possibly winning some deckchairs which Scots are abandoning as they climb into in the lifeboats bound for Europe. The latter may yet decide to take these to help them float to safety.
In Blighty, nobody seems to have noticed the iceberg, even if Scots, Irish N. Irish and even Welsh now have been shouting ever louder warnings about it. The English / British establishment / media has become so inward looking it can only navel gaze. Even now, with the massive berg in spitting distance, it is distracted by England being, once again, tipped by itself to win the Euros.
But some people are starting to spot the berg and wonder what it is. It’s puzzling. Things don’t feel right. Something is different. There’s an increasingly ominous feeling. It does not feel like 1997 at all. No, somethings going wrong, very wrong.
And the rise of Farage is a symptom of this.
Polling fact of the morning. Survation’s’s recent MRP, the bulk of the fieldwork for which will be almost 2 weeks old now, have the SNP on the highest number of predicted seats since March (37 or a supermajority 65%). This supports the mounting evidence that crossover may have occurred in Scotland, as suggested by the most recent full Scotland polling, which had fieldwork from a similar period. That and UK-wide polling; Survation MRP adding a tasty 4% to the mix.
Survation UK MRP averages with changes on their last MRP.
This poll was 31 May to 16 June, so consider it about 10 days old in terms of primary fieldwork complete. Changes are over 10 days or so between the two surveys.
37.3(+3.3)% SNP
30.2(-3.5)% Lab
14.7(-2.6)% Con
8.4(+0.6)% Lib
4.5(+1.7)% Ref
2.8(+1.0)% Grn
2.1(-0.4)% Oth
7.1(+6.7)% SNP lead over Labour
37/57 Seats for the SNP = 65% or a supermajorty 2/3 near enough.
Data agree very well with full Scottish polling, and I have been putting these into my PoP graph as full Scottish given it’s close enough due to the huge sample size and MRP approach. I think we can be cautiously optimistic now that my graph is correct and things are moving. Moving our way. Please touch wood while reading this.
I remind people that this is still with a very low turnout predicted, which implies unionist movement to SNP (Lab 2019 mainly), with silent SNP 2019 still not engaged as of 10 days ago or so. This is what will be giving 4.5% Reform, i.e. oversampling. A few % for them is desirable as they will take votes from Con and Lab, splitting the unionist vote.
Would it be a surprise, that if across the UK, voters are rejecting the two cheeks and voting for alternatives, yet they were not going to do the same in Scotland? Well UK, UK-MRP and Scottish polls all suggest Scots are doing exactly the same as folks in the other nations and planning to vote for the alternatives.
The Tory demise means is safe for Lab 2019 to vote SNP knowing it won’t let the Tories in. That’s what the British media is telling them. That and 1/3 of these want independence.
Averaging out this, IPSOS and Opinium Scottish polls and the data says the SNP had taken a narrow lead 10 days ago. Triangle added between the latter two for the MRP.
Och lol, I see there is an ancient Panelbase now out on Whatscotlandthinks. Probably the English Times using a poll from 2 weeks ago as it doesn’t like the latest results! The fieldwork is saying 1-4 June, so it’s 15 days old! What on earth is the pointed in that.
Still, shows SNP up and Labour on a low 34%. Remember, with Panelbase you need to add ~7% to SNP. They predicted 38% for 2019 and 37% for 2011 for example. Hence I don’t use them in my PoP; only pollsters with a degree of reliability in Scotland are employed. Old hat anyway now as too old to include in averages and a sore thumb outlier. If you did a 2019 correction they’d have had SNP ahead of Labour at the start of June, which would be in line with the general pattern.
Some inconsistency in the fieldwork days for that panelbase. Either Prof C has made a mistake or Ballot Box Scotland has.
Either way you need to add 7% to SNP and take a chuck away from Labour to correct based on past performance.
13% ‘other’ tells you it’s a heap of dung too.
Ooh, apparently 49(+1)% Yes, and that’s with one of the most heavy unionist oversampling going! If you need to add 7% SNP and take that away from unionists to be correct, imagine what Yes really looks like.
Sweet. The iceberg draws ever closer.
And SNP move ahead for Scottish Parliament too, so the trends are consistent, even if absolute numbers are overly unionist guff.
How come your chart does not show Con & Ref closer together or even crossing??
Or the Greens paralleling the Lib dums??
I don’t get it, maybe just too thick to see the chart reflect the text.
How do you get Imagur images to embed- can never seem to get it working on wordpress sites
I right click on an image I’ve uploaded and select ‘open in new tab’. This just loads the image only in a new tab. Copy the url of that and paste into a post to embed.
If people want a larger res of pics embedded here, they just need to do the same, i.e. right-click on the image and ‘open in new tab’.
thanks
Voters in Scotland are sussing out Labour day by day
Starmer can’t keep using the *Ming vase strategy* and expect to get away with the exact same thing Tony Blair did without anybody noticing you’re doing it
Many younger folk won’t know what that even is, but once explained it becomes obvious
Talk a lot about nothing, defend to the hilt that nothing you’ve said while holding a priceless store of secret policies that you can’t and never talk about inside your incredibly valuable Ming vase, that of course you can’t allow the people access to because the opposition would steal those priceless policies, but you keep promising those priceless policies are definitely in there
Ooh the anticipation
Except there’s nothing in the valuable Ming vase and never was, but made you look !
Prof Robertson comments on that Survation MRP poll and includes a nice map. No blue in the NE of Scotland.
