Telling half the story
An alert reader pointed something interesting out to us this morning. STV News, the Telegraph and the Paisley Daily Express all carry an almost word-for-word-identical story (the only one with a byline is the Telegraph’s version, which credits it to the grumpy-looking Josie Ensor), all three of them headlined with slight variations on the phrase “Over 60 per cent unconvinced on Scottish independence”.
It refers to a poll conducted for the “Better Together” campaign, and reports its findings accurately. Or to be more precise, reports some of its findings.
That fact only becomes clear when you read the rather more complete and balanced account of the poll in the Sunday Herald, although it’s one tucked away halfway down a completely different story.
The piece by Tom Gordon contains a couple of snippets of fascinating info which the other publications, in their haste to snap some page-filler up off the newswire on the cheap, have managed to omit:
“But although [the poll] found the currency was important in how Scots will vote on September 18 next year, it was not as important as the Unionist side might have hoped.
Only 19% said swapping the pound for the euro or a new currency would make them less likely to vote Yes, as most had already made up their mind: 44% said they would vote No regardless of the currency and 23% said they would vote Yes regardless.”
“Scepticism about independence was closely linked to party allegiance: 98% of Tories, 91% of LibDems and 82% of Labour voters are unconvinced by SNP arguments.”
The second is particularly valuable, as it confirms something we’ve highlighted several times in the past (all the way back to 2011, in fact) but which the mainstream media never acknowledges: that polls consistently show a solid 20% or so of Labour voters (and smaller percentages of the other two Unionist parties) open to independence.
The “Better Together” poll asked an extremely leading question, focusing specifically on the SNP rather than independence, yet still found that sizeable minority of Labour voters not prepared to accept the party line. We wonder when someone’s finally going to have a proper look into that. Judging by the lazy regurgitation of biased, UK-slanted wire stories today by STV and the Paisley Daily Express, we won’t hold our breath.
If the MSM accepts the yes campaign is multi party supported and not just the SNP then it shows division, and so it cannot be discussed in depth.
Unionist voters were not sceptible about the SNP’s vision for independence !
If you add another five or six percent as those who’s answer might change if the question had the less partisan ‘Yes campiagns vision for independence’ rather than SNP, then you can see why the Labour Party in particular, is so desperate to do something to stop this sizeable chunk of it’s party going over to the Labour for Independence group.
I’m sure I read a Libdem for Indy post that mentioned a poll that said that among Scottish Liberals their was a 19% support for independence.
So as Scottish Skier mentioned, these yougov polls, commisioned by the BT campaign tend to underestimate support for independence, so will also underestimate support for independence inside the unionist party’s.
There are cracks opening up. I do think it is beginning to sink in that the UK is not in a good place and we are very unlikely to be better together. UK politics is swinging to the right. Tories and UKIP ultra Tories actually have close on 50% of the vote whereas in Scotland they will be lucky to muster 15% between them. As Basil Fawlty said “cuddle that and you will never play the guitar again”.
Yes Handshrimp,
I work in England and I have had a few good friends tell me recently that they will be voting for Ukip for the first time from now on. they are saying that it’ the only party that speaks for the working man now, so it will probably have a big impact on Labour as well as Tories.
This is why the Coalition has turned sharply to the right recently, but my friends have all said this since the tories got tough on imigrants and benefit scroungers, so ….
I’m not all that sure just how extreem Ukip is, as I’ve not paid much attention to them, but if they are as bad as some on here say, then we will probably see English politics taking a further sharp right turn, that will put even more distance between Scotland and the rUK.
It’s interesting times we live in.
Quite.
It amazes me the media did not concentrate on the pressing issue of rusty boats during the D-Day landings.
The media’s inability to get to the heart of a story is both predictable and lamentable.
Of course the public want to read about the minutiae of the poll rather than the only aspect which will have any effect on their future.
