As well as asking the respondents in our latest Panelbase poll what they were thinking right now, we also invited them to have a shot at peering into the future – to be more specific, the future of the UK.
It’s fair to say that their predictions weren’t exactly overflowing with optimism.
Alert readers can’t have failed to spot that we’ve been devoting quite a bit of attention on Wings to Labour’s devolution proposals, chiefly because they’re by default the closest thing to the “more powers” option that’s so conspicuously missing from the referendum ballot paper at the insistence of the Unionist parties.
We’ve established that the party itself doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea what its own proposals are, and we’re still in the process of trying to get to the bottom of it. But as our latest Panelbase poll was “in the field” fairly hot on the heels of the launch of the “Devo Nano” paper, we thought we’d see what the Scottish people made of it.
Depending on which opinion poll you believe, the number of Scots who haven’t yet made up their minds which way to vote in the independence referendum is anywhere between about 11% and 33%.
That’s a pretty wide range, and when we were pondering our latest Panelbase survey we thought it’d be intriguing to probe the Don’t Know demographic a little more deeply.
If there’s one thing we – as a website rather than as part of the Yes movement – are sick and tired of hearing from Scottish people about the referendum it’s “We need more information”. Having spent two and a half years writing thousands of articles full of fully-sourced and referenced information covering every conceivable aspect of the debate, our response tends to be “You can’t be looking very bloody hard, then.”
But are we right to be so cranky, or are we just crotchety old grumpyfaces?
So anyway. Alert readers will have noticed by now that we’ve had a poll out, and earlier today we finally got the full data tables in.
It’s going to take us a while to fully analyse everything (though we’ve dropped a few tantalising snippets on our Twitter account, which many of you are now stylish enough to follow), but we’re going to start with a theme we return to often in our polls – trust.
By now you may have already seen the headline numbers for our latest Panelbase poll. We hope you don’t mind that we gave the Sunday Times a couple of hours’ lead time in return for some major coverage, but we’ve always said that at this stage the headline numbers are the least interesting findings.
(That’s why our first poll didn’t even bother asking the referendum question.)
We’re actually still waiting on the final full tables for the other 10 questions – we should have them tomorrow – so for now let’s just have a dig around in the top line.
When presented with the evidence that Scotland has been a huge net contributor to UK finances ever since the discovery of North Sea oil, Unionists sometimes protest “Ah, but what about the 260 years before that, when Scotland was just a poor wee backwater with no industry that was bankrolled by England after the Darien disaster?”
(Because most of them don’t actually know the first thing about Darien.)
And after this morning’s story, we thought it might be worth checking a few more of the official UK government figures for Scottish revenues and expenditure, up to the point where the Treasury stopped compiling the figures lest they get too embarrassing.
So thanks to yet another alert reader, that’s what we did.
The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.
1. Going (on the) underground
The tangled tale of our first advertising campaign.
2. The ad SPT don’t want you to see
The graphics of our first advertising campaign.
3. Ironic timing
A juxtaposition to our first advertising campaign.
4. The Devo Nano Policy Explosion
A post not related to our first advertising campaign!
5. The Tumbleweed Files
Crowdjournalisming.
This week’s theme: it definitely pays to advertise.
A new poll by Populus for the Daily Politics is out today, with some interesting rankings for the four UK party leaders. (Which in a UK context includes Nigel Farage, despite his representing a party without a single MP while there are seven other parties at Westminster who do have seats.)
As you can see, UK respondents were asked to identify the three main qualities they associated with each leader, from a list of positive and negative ones. It’s fair to say none comes out covered in glory – fewer than one in five people think the UK’s Prime Minister is “competent”, for example. But the balance is striking.
We’ve noted several times recently an increase in the intensity of the No campaign, which has really been ramping up the rhetoric and menace since the turn of the year. But it’s also been accompanied by a growing sense of denial, as every poll showing a shift towards Yes is dismissed with the use of ever-more-selective comparisons.
Last night as part of its coverage of the latest polling, Scotland Tonight retweeted a comment from Oliver Milne, the Chair of Scottish Labour Students:
You know how we love to check facts, readers. Let’s check the facts.
The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.
1. We less, we happy less
Awful grammar and the same old scaremongering from “Better Together”.
2. Sympathy for the devil
The No camp tries not to rejoice at bad news for Scotland.
3. Please stop lying to us
Reporting the news from Things That Didn’t Actually Happen World.
4. The countdown starts tomorrow
We got the date wrong on this – just two days to go.
5. An apology to Gordon Brown
Instantly gazumped in the “old man gibberish” stakes.
This week’s theme: devo schmevo.
Three opinion polls this week have all suggested that Labour’s opinion-poll lead over the Conservatives is continuing to shrink. ICM put Ed Miliband’s party just three points in front, as do Ipsos MORI, while Populus have a mere 1% between the two parties.
For perspective, the same distance out from the 2010 general election, the Tories were 16 points in front. By seven months away from the vote, in October 2009, their lead was an incredible NINETEEN points, and they still couldn’t win a majority.
Who fancies Labour’s chances?
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