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/06/16/poll-of-around-4-000-in-scotland-gives-snp-majority-and-35-seats/
Aye, very promising for 10 days ago when polls continue to show rising SNP since.
I’m starting to get a bit excited.
Sample in Scotland will have been around 3550, so 3 times the size of a regular poll with MRP applied. I’d definitely consider this a good indicator of where things were 10 days ago. Has generally sensible numbers, apart from still too much VI for ‘others’ which is a product of oversampling in final VI due to dilution by non-voters and unionists as 11% of those who voted (all of which were SNP) remain largely silent.
Survation under predicted SNP in 2019 too, but not by much in their final poll on 11th December.
42(-3)% SNP vs 28(+3)% Con, so a gap 6 points narrower than reality.
Still a hell of a lot better than Panelbase’s 38(-7)% SNP vs 28(+3)% Con, which was just embarrassing. 10 point gap when it was actually 20!
Starmer is the modern Toom Tabard ( empty jacket ) . He has nothing to offer except more of the same Tory misery for the Poor , the Homeless , Immigration , North Bri..( checks notes ) ..Scotland , …. all dressed up as ”CHANGE !”
Scottish turnout at 57.1(+0.7)%, with changes on the GE announcement. That’s been enough to lift the SNP by at least 5 points to 37.5% as of 4 days ago according to UK polls, reasonably reliable Scottish polls, and Scotland MRP data.
This shows you why polls are very volatile. Small uplifts in turnout are changing things a lot, and to the benefit of the SNP.
Those “Harry Lauder jocks in kilts” (jamesfitz above) have been great ambassadors in Munich. Even the police are full of praise.
A reminder on the relative accuracy of full Scotland polls for past GEs. IPSOS comes out tops, Panelbase the worst. Opinium got unlucky as they only polled once mid term 2010-2015; their other Scottish stuff is decent enough. Overall, panel polling in Scotland has a poor record, with telephone (IPSOS) and face to face (TNS back in the day) considerably better.
Newbie Redfield and Wilton are all over the place with no consistency in numbers. Like a yo-yo in ratings etc, which is a red flag for sample quality. As we’ve no record of them, they cannot be used a reliable indicator; it’s like using an uncalibrated probe to measure temperature; meaningless. Doesn’t matter as they were not needed before so not needed now. After the election we can see how they did and take that into account when interpreting their polls.
We have had two full Scottish of reasonable accuracy plus a new MRP which agrees with these, all of which agree with UK-wide polls plus other MRPs in Scotland.
Movement appears to be occurring, with the SNP making gains. Election still ages away in polling terms. Massive changes possible given the huge levels of ‘DK’ and ‘might change mind’.
Panelbase is apparently recent. What Scotland thinks has updagted. Applying a 2019 / 2011 correction would give 37% SNP vs 31% Lab, which is in line with everything else. That would be around 5 days ago when the bulk of the fieldwork was done.
Otherwise needs discounted due to established inaccuracy and the fact it’s well outside regular MoE with those polls close to it. When plotted, it looks comical. Does show movement to the SNP and Yes, so ties in nicely. Now all recent polls have the SNP back ahead for Holyrood and on the up for Westminster, even if Panelbase is a sore thumb outlier in terms of absolute numbers as usual.
Panelbase really struggle when the Scottish electorate disengages and you have silent SNP. They are ok when the electorate is engaged, such as when votes are happening in succession, e.g. 2015-16 and 2019-21. This applies to all pollsters, but panelbase are really poor when certain to vote numbers are low, as they still are.
How about this for a bit of fun, stranger things and all that.
On present polling trajectories/predictions, who knows.
SEATS ENTITY
366 Labour
45 Conservative
49 Lib/Dem
19 Green
52 Reform
25 IND
18 NI
21 Plaid Cymru
55 SNP
650 Total
82 Majority
The official opposition to the UK/England/Britain is……….
*Scotland* now wouldn’t that would be something
And *Wales* – PC majority party in the home country: 21 out of 32!
Whoop! Whoop!
Labour’s Sr Kier Starmer has made a promise he says he definitely can keep
He promises “CHANGE”
when conditions allow, subject to market fluctuations world economy, war in Ukraine and Israel and the strength of the dollar relating to oil prices should the Gulf states position remain the same
Terms and conditions apply
Here is my PoP with the only outliers I have excluded. I QA/QC data as a principal consultant, so I have 24 years experience.
But even an amateur can see why I’ve done that for 2/98 data sets, and that’s before I point out it is 7% wrong panelbase and all over the place no record, Labour adoring Redfeild and Wilton.
The writing should have been on the wall for the public when Zahawi started YouGov – He was only ever interested in increasing his personal wealth, saw an opening to influence public opinion and sell it to the highest bidder, now ‘companies’ are crawling out of the woodwork for a slice of the action….
Regarding the outliers, note the rise in SNP in line with the wider picture. Yes up too. Not shown is the possible fall in the Labour lead they also had from 10 to 4 points. Different pollsters yes, but similar methods yielding similarly outlying answers. Answers that still indicate Labour losing ground to a rising SNP vote. Even the outliers greatly favouring unionists are increasingly bad news for them. Both polls showed Yes edging up too after all.