Paisley Dailey express just lost another reader, and I will be be spreading the word to all my friends and family about how they are printing junk and to stop buying it, the same as the rest of the paper media, in a time when they need all the readers they can get then I think they were badly advised to go down this route.. Also, that rodent Douglas Alexander writes a piece for them, so I suppose they were bullied into taking the point of view that they have taken, I won’t be shedding any tears when they are padlocking the place up for the last time due to falling sales, will dougie be there to offer support, of course he won’t , because in an independent Scotland we won’t have any Westminster MPs …. MSM should think long and hard about who they are trying to destroy and who they are supporting, We will not forget the way you lot are treating us, YES 2014…
The best Polls are the ones girls dance around, every other one I ignore as they are a pure waste of time and space
So we get an Opinion poll from a Campaign funded by dirty money and from a Campaign noted for telling porkies. It is a supposed poll designed to attack the SNP. I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from that Opinion Poll in realtion to Independence. They are almost certain to be way off. I dont trust any poll given out by any branch of the Brit Press and Media and certainly none funded by dirty money!
I struggle to understand the thinking behind the Better Together campaign’s choice of tempo at this stage in a very long campaign. It’s as if they think that there is some benefit from being ahead now, when – as election campaigns and past referendums, here and elsewhere, demonstrate – things will (not may, will) change over the next year and a bit. As has been said before, Labour were ahead in 2011 until two months out. Also in 2011, Yes to AV started in the lead. Polling in Iceland on EU membership appears to have switched from yes to don’t know and then no in much less than a year. (“Events, dear boy, events.“)
There is a comprehensive list of all polls going back to by Leger, whose “house bias” in 1995 appears to have been consistently on the Yes side and at least one of whose polls was – to use a Curticeism – “rogue”, available here. The referendum, on 30 October 1995, broke 49.4:50.6. Some polls had given No an almost 2:1 lead at times.
As for the apparent expectation that foreign – including London – media coverage will be better informed and more serious if only the polls get closer, this bit of polling on the Quebec referendum in 1995 (last table) suggests that changes in polling will make no difference to the general media’s coverage. (But specialist media could be very different.)
“I struggle to understand the thinking behind the Better Together campaign’s choice of tempo at this stage in a very long campaign.”
I honestly think it’s panic, perhaps combined (strangely) with complacency. They’ve fired all their guns at once, at a time when frankly hardly anyone’s even listening. I think Yes Scotland is doing the right thing at this stage: rope-a-doping them while expending the minimum possible amount of energy/money.
Better No Dae That think they’re winning because they’re getting the media coverage, but the media coverage at this stage means diddly. As I said on the Scottish Independence Podcast a few weeks back, I don’t think the bulk of the public is going to start paying attention until 2014, and at the rate we’re currently going we’ll have a majority by then purely from people scunnered with the non-stop barrage of hysterical negativity.
Let’s keep our pikes on the ground for now. The enemy’s galloping towards them full tilt, and soon they’ll be too close to be able to stop.
link to youtube.com
There was mention this morning on the radio that BT had garnered in another £1m but that this news was tucked away on page 11 of whatever paper it was in. The money is again from big business and presumably Tory. Who were the backers? Anybody know? Why are BT so coy about this £1m after razzmatazz of the first £1m?
If 64% are as yet unconvinced, does that not mean that 36% are now convinced? Pretty good result for YES, I’d say when you add in the biased question.
@HandandShrimp: That could well be the extra million or so in pledges that were mentioned in Tom Gordon’s Sunday Herald’s story on 7 April: “Six business people have also pledged a further £1m in donations to the campaign, although this has yet to be translated into hard cash.”
@Ian More: If BT misrepresent – rather than cherrypick – YouGov’s polling, you can expect this sort of reaction. Pollsters do care about their reputations.
O/T I am beginning to wonder if A.S has played a blinder over the sterling question .
If you remember the trap he set for them over the third question ‘ we all knew what their reaction would be and they fell for it .
In the last week we have had Osborne & the media telling us what we can & cannot do and that like a spoilt child they will not let us use sterling .
Now think to yourselves ‘ what are a lot of the undecided voters thinking today ‘ I know what I would be thinking and it would be along the lines off , how dare these rich toffs tell us what we can and cannot do .
I would like to see the S.N.P,s recruitment figures for the last week as every time a tory has came north to tell us what to do the recruitment figures have rocketed .
