Wings Over Scotland

Both of our polls so far have been far less concerned with HOW people intend to vote in the independence referendum, and much more concerned with the WHY. So in the second one, we decided to have a bit of a dig around in their reasons, see what it was they really wanted, and what might change their minds.

We had no idea what to expect, but our respondents still managed to surprise us.

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In our previous poll, we discovered that the public overwhelmingly thought its politicians were a bunch of liars. Not a single one of them scored a net positive trust rating for truthfulness, although Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had the small consolation of being well out in front of the competition as the least distrusted.

We felt a little bit sorry for the nation’s elected representatives, so we thought we’d give them a better chance this time around.

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Alert readers will recall that earlier today we revealed the answers to the first 10 questions we asked the Scottish public about their views on various topics not directly related to the independence referendum, just because we were asking them about stuff anyway and it seemed like a good idea.

Here, in a surprise twist, are the other 10.

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As we were compiling our second poll, it struck us that it provided an opportunity to find out a lot of things about the Scottish public at once, that weren’t necessarily directly related to the referendum.

Politicians and newspapers routinely make all sorts of claims about what the public’s attitude to various issues are, but whenever we Google for polling data backing up those assertions it’s very thin on the ground, especially for Scotland specifically.

So as usual, we just went ahead and did it ourselves.

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As readers will know because we always go on about it, we’re not very fussed about straight Yes/No polls this far out from the vote. We want to get right under the Scottish electorate’s skin, so for our second crowd-funded poll (as with the previous one) we asked for their opinion on all sorts of other stuff too.

But the media is boring and only cares about the simple bits. Headlines first, then.

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SHOULD SCOTLAND BE AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY?

Yes 35%
No 43%
Undecided 20%

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Just an eight-point gap, which remains unchanged if you only include people who are at least 8/10 likely to vote – the numbers in that scenario move to Y37-N45-DK17. With the white paper still unpublished and 11 months to go, the Yes side needs a mere 4% swing to close the gap completely.

But that’s just about the least interesting stat in our poll.

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As all the cool, good-looking people who follow us on Twitter will already know, the results of our second crowd-funded poll are in. The data tables only arrived around teatime, so we won’t be publishing anything until Sunday, because we have to analyse a great big mountain of info, write some posts about it and get those posts cleared by Panelbase, all of which takes a wee while.

But allow us to offer you the odd little teaser snippet.

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Okay, with the fundraiser now closed (at a fabulous £5,797) we’re about to send our second poll off to Mystery Professor X for some serious expert scrutiny, but there are still a couple of available slots for good questions.

Now would be a good time to fire suggestions at us in the comments.

About the poll, that is.

General consensus among the Wings Over Scotland readership seems to be that our Panelbase poll was a resounding success. Despite an almost-total media blackout, traffic to the site has seen a large spike since we undertook the project, and the survey’s findings have bled into the narrative of the debate even when the press didn’t want to acknowledge their source.

We’ve also had some helpful advice on how to do an even better job next time, and to be honest with you, readers, we’re itching to have another go.

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Forgive us another rummage around in our poll data, but we didn’t do a lot of study into gender differences in our first wave of analysis, and we were struck by something this morning as we idly browsed through the question about what Scots were scared of.

Along with the fact that women were almost twice as likely – 38% to 22% – to be undecided about their referendum vote* as men (and indeed about most other votes), it was one of the areas where the differences between the sexes were most stark.

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…to reporting of opinion polls in the Scottish media! These are all from today:

“More than half of Scots live on ready meals or takeaways at least three times a week, according to a new poll.”

Vital data, there. And definitely more interesting and important than learning that two-thirds of Scots don’t believe the promises of improved devolution after a No vote.

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A quick update on how mainstream media coverage of our poll is going.

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In so far as there’s any actual reasoning or hard data supporting the Scotsman’s front-page lead story today at all, it’s when the American pundit Nate Silver claims that “Historically, in any Yes or No vote in a referendum, it’s actually the No side that tends to grow over time, people tend not to default to changing the status quo.”

Shall we just check whether that does indeed “tend” to be true, readers?

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