The outliers here, and the large differences between values for different smaller parties in the Yougov/Survation plot below, shows how it’s statistically meaningless to try and produce a Scottish PoP averages. There are just not enough polls to do this. What you end up with, particularly if you include outliers, is yo-yoing that doesn’t exist. Tory surging then falling. Labour overtaking the SNP then falling back the next day silliness. Hence I tend to average where I’ve a large dataset (UK polls), then put a trend through the averaged data.
For Scottish / MRP polls, I QA/QC for outliers, then fit a trend. I constantly update what is an outlier as sometimes what looks like one can in retrospect turn out not to be. This happened with the first poll in 2011 that predicted a stunning SNP win. It was a lone voice in the wilderness at first, miles from the pack.
Our first poll showing a clear SNP lead with a supermajority of seats from a 3550 Scot ‘MEGA’ sample using MRP has certain made my day.
The field work which saw the first clear SNP lead in 2011 was at exactly the same timeframe I note. When I saw that poll from Scottish Opinion on 9th April 2011 I was like ‘oh, this looks interesting!’ and the clouds began to lift.
Looked like a total outlier, and a even Stevens followed, but along came another 10 days after it and my heart was in my mouth. Scotland was rising.
If the “silent 11%” were to vote SNP, where would that leave us in terms of the final projected result? If they are mostly SNP, say 8%, what does that mean in terms of seats? Sorry, my maths is rubbish!
Well over 50% SNP possibly.
Like 2015, but easier, i.e. lower turnout needed, so a 2019 type turnout could break records.
Now remember they are silent SNP 2019. We only know what they did before, and that their going silent has impacted the SNP alone. We don’t know what they support now as they’re silent. However, given more unionist voters are warming to indy and Yes parties, it would seem odd if SNP2019 were going the other way.
We also know they existed in 2019, but in much smaller numbers. They also only came out of the woodwork in the last 10 days last time polling wise.
Didn’t take long.
https://archive.is/sI0US
Serbia and England fans throw tables and chairs in violent mass brawl ahead of Euro 2024 opener
Two hundred German riot police rushed to break up the clashes, hours after officers shot a man in Hamburg for making threats with a pick axe near a fan zone
Didn’t take long – as you say.
But it’s taking longer to feature on the BBC.
So far from the BBC:
“England fans involved in incident before Serbia game
England fans were involved in “an altercation” with Serbia supporters before their teams’ opening Euro 2024 match in Gelsenkirchen.
Videos on social media showed tables, chairs and bottles thrown in the German city before riot police arrived.”
[…]
‘Altercation’, huh?
“A noisy argument or disagreement, especially in public.”
– Oxford Dictionary of English.
So … if I say ‘poh-tay-to’ and you say ‘poh-tah-to’ back at me in a loud voice in the street, we’re having ‘an altercation’. Not quite in the same league (pun intended) as having “a large-scale brawl” or “Videos circulating online show skirmishes as “tables, chairs, glass bottles” were all “thrown and smashed in a side street just off the main square” is it?
And another thing. How does this even make sense?
“I ran away and the next thing I saw was the tables being smashed and chairs being thrown,” the fan, who gave his name as Larry, added.
Larry runs away … and the next thing he sees is furniture being smashed and thrown. If he ran away, how could he, ‘next thing’, witness such things? Or am I missing something?
Farage’s foreign policy in action!
England must maintain a hostile environment against all immigrants, would be immigrants, soon to be immigrants, people thinking of being immigrants, no matter where they are or live, every day is independence day for the people of England
There can be no peace
If they had space travel who would they be?
Well , it wouldn’t be The Borg – as they always want to assimilate every other species .
They’re in Germany. They’re the immigrants.
They would be the Cardassians, they like too many people in England are manipulative and always want to be the dominant race/species
Or how about Daleks? Wanting to “exterminate” all those not like them.
e.g. Bengal famine: Susannah’s grandad ran Bengal as famine killed millions – BBC News
Survation is the only pollster to have a series in Scotland covering the whole campaign so far. 3 polls. Yougov have had 2 either side. Both of these have an established record in Scotland. It’s not great, but they tend to do ok in final polls after mid term beamers. Both got SNP 2019 within 3% in the end, albeit both underestimated.
2 big ass high precision MRPs after a standard 1k survey from Survation. So I have my first pollster agreeing with me that SNP crossover apparently took place around 10 days ago as they’ve been steadily rising, notably since the 1:1 rich English erse cheek debate over how much Brexiter austerity they plan to inflict on Scotland.
Yougov only have two polls to play with, and two points always show a nice straight line relationship. 🙂
But they do concur with Survation on SNP and Lab, it’s just they get differing number for Con/Lib/Green. One of the reasons Yougov have had outlier SNP seat levels in their MRPs is that they have comically absurd levels of Green under FPTP as you can see. 7%. Oki-doki.
English sky news were in North East fife today telling us jocks how the seat is ‘in contention’, with ‘Labour on the up’. They even found someone who says they maybe would vote Labour, but he could not have been less enthusiastic. This is while Survation has the Libs holding it 10 days ago with Labour on a paltry 15%. FHS it’s like Remain central; English Brexiter parties like Lab and Con have zero chance. Bless English foreign correspondents visiting the colonies. Out of their country, out of their depth. Hope they had a nice time as it’s a lovely area. I spent 4 years at St. Andrews as an undergrad.
Vote Labour. Vote Colonialism.