Text exchange today with ex-pat pal in England (a guy who, when he lived up here, once considered joining the SNP) contained this …
” … you’ve lost the referendum out the park already so get used to being in the UK for the rest of your lifetime. The Yes campaign is a joke and that fat, sweaty bullshitter on whom you pin all your hopes isn’t worth your adulation.”
I apologise for sharing that with y’all but, combined with the glimpses we’ve had this past week of the indy coverage the English get, I think it speaks to very important point. If we think Scots are misinformed then it is nothing to the state the average Englishman or woman finds themselves in. The Rev will be able to confirm that down there the indyref is an irritation, a joke, a waste of money, a ego-trip by one man, an occasional diversion from real news or an excuse for some old fashioned – but ironic, of course – Jock bashing. What it isn’t is a serious constitutional issue for the entire UK.
When an otherwise well-informed and previously sympathetic Scot as my pal can dismiss the campaign in such derogatory terms, it tells me the No Campaign is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Because, the Rev is right, the whole of the UK will only start paying serious attention to this next year. And when they do, the outpouring of prejudice, contempt and bile from south of the border will be like a tsunami.
How many undecideds will wipe the spit and shit from their face then and think, ‘Hey – those are my kind of people. Ah’m voting no’?
It is a quite noticeable and repeated aspect of broadcast news and in debated issues that independence is becoming the norm -and what happens – if it happens is starting to gel in many minds.
Five or ten years ago this was a side issue of no real importance, but now it has a kind of recurring permanence and there’s no prospect of it diminishing as UK Gov and Labour go on to wreak devastation among the bulk of ineffectual voters as they chase middle and south Englandshire support with their totally screwed system.
If the bulk of England had a SNP type option, there’s no way they would be voting for the extremist BNP or UKIP.
You’d better believe it- we’re lucky indeed with that option.
@HandandShrimp
It was mentioned on Derek Bateman this morning.
Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday reported that BT had donations of £1 million in the last ten days.
Even the commentators on the prog were sceptical about the piece.
(Which was tucked away on page 11 or something).
Back in the autumn when we had the Yes Borders launch, the lady running it said she’d been told by her BT opposite number that he had so much money he didn’t know what to spend it all on. I wonder, if they’re so flush, how come they can’t just give back the Taylorgate money?
Say not so, but could they be telling porkies?
@Morag
Even if they are as flush as they claim they couldn’t hand back Taylor’s cash, that would be admitting they were wrong to take it in the first place.
And they aint gonna do that.
Actually, there’s one big difference. The STV one has extra portions with a reply from the Yes camp. Might have been edited in later, and also slipped in something from a labour MSP about blah blah scotland doesn’t trust them blah.
The other two and everything above that, identical bar a few minor changes, like % to per cent, 2014 to next year.
Just checked out STV’s version of this story. The bit that stood out to me was this
“In a question which allowed them to choose up to three options, the main issues raised were: the economy (59%), tax and spending levels (39%), pensions and welfare (36%), health services (30%) and currency (22%).”
Considering only oil receipts prevented a triple dip recession last week, that pensions are totally unsustainable for the UK economy, and the NHS is well on its way to privatization south of the border I’d say it’s Better Together who should be worried.
Have to agree 100% with Rev Stu’s post. Next year is when the heat will be turned up and when the Don’t Know’s and Soft No’s will suddenly realize what’s at stake here.
The referendum is there for us to win.
“I struggle to understand the thinking behind the Better Together campaign’s choice of tempo at this stage in a very long campaign.”
I agree with rev, re the panic, but also the fact that their are three main elements to BT in Tory, Labour, and Lib Dems, that while fighting to keep us chained to Westminster, have to do what is in the best interest of their parlimentary party who are fighting each other for the right to rule Westminster.
This results in them facing both ways, which is causing friction, with the recent call from some Labour members for the Labour Party to run it’s own BT campaign.
It was interesting how Ruth davidson refused to comment on the Ian Taylor scandal, as she would have thereby allowed her leader (david Cameron) to be brought into the frame, as he was the personal friend of Ian Taylor.
