Isn’t it weird how since we did this, everyone’s suddenly started asking much more interesting questions in opinion polls about independence?
After months with almost no polling at all, and what there was being restricted to boring Yes/No affairs, there’s been an explosion in surveys conducted by every conceivable pollster for everyone and his dog, and nearly every one has followed our lead in digging below the headline response and trying to find out what makes Scottish voters tick when it comes to their views on the constitution.
Today has two new sets of data to chew over, with fascinating results.
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Tags: project fearvote no get nothing
Category
analysis, psephology, scottish politics
This is a leaflet distributed to pupils at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire this week. It was put together by “the school’s Better Together team” as part of the lead-up to a mini-referendum this Tuesday and sent to us by a concerned parent.
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Tags: cringeproject fearthe positive case for the uniontoo wee too poor too stupid
Category
disturbing, scottish politics
It’s been a remarkable week in opinion polling, with YouGov calling the independence referendum for No on Sunday, Panelbase calling it for Yes on Monday, and TNS-BMRB, according to Prof John Curtice, calling it for Don’t Know by Wednesday.
When you look at those results more carefully it becomes apparent that only the initial YouGov poll holds good news for the No camp, and the reason for this comes down to the psychology of change.
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Tags: project fearScott Minto
Category
analysis, scottish politics
Forgive the mangled Star Trek/Blackadder reference, there.
We’ve been having a wee dig around in the just-released full data tables from today’s Panelbase poll, and found something we thought was particularly interesting, and which we don’t think anyone’s picked up on, because it’s a bit tricky to get your head round. Walk with us while we simplify it.
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Tags: captain darlingproject feartoo wee too poor too stupid
Category
analysis, scottish politics, stats
STV this morning reports a speech to be given today by Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, in which she issues some blood-curdling warnings about the chaotic impact of independence on Scottish trade with the UK.
There are a couple of things Ms Davidson should probably know.
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Tags: misinformationproject fear
Category
comment, disturbing, scottish politics
We’ve already briefly discussed Bill Jamieson’s article in today’s Scotsman claiming an independent Scotland will be more likely to suffer financial collapse and wouldn’t be able to afford to bail out its banking sector, that its economy will diverge from the rUK due to differing economic policies (making Sterling a millstone round Scotland’s neck), and that Scottish banks would relocate their headquarters to London as a result.
We’ve heard these dire tales of “too wee, too poor” inadequacy a thousand times. “But you couldn’t bail out the banks!” is perhaps the most scratched and worn-out disc in the No campaign’s entire DJ setlist of doom-and-gloom tunes. What we need is some sort of independence Woody Bop Muddy, but while we look for his number let’s yawn our way through this tired old scaremongering cobblers one more time.
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Tags: project fearScott Mintotoo wee too poor too stupid
Category
analysis, scottish politics, uk politics, world
Alert readers will be aware of the occasional service provided by this site whereby we help out time-pressed citizens by letting them know when they can safely stop reading an article in the Scottish media. This morning we noticed a tweet from Unionist/Tory commentator Alex Massie, drawing attention to a Scotsman piece he described as “a v important column on banks. Not ‘Scaremongering'”.
Despite the obvious we respect Massie’s views on a lot of subjects, so we had a look.
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Tags: project fear
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
The debt Scotland stands to inherit as an independent nation is often used as a stick to beat the Yes camp, and various “estimates” of the size of said debt – ranging from the merely extreme to the comically deranged – are a core element of the scare stories that suggest Scotland would have a fragile economy prone to collapsing the first time there was a bad year for oil prices/production.
But to understand the reality you need to dig a little into the nature of the debt, as the relatively widely-known figures of outstanding UK debt only tell half the story. Delving into the (deliberately) labyrinthine world of finance is a daunting task, but we’ll keep this as understandable as we can.
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Tags: project fearRobert Bruce
Category
analysis, stats, uk politics
Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran is quoted in the Herald today presenting the award of £300m of contracts for the navy’s innovative new aircraft-free aircraft carriers as a benefit of the Union, and continuing the well-worn scare story that the Clyde and Rosyth shipyards would close in an independent Scotland.
We’ve already dealt with that particular canard, so instead let’s look at the sums.
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Tags: arithmetic failproject fear
Category
analysis, comment, scottish politics, uk politics
This is the last of the political data from our Panelbase survey of Scottish opinion. The full data tables should now be available to the media from the pollster.
(But a quick word to all the Scottish journalists who we know read this site – had a single one of you had the courtesy, wit or basic journalistic initiative to actually contact us and ask us for the tables directly, we’d gladly have given them to you 24 hours before your competitors. Just a wee tip there.)
We know our chums at “Better Together” have been looking forward to this one for days, so we won’t keep them waiting any longer.
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Tags: pollproject fear
Category
analysis, scottish politics, stats, uk politics, world
Ooh, we haven’t had one of these for a while. Browsing the newspapers on our iPad this morning before getting up, we noticed an interesting headline in the Scotsman.
Intrigued, we clicked on it to see if it was a standard-issue scare story in the paper’s “Scottish independence” section, and were pleasantly surprised to note that it wasn’t. In fact, the warned-of tax rises or cuts in services were those which would follow a No vote in the referendum, as they’re those planned by UK Chancellor George Osborne.
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Tags: misinformationproject fear
Category
analysis, comment, media, scottish politics
Michael Moore is the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Keep that in mind when you read the next line.
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Tags: project fear
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comment, disturbing, idiots, scottish politics