MOD claims a Russian submarine was spotted off North Scotland so that means we need to be in the *union* with England for protection
I might suggest if we didn’t have England’s nuclear crap in our country Russia wouldn’t have any need to waste its time playing war games around a country that isn’t interested in having this shit in the first place
Of course nobody addresses the question of how does a nuclear submarine base protect Scotland from Russians when they sailed right past anyway, obviously nobody is actually deterred by “The Deterrent” da da da dah!
We need England to protect us from countries that would rule us against our will, not let us freely vote for the government of our closing, and plunder our resources.
Probably, the root to all this is the 1936 Montreux Convention, which Turkey invoked to prevent Russian warships entering the Med from the Black Sea past Istanbul, though returning ships are allowed. So they go the long way around instead!
I didn’t say that. Shhhh.
In support of rising SNP, Yes has also gone up since the campaign kicked in, benefiting from DK.
https://www.whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/how-would-you-vote-in-the-in-a-scottish-independence-referendum-if-held-now-ask/
So rising Yes may in fact be coming from DK as well as a little from unionists as the 11% of the electorate silent SNP 2019 remain so for now.
Ages still to go. 17 days. It all kicked off in the last 10 or so in 2011/2019.
Tony Blair says Scotland didn’t vote for Independence in 2014 and that’s proof that devolution works
Scotland didn’t vote to join a dictatorial union with England, in fact Scotland didn’t get a vote at all, and those who found out and opposed the sale of of Scotland were murdered by the English, some in the streets while the perpetrators of the sale of Scotland were being chased through the streets of Edinburgh
Scotland didn’t vote for Brexit but we’ve damn well got it, is that working?
Scotland hasn’t voted Tory for 60 odd years but we got it just the same, so that must have worked eh?
Scotland didn’t vote for Nuclear weapons to be parked in our driveway but we’ve got them, still working this devolution thing is it?
Scotland doesn’t and never has had devolution, we have dictatorship by a foreign power that keeps insisting that everything’s so great in Scotland that they took us to court to prove by their law that we weren’t allowed to even talk about independence under threat of our politicians being arrested and jailed for sedition
Aye, that all sounds lovely and voluntary and democrafied
I’ll send Tony Blair my address and he can nip round my house anytime to explain to me that I’m happy
I’ve got stairs
74% voted for semi-independence from London rule by Blair’s Labour. Starmer will win a majority for complete independence.
Scotland not being independent means devolution has worked, says Blair (nation.cymru)
We’ve got our popcorn in Cymru.
If the scenario painted in this article comes to pass, which I agree is very possible, will Farage’s rise mark the end of the UK or will it usher in a situation akin to Spain? If support for independence is criminalised, would it mean a change to the constitution?
Farage doesn’t really care about Scotland. He’s a full blooded English nationalist. Truly believes England subsidises Scotland, so no loss as far as he’s concerned.
though he is cut from same cloth as Trump, so is spiteful.
i certainly think we would be in a bad place if he ever became PM.
As first Lord of the Treasury, Farage would have access to the UK’s books (accounts). He’d then find out the truth of who subsidises who, even though he’ll keep it to himself (natch). And then he’ll damn well make sure supporting Indy is a criminal offense.
Farage is not going to be PM of the UK. PM of England would be his only hope, and I can’t see English folk ever allowing that to happen.
In France, there is deep discontentment with the political system, with election turnouts getting desperately low. The process has been gradual rather than the imminent collapse the UK potentially faces.
However, turnouts shoot up whenever it looks like Le Pen is getting too close to office. Macron won last time because the French turned out en masse with noses held to stop Le Pen; 72% turnout compared to 50%’s for parliamentary elections.
It’s why Le Pen keeps moving away from the right, and now lead pro-EU free movement party. It’s the only way to make any inroads.
If Scotland is a country in a union as the UK government always insists, then by the UKs own admission they should have no power to criminalise support for independence
And yet with the UKs supreme court decision they threatened to implement that very outcome revealing themselves as a dictatorship, which was the purpose of FFM Sturgeon pointing that fact out to the nation of Scotland, but the nation sat on its hands
As to *the constitution* there is in fact no such thing as a constitution as the UK government are never done telling us, it is unwritten, they just make it up as they go along to react to any given situation
What the English/UK did was to try to convince the people of Scotland that like Catalonia in Spain Scotland is a region of England
There is no one document constitution. They make it up as they go – as they always have done and relied on the ‘good chaps’ form of government. That was trashed by Johnson and will be further obliterated by the likes of Farago and anyone else he can bring aboard e.g. Braverman
Scary.
What constipation….eh…mmm……constitution. (no probably right the first time.)
Interesting article in UKDJ
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/a-vision-for-plaid-cymrus-2024-defence-and-foreign-policy/
by a member of Plaid.
New independent analysis of BBC Question time has revealed the Broadcaster is guilty of rigging the panel with a constant majority of right wing guest supporters and that the host Fiona Bruce is acting like a Lady Haw Haw for the BBC
Have you got a link to that research Dr J
It was reported in the National, https://archive.ph/3vgBw
I got to https://archive.ph/6sGyQ but haven’t read it yet…
PS – Note Ross Hunter’s link ” In an article for The Conservation…”, which leads to ” The Conversation… “…
A future for that lad at the Grauniad for sure……..
It does appear that Yes has been rising on approach to voting day as previously mentioned.
There was evidence for Yes moving to DK as SNP bottomed out before the GE following the turmoil of the end of the BHA etc. That seems to have been reversing now, with DK moving back to Yes. Which is probably how SNP is going up while turnout projection remains low because silent SNP 2019 remain disengaged. Our more unionist respondent pool is apparently moving to SNP and Yes.