This would have seriously pissed off a lot of Labour folk, who would have seen Johann and co getting a skelping from the media, while Ruth Davidson kept shtum, for her leaders sake.
I’m convinced it was this that lead to the call for Labour to go it alone in BT, at the conference.
With Labour for independence as well as Lib Dems for Indy snapping at their heals and now warnings from the STUC that labour need to present a positive case for the Union etc, they are all under considerable pressure to appease organisations with opposing interests.
The panic has set in, because I’m sure they understand that once a momentum begins with a rise in Yes support, it will be very difficult to stop.
They certainly won’t stop momentum with negetive scaremongering, so they need to kill it stone dead at the point of birth.
Every time something positive looks like happening for the independence movement, a new scare story emerges that the MSM leaps upon.
A lot of these scares are now being recycled, such as this recent currency scare. they are clearly running out of scare stories.
I can’t help thinking that they have internal data that is showing an increase for the Yes campaign, a few people have mentioned snipets that support this, but I am hoping that their will be genuine evidence to support this soon.
As ome have mentioned, if 62% are not convinced then 38% must be convinced. ince the poll is puposely scewered by asking about the respondent being ‘convinced by the SNP’ then this again suggests that BT don’t want to ask a straightforward honest Yes or No because they know they would not get a good result.
I am beginning to think that the Bitter Taegither’s plan was to rubbish everything that the YES side and crap all over the idea of independence so that by the time came near the vote, and the voters actually thought about making up their minds, the well would be so poisoned that NO would be default position.
I smell a faint whiff of fear and panic in the air as they realise they need a plan B.
“44% said they would vote No regardless…..
Only 19% said swapping the pound for the euro or a new currency would make them less likely to vote Yes, as most had already made up their mind….. and 23% said they would vote Yes regardless.”
Did that mean the straight results were?:
Yes: 42%
No: 44%
DK: 16%
OT but Farage doing well.
link to yougov.co.uk
“FARAGE TOPS LEADERS POLL”
UKIP may well cause quite a storm in the forthcoming English local elections.
Will be a great way of demonstrating to the Scots electorate how we can be ‘Better Together’. So long as you are right wing and xenophobic that is.
Also, is it me, or are the BT campaign missing the vast majority of the voting electorate? It seems most of their team look like this:
link to twitter.com
There’s 30+ years missing it would seem. Agrees with facebook follower demographics.
@scottish_skier –
I know this must seem a bleedin’ obvious one, and I can’t imagine it’s the sort of thing that is easily analysed or polled, but what about the basic likeability of the people involved in the campaigns?
Normally, when you look at any large grouping, you can find some characters who are genuine, sincere, and worth respect. Even when their political opinions are nowhere near your own. But I’m honestly struggling to think of one BT-advocate who doesn’t come across as torn-faced/dissembling/shifty.
(Reminds me of Jack McConnell – someone once said that McConnell just looked guilty all the time, as if he was expecting a tap on the shoulder at any moment.)
Sometimes gut-feeling plays a crucial role, especially when you’re older and have experienced what liars’ eyes look like when they’re ‘at it’. Every single BT rep I’ve seen looks and sounds really uncomfortable. Any behavioural analysts among you able to put some meat on these unscientific musings?
About that Yougov poll. Can you put your hand on your heart and say that Farage isn’t doing a good job as UKIP leader?
That doesn’t mean people like the job he’s doing, just that they think he’s doing it well. After all, just over one in ten people think he’d do a better job than Cast Iron Dave. And given that choice then I’d pick Cameron every day of the week and twice on Thursdays: Votez escroc mais pas facho!
“About that Yougov poll. Can you put your hand on your heart and say that Farage isn’t doing a good job as UKIP leader?”
He absolutely is. He’s never off the telly despite not having a single MP. The Greens, who do but are never ON the telly, must be wishing they had some of what he’s on.
@Calum Findlay
Could well be.
There are two options. BT did not ask the Y/N question as they feared the answer. Unlikely to be Y in front, but a fall in N and rise in Y from the last poll would be not something to shout about in a poll you paid for!
