Not more accurate maybe, but safer. Hoping that