It is truly remarkable that we have like 50% Yes, and all while the data point to a huge swath of SNP 2019 / Yes voters being largely unreachable to pollsters.
A check on recent survey times and it has remained at 4.4 days average time to reach quotas in Scotland, ergo still 33% higher than it was before SNP 2019 went silent / hard to reach. This is SNP voters being difficult to get a hold of as they are being undersampled far more often than they were before, with Labour being oversampled far more often.
So our movement to SNP and Yes does seem entirely amongst more unionist respondents, which would be excellent if so.
About 10 days out we can start watching for silent SNP 2019 engagement. If unionists are moving to Yes/SNP, then I’d venture silent SNP 2019 will not go home to Labour. Rather they might do as before, just variably pop out of the woodwork polling wise and turn out to vote.
Backing this up would be English folks moving away from Labour even after 14 years of the Tories. It would be nonsensical to have Scots warming to Labour as they are increasingly rejected the length and breadth of the UK, have not won over anyone really since 2019 as a share of total electorate.
So aim tentatively putting my money on the outcome being really quite different to recent polling. Possibly remarkably so. If those turnout numbers do go up, things should change massively. That applies UK-wide, not just here.
It would be terrific if we had some media support for Independence
like a newspaper
Sunak has apparently got the ‘forces of separatism in retreat’ by boosting support for Yes to record levels in polls structurally biased towards the union due to recent unionist oversampling.
If you had to pick, what would you prefer in polling that sampling issues have favouring the union going into an election?
Which one is more a threat to the union?
Option 2 every time every time for me.
You can’t have an option 2 in an A & B question, but the answer is total support for the SNP to wipe out all unionism in Scotland and begin negotiations for withdrawal immediately from England’s dictatorship
Not a country on earth could refuse to support the removal of British politicians from Scotland automatically means rejection of the UK
As long as there is just one of them left they’ll still rule
Wordpess did that. changed my 1 and 2 to A & B.
Definite 2.1% rise in Yes (ex DK) starting around 48 days from the election when you average the data. That’s where my PoP had the SNP share bottom out and begin to rise. So we now seem to be going into the election on rising support for the SNP and independence, with this occurring, as noted, among more unionist respondents.
It’s now 10 days since we’ve had any fieldwork from a pollster with as reasonable degree of historic reliability in Scotland. 5 days since the last round of UK polls were largely conducted. Fingers crossed for the next lot!
Fact of the day:
Petrol and Diesel is 10 pence per litre cheaper in Europe and Ireland than it is in the UK, in some places in the Scottish borders petrol and diesel is up to 26 pence per litre dearer than the rest of the UK
None of those places have any oil of their own and they’re all independent countries unprotected by mighty England, plus each one of their population remains unkilled by the bad forces of the world for not possessing deterring nuclear weapons
I didn’t say fun fact
Labour slipped again in the latest UK-wide poll. That Savanta with 46% now looks like an outlier amongst the recent upper 30’s / lower 40’s. The good old days of upper 40’s seem a lifetime ago now.
My PoP project has Labour dropping below 40% on average as we speak, and on 21.8% of the total electorate. The lowest value of the campaign based on all recent data added in, and just 0.2% better than the disaster of 2019.
Wiki trend would have labour dropping below 40% a couple of days ago, so I’m being nice to Starmer by not giving any pollster bias.
And so HMS Britannia continues to steam full ahead towards the gigantic iceberg straight in front of it.
Keep in mind Tony Blair polling 50% right up to t-2 days, but won just 43% on the day, and he was really quite popular when first elected.
Labour on 21.7% of total electorate now with another couple added in. Statistically, they could be lower than 2019 in terms of total votes. Holy s**t.
UK turnout projection remains at a desperately low 52.8%.
The sharp fall in the big two vs the sharp rise in smaller parties is becoming quite something.
Here is my PoP scaled the same way.
Compares well. Labour went up with the GE announcement, then continuously down since the two erse cheeks debate. I guess Starmer mibbie dropped the Ming vase at that. He did lose in polls around it.
SNP appear to be on the rise, starting from a low of a few points over 30% at campaign KO. Possibly upper 40’s now. The survation MRP with FW around 11 days ago is our last solid point of reference. SNP on 37%, with a 7% lead over Labour and rising.
Channel four researches Scotland and concludes that we don’t want independence anymore
They asked people in the street and everything, so must be definitely right
If it wasn’t so insidiously evil by the British broadcasters you’d laugh
Ehm, Kathryn Samson is no impartial journalist…
Here is her report
https://www.channel4.com/news/scottish-independence-takes-backseat-in-general-election
The false framing was as obvious as it was fully expected from Samson.
C4’s Scotland reporting continues to be a la James Cook, with the same reputational damage….
Average yes in last 2 polls is 50.1%, up 2% on early campaign polls. Latest 3,550 sample MRP shows a supermajority for the SNP.
And that’s with Panelbase / Norstat historically underestimating Yes / SNP.
This looks like front seat to me. Like it will decide Scotland’s future in 2026 if not on 4th July.
But then foreign news channels often struggle to pick up on such things when reporting from other countries.
Even Brits native to Scotland living here struggle to see too as they live in a different country. If they have any Scots friends and colleagues, these know they are British / unionist and therefore will speak English to them, not mention their support for indy / the SNP etc lest this causes an argument.