Or, they asked the question and have not released the result as it’s not good.
As I’ve mentioned before, Yougov are poor in Scotland; inadvertent pro-union bias. In the simplest terms, they use the same weighting methods as they use for England (where their very simple methodology works ok). That’s a mistake in Scotland for a couple of big reasons.
Anyhoo, Yougov will release the tables at some point and those should shed a little more light on things.
@IanBH
Scots trust the Scottish parliament and Scottish government a hell of a lot more than Westminster. They don’t trust BT politicians at all. It’s just they’ve been asked to make a huge decision (well what seems to be a huge decision if you are not a political geek). Give them time. There is little love for the political union in Scotland. That’s all that matters.
Angus McClellann @08…23 pm
Votez escroc mais pas facho
Unfortunately many French are sliding towards Marine, the blonde smiling face of the friendly right but her boot boys in Lyons and Paris are waiting in the wings for their orders.
A bit like Farage and his unspoken supporters who, thank god, are very thin on the ground in Scotland.
Another reason to be shot of this acursed union?
When BT and their friends in the MSM have to skew polls to this extreme only means one thing. The polls between Yes and No are closing rapidly. I have always been of the opinion the strategy of the SNP to put forward their position in the white paper come November a full year before the referendum is a sound one. The sabre rattling and scaremongering of the No camp has been ratcheted up in the recent past with 99% of their “positive” case for the union is surely having a “Dehumanising” effect on the broader population because of the regularity of the “Threats” “Warnings” “Attacked” “Blows” headlines on a daily basis. This “Strategy” is becoming cartoonish and more and more people are awakening to the one sidedness of what is supposed to be a balanced debate for the future of their country. I say let them carry on in the No bubble as everyone knows what happens to bubbles in the long run.
@Bobby: We should really wait for YouGov to release the full data, but what’s in the Herald story isn’t a surprise. A lot of people want to be convinced – it looks like under 40% say they can’t be convinced to vote Yes and given that people overstate their certainty in polls as a matter of routine, the true number will be less – but they have concerns.
The Yes campaign are very lucky in the concerns people have. The ones listed in the Herald were the economy (59%), tax & spend (39%), pensions & welfare (35%), health service (30%) and then finally currency (22%). That’s good news. If the list had read defence, currency, foreign affairs, then I’d have been worried. The No folks do have advantages there.
But when the concerns are things like health and welfare and the economy then Westminster is sabotaging their every argument day in and day out. Health services will be better when Westminster are privatising the NHS in England and Wales? Welfare will be handled better by Ian Duncan Smith? The economy is safe in Osborne’s hands? Good luck selling that lot to Labour voters in Scotland. Especially come 2014 as the Westminster election gets closer every day.
Better Together might be making a reasonable job of sticking together now, but it won’t last. If (when?) the meltdown starts, will we see SoS editorials demanding that Alistair Darling get a grip of the No campaign? I doubt it, but we’ll see soon enough.
@Rev re Farage-
He’s an example of what I’m on about – no matter what his policies are, or what unsavoury elements may exist among his support, he comes across well despite looking as if he has twice as many teeth as anyone else. He’s the sort you could imagine sharing a couple of pints with, would be interesting company, if for no other reason than he survives plane crashes and seems content to have the Poundstretchers logo as his party’s insignia.
But who do BT have?
Put it this way – if, due to some unimaginable set of circumstances, you had to go on a blind date with any of the known BT people, who would you pick?
FWIW I would pick Jackie Baillie, for reasons which have been exhaustively detailed on previous threads. But aside from her? I wouldn’t know where to start – a pretty rum bunch altogether.
FWIW I would pick Jackie Baillie, for reasons which have been exhaustively detailed on previous threads
/\(Oo)/\
Holy Moly Rev, sorry to swerve a couple of degrees off topic, I’m a bit new here and just browsed your Sealand Gazette. I thought it was a spoof Better Together send up, like the BBC Scotlandshire; I’m not kidding, Thatcher backing Pol Pot (really), a miners daughter left in agony denied help because her father had been a striking miner, ATOS telling someone with a mental age of 3 to get a job…
I thought to myself, it isn’t very funny for a send up. It’s even less funny once you realise it’s for real.