Similar on the streets, with SNP voters not interested in speaking to English news channels in case they get called ‘economically illiterate anti-English racists’. Calling people this makes them support indy more, not less. However, it does make them not talk to you anymore, nor tell pollsters what they plan etc. This especially applies when you punch them in the face twice, such as by taking their vote away and trying to arrest their leaders.
This is why you don’t find anyone opposing Kim Jong Un on the streets Pyongyang. Here it has been taken to the extreme, but British propaganda does the same in earnest.
And you’ll know it’s true because you’ve done it yourself. Someone at an event mouths off about Sturgeon and the room hushes. Nobody disagrees, but you see a few people rolling their eyes and smiling at each other out of the corner of their eyes. The reality is, unless you were at the local bowling club or old folks home or orange order hall, over half the room backs independence outright and much of the remainder were not in principle against it, having previously wanted devo max. But people are not talking about it right now. Not when their cause is under sustained assault. They are behind the parapet, and waiting for their moment to rise and shoot quite possibly.
That was dire but exactly what we have come to expect from the Unionist media. They are desperately pushing the “lend Labour your vote to get rid of the Tories”.
This is quite simply a lie as the way to get rid of the Tories in this election is to vote SNP in every Tory held seat in Scotland where only they can replace the Tory MP.
If Independence supporters think voting for a Unionist party will somehow help replace the Tories at Westminster then they are making a big mistake. Look at the Tories Starmer has welcomed into Labour with open arms and look at those Labour members he has expelled.
Voting Labour will replace one version of Tory policies with a slightly different version of exactly the same policies, if any Independence supporter really wants “Change” they will only get that by supporting Independence and electing an SNP MP as the only realistic chance of winning a Unionist held seat.
Yes. She kept mentioning that support for indy was falling which she seemed to base on selected vox pop, emphasis on selected, but never once mentioned the most recent poll that put Yes on 51%.
Her usual shallow and biased report.
It’s the Nick Robinson et al method – Present something in a different context to the reality of the exchange and the audience will swallow it whole – As in the Alex Salmond answer “Came there none..”.
I’m willing to bet many of those vox-popped are livid at being misrepresented – They know they said those words, but not in the context presented….
You say that demographic factors are favourable for independence given that the vast majority of young people support it. But there’s another demographic factor to be borne in mind which swings in the opposite direction, the effect of which we see in the Borders, D&G, Moray and Aberdeenshire and might see repeated in other parts of rural Scotland. The census 2022 figures on demography are to be published in August and should make for an illuminating read.
2022 Census shows highest level of Scottish (not British) ever. It’s why we are on the brink of independence.
Actually they don’t because the figures on demographics aren’t published yet. I think you might be confusing that with the figures on national identity released in May. Even those show a more complex situation than you suggest. I wish you were right.
There is no other data of relevance demographically. Ethnicity is likewise based on self-indentification.
Parentage and country of birth are influencing factors, but not defining. 2022 census:
65.5% Scottish only (not British)
2.0% Scottish + other (not British) = me (+Irish), my daughter (+French)
8.2% Scottish & British
13.9% British only
This is the most Scottish (only) Scotland has been since census records began. Not the same series, but similar:
If you split the 8.2% in forced choice, you’d have:
72% Scottish
18% British on that plot as of 2022.
So very much in line. The difference is we have gained more ‘other’ in the form of Europeans over the past 20 years. These support independence now for obvious reasons.
As for CoB, 30% of people born in England would vote Yes according to the latest poll. So 3% of e.g. the latest 51% Yes is coming from these.
Oh well. Everything’s just dandy then.
Yes, it’s looking the best it ever has. If you look beyond the propaganda and focus on the big picture.
Polls say this election will break the back of the UK.
A serious UK-wide constitutional crisis is predicted.
Thank you for your analysis. Always good not to be guided by a lot of wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking is certainly not a good idea.
It’s crazy that unionists are talking about ‘the forces of separatism being in retreat’ when election polls are show a majority for independence first thing tomorrow and a supermajority for the SNP (latest 3,550 sample MRP).
I personally don’t know what’s going to happen SNP-wise, but the polls are 100% in agreement that at least 2/3 of Scots are going to overwhelmingly reject English labour rule, meaning Starmer has no mandate to rule Scotland. This is what’s needed above all for independence. Not only that, but polls say he’s going to get the keys to No. 10 on the same number of absolute votes as 2019, Labour’s worst defeat since 1935, so breaking UK democracy completely. No mandate for England never mind Scotland. The most unpopular government ever to have taken office in London.
We are barrelling towards a hated Labour government that Scots didn’t vote for.
It’s never happened before and will break the union IMO. Scots will find they can never get a government they want as part of the UK. Never.
Lovely
Over 2 weeks since the last reasonably reliable polling fieldwork was done in Scotland (Survation MRP and IPSOS telephone).
That we are party to at least.
As for panelbase / norstat. You get what you pay for as they say. If you want cheapo English panel shite that predicts 38% SNP when the reality is 45%, then Norstat’s yer pollster.
The most recent Scottish poll is this one:
https://archive.is/iMN76
Norstat
Adults resident in GB
1050
11-14 June
‘Adults in GB’. I suppose that is true.
‘2017 Holyrood constituency’. Facepalm.
Note how much Yes and SNP are down weighted. But the weird thing is that an overly English born sample (11.3% down-weighted to 9.0%) is insisting it voted max 49% SNP in 2019, also said it voted a whopping 56% Yes in 2024. This is impossible unless respondents are lying about how they voted in 2014, causing heavy Yes down-weighting.
So not only is the polling super sloppy for the basics, this is not a representative sample. The overly high English born is not an outlier, this has been a big problem since silent SNP (mainly Scots born) appeared.
Yet this overly England born, more-pro union sample is insisting it supported SNP in 2019 more than it did and, crucially, voted massively for yes when it did not.
This is serious red flags galore for sampling. It also suggests Yes/SNP may be far strong than things appear, because if a more unionist sample is saying 49% Yes tomorrow even in the face of heavy down-weighting, what does the real number look like?
The British insist on telling us that nationalism is bad and yet with every fibre of their being they pressure the population into accepting the invented by them nationality of *British* when previously they were English Welsh Scottish and Irish, and they still are or they wouldn’t have national football or other sports teams to represent their countries, not even counting their national identities represented by the flags of their own countries
In Europe folk might say they are European but they identify as the nationality of their own individual country first
What these *British nationalists* have always attempted to do is to overlay a non existent false ideological identity backing it up with the use of a picture postcard of a benign Royal family that has our overall interests at heart by smiling waving and making themselves richer at our expence
British nationalism has no country, it’s the manufactured control tool of the politics of imperialism, the same thing that the bad man in Germany copied in the 1930s, so it’s no wonder the *British* were dead against that guy doing the exact same thing as them
It’s clearly demonstrated today in our Euro football tournament where a fair percentage of Scotland hates the very idea that Scotland as a nation might do well at football because they adhere to the invented British identity which holds the Scottish identity in total contempt, again very much like the bad German man in the 1930s who didn’t like the German people who actually lived in Germany and tried to replace them with a concept species of his personal preference
Many will know of the British excuses for invading other countries like Ireland for example where their documents reveal that they considered the Irish to be a *sub human species*, or Scots that had to be *civilised*
I’ve no doubt the other 65 countries the *British* invaded in order to help civilise them were assigned similar adjectives as *reasons* to murder and steal every asset they possessed, which is an odd thing in today’s world where in England they have a leader of Indian ethnicity and in Scotland a Pakistani hysterically chanting Britishness at us all after their own home countries were invaded robbed and torn apart by the very British ideology they stand for
I can only think their must be money in this Britishness, silly me, of course their is, it’s called invented Royal state sanctioned theft robbery and murder for capital gain of the few who run it
God save the King, see! they even invoke God to make their point
Updated my turnout prediction, and UK wide it’s fallen back to 52.0%.
OMFG.
I am so far not picking up any notable rise in Scotland either based on UK subsamples.
So the tentative SNP / Yes rise is coming from more unionist voters as noted, not the appearance of silent SNP2019. They are still silent just like they were in 2019, when they only crawled out of the woodwork partly the last 10 days or so.
A comparison of 2011 and 2024 polls, including outliers R&W (no record in Scotland) and Panelbase who predicted 37% SNP in 2011 / 38% in 2019.
There were no MRP polls in Scotland then. They comprise 5 ‘full Scottish’ equivalents in the 2024 set.
Now this does not say what will happen, simply what was the case up to 7 days ago when the last fieldwork was done in Scotland by crappy ‘2017 constituency vote’ English panelbase / Norstat.
SNP went into 2011 way worse off than they’ve gone into 2024.
I note Swinney’s leadership ratings compare well with Salmond’s at the time. Starmer / Sarwar are more like Ian Gray.
From today’s ‘The National’:
Ancient poll, but very good for 2 weeks ago. Bulk of the FW will be 3-4 June.
Sharpe fall in Labour is a good sign. 10 point lead collapses to 4.
Ties in with crossover around that time.
Yougov have been getting nonsense ‘others’ numbers as you can see.
If you think 15% are going to vote for small parties under FPTP you button up the back. This is caused by non-voter dilution due to silent SNP 2019. Drops turnout to record lows and inflates others to silly levels.
Small party average in Scotland is 2% of on the day, 3% record high.
It’s why Yougov’s MRPs are big outliers from the pack and must be set aside. They get silly levels of Green, reform etc. Results in unrealistic Yes vote splitting.
I would say it’s very positive that unionists are now resorting to polling data from 2 weeks ago to maintain the narrative. We are the grey line today, so Labour were still ahead of SNP 14 days ago according to my conservative calcs (includes Panelbase and R&W).
When you look at my plot above, 2 weeks can equal a 12 point lead change readily in a campaign. Things can move at incredible speeds.
Yougov’s Con is realistic. They look totally screwed.
Up to 5 days to sample is consistent with them struggling to reach their SNP 2019 quota still.
Just wondering if Reform is up in Scotland because Tory voters (blue & red) here are switching to them?
Will be a bit, they’re averaging 4.5% or so, but this is low turnout over-inflation and tactical not kicking in. So think 2% like 2015 – the last peak year of UKIP in the UK – if things go well for them. Farage is saying in the news they’re not doing well at all here.
TBH, I’d like to believe 7% as that would ensure loads of seats SNP by splitting the unionist vote. However, I’m not going to kid myself with such silliness here.
Just slotting this behind 4 newer polls.
Yougov are definitely attempting to steer narratives again, both in Scotland and the UK with reform.
Scotland the least enthused of all areas of the UK at a campaign working up towards an English Labour government.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/06/14/d06bd/1
How much, if at all, are you enjoying the 2024 general election campaign?