This Independence business is for keeps. If we vote No, then heaven help us, and I really mean that.
As someone who is signed up to you gov I have the constant problem with their survey as it may start off with who you would vote for in a general election and will list SNP Plaid but then remove them from all following questions as to who would be better at such and such.
Still waiting for the results of the no camps text poll they had months ago now, assuming it was very bad news.
Breeks, I have to be feeling very up-beat even to click on the Sealand Gazette link. It is just too depressing and there are occasions when I have ended up crying.
Another half story. Peter Curran did some investigating.
link to tinyurl.com
” FWIW I would pick Jackie Baillie, for reasons which have been exhaustively detailed on previous threads.”
I knew it would take all sorts, but surely not those who can’t say NO in any circumstances!
No, don’t tell me what I missed lan. Leave me the consolation that some ignorance is bliss after all 🙂
@Indion-
Understood.
I’ll spare you the details, but ‘beauty is in the eye…’ an aw that.
The wee gravatar is actually an image of my younger brother.
Here’s what I really look like:
link to troll.me
To me this issue is so obvious that I find it cringeworthy and embarrassing that we are even having a debate. Fair enough if there were a substantial number of people voting NO regardless because they saw their county as Britain. But fortunately this is the polar opposite of the real situation. Probably 90% are voting for whats best for them and the country that they live in i.e. Scotland.
If everyone who lived in Scotland voted on a position of enlightenment then it would be a 90-95% overwhelming majority for YES. The NO votes would comprise a few wealthy individuals that may worry that there taxes may increase and tax avoidance loopholes would be closed. The other would be your hardcore British Nationalists.
I can’t believe that anyone would be gullible enough to believe that the Tories will fight tooth and nail to keep Scotland at the expense of their own party. That fact alone should make people question why this would be the case. A couple of hours google searching and conversing in forums/newspaper comments etc and the facts become pretty clear.
People want to be spoonfed information by the media and are too lazy to seek information themselves. I’m pulling out my hair in exasperation at the number of times people ask about answers to questions that have been answered a thousand times. Of course the media should shoulder some of the blame but come on people there’s no excuse now for being so ignorant on such an important issue.
@ Ian
Touche!
Each to his own.
In my case, no longer wondering what had happened to my long lost twin with the other brain cell 😉
@Indion-
Sorry if I implied that there was anything wrong with your brain! Not intended at all! – it was just a good image of Feldman…er, sorry, me.
Hoots mon!
Tom Gordon – Wow! Holy fuck, that name almost made we want to read it.
Lol, o.k., no it din’t. What drivel.
O/T, but also (the other ) OT : My ‘partner’ – got an unsolicited text message today from Better Together.
Whatever ‘Yes’ do – don’t do this. don’t ally yourself to the trawling of ‘consumer datasets’ to further the engagement strategies of anyone – you’re no different from the PPI spammers if you do.
@Wings – Keep the heid up, and don’t mind the sanctimonious halfwits on twitter (like I need to tell you 😉 )
@Ian
My words were in jest to lighten the thread.
I took your’s to be likewise.
Also relieved to hear on a concurrent thread that you are partnered by someone who seems more than capable of burning Baillie bridges!
What was I saying about events? With history being just one damn thing after another there’s never very long to wait for an event to come along.
Here’s an interesting story in the Independent: “Hundreds of millions of pounds from ring-fenced Whitehall health and education budgets could reportedly be “reclassified” to protect Britain’s Armed Forces from the next wave of Treasury spending cuts.”
So, can anyone tell me, would taking money out of the Whitehall health and education budgets have any impact here in Scotland? Can’t wait to see how Better Together spin this one.
Interesting rebuttal of American against Scottish independence on Moridura! Read it and disseminate it as widely as possible!
Also the funding issue for the BT campaign regarding Scottish Labour, they have to ask themselves is it Tory ” dirty money” they are using or is it ” Dirty ” Tory money. Over to you Johann.