Scotland
17% Very much (2%) / a fair amount (15%)
75% Not very much (35%) / not very much at all (40%)
UK
22% Very much (4%) / a fair amount (18%)
70% Not very much (33%) / not very much at all (37%)
If we Scots were coming home to Labour, we’d be enjoying the media narrative and campaign immensely. Like the buzz of 2015 when we were informed a stunning SNP victory was coming. The electorate was massively engaged with a huge turnout predicted for many months ahead.
Just 17% enjoying the prospect of Labour heading for No. 10. That’s dire.
This is why you can’t reach SNP 2019 to poll them. The more you tell Scots Labour will win No. 10, crushing all before them, the less likely the are to engage. What’s there to be excited about?
At least until voting day. Then non-Labour may well go out and quietly vote for what they deeply believe in, while Labour may stay at home, confident of victory, but not that enthused by Starmer. That’s how Tony dropped from 50% to 43% final polls to outcome.
No escaping the bampot – look how he gets treated with kid gloves whereas Plaid Cymru (who actually have seats at Westminster*) are frozen out:
BBC adds Question Time show with Reform after Farage complaints over exclusion (yahoo.com)
BBC adds Question Time show with Reform after Farage complaints over exclusion
The BBC will allow Reform UK to take part in an extra Question Time leaders’ special after Nigel Farage complained about being excluded from the programme.
The broadcaster has added an additional Question Time to its election coverage to reflect “the fact that it is clear from across a broad range of opinion polls that the support for Reform UK has been growing”.
[…]
_________________
* I imagine the SNP were only grudgingly allowed on.
The first interruption made by bruce to the SNP panelist (because, as we know, there will be many), the SNP person should take out a gimp gag from their pocket and offer it to Bruce with clear and strict instructions on how to place it around her gob.
Well, it’s official folks, “Scotland is not a country” says Henry Newman, advisor to Tory minister and hater of all things Scottish Michael Gove on the BBC politics live programme
Mr Henry Newman advisor to Michael Gove didn’t stop there did he? oh no, he continued with “Scotland is a *region* of the UK”
Given that we all already know that British Nationalists like Henry Newman and Michael Gove are mostly morons with educational gaps the size of the Grand Canyon, they are also a bunch of *Nastys*, and yes I did spell that incorrectly and deliberately
This attitude is why others took an entirely different route to gaining their independence from these people and removed as many of them as they possibly could by making them fall down not alive anymore, and yes I worded that in a way that I hope avoids the removal of what I wrote
And also why I personally cannot even talk to these types of *things*
England is not a country.
[…] Source […]
Very old UK MRP out from IPSOS England out. Fieldwork mainly 10 days ago.
Tells us nothing more than their full Scottish telephone did about what the situation possibly looked like 10 days ago. Even stevens between Lab and SNP, maybe a slight Labour lead still, but possible crossover occurring as Labour’s short-lived lead fell away sharply. Like we needed to know this fascinating new insight into the past. Desperately low turnout. Labour overwhelmingly rejected by 2/3 Scots even with a mass Yes voter boycott, with zero mandate for them to rule Scotland from London.
Identical VI numbers within MoE to their telephone apart from panel = SNP slightly lower. Comical 10% for others is the highlight. This is because they’ve used a panel and hoped Scots would come to them rather than e.g. contacting silent SNP to see if they’ll talk / whether they’ll turn out or not.
The huge disparity in seat numbers between these MRPs is because when it’s even as it was a couple of weeks ago, you get huge jumps from tiny changes as seats change hands. It means it’s nonsense trying to average things. Also, seats don’t matter for indy; the key is Labour failing to win any sort of popular mandate in Scotland, while getting the keys to No. 10. That looks like it may be set in stone now. Any slight turnout rise has gone straight to SNP so far, so some mass popular movement to Labour seems totally impossible now.
Our most reliable indicator remains the MRP from Survation who used over double the number of respondents. 60 per Scots seat compared to 30 for IPSOS.
Survation also have a record of panel polling Scotland too, with regular panel polls in the same period that match up with their MRP. IPSOS panel is very recent, and they’ve only had a few leadership ratings polls of Scotland. These tended to show poorer SNP results, contradicting their gold standard telephone polls, meaning they were accusing themselves of inaccuracy, which isn’t a good look. So we have a telephone haggis to compare with an unknown species of English apple.
I used to like the days of ‘new poll out’. Now it seems for Scotland, you only get 10 day old results. Sometimes 2 weeks like today’s ‘latest Yougov’.
I note that Yougov published 3 UK wide polls since they did the fieldwork for their Scottish one. I bet you they’ve done more recent Scottish ones but have decided the 2 week old one is they one they want in the headlines.
This is is not at all in breach of BPC rules and they could not trip themselves up by doing so. But pick out that low SNP, high Reform that are simply coming from variance, including outliers beyond the 95% interval, and you get the headlines.
So my plot of SNP lead over Labour remains as earlier. Will be unchanged with the addition of these ‘old’ polls.
Table out and 2 week+ old YouGov shows a rise in Yes too. So all polls showing Yes is on the rise along with SNP.
As of 2 weeks ago:
47(+2)% Yes
53(-2)% No
Gap closure of 4% from 13 May, so over 3 weeks.
Highest Yes in YouGov since 2nd April.
Starmer in No 10 is pushing Scots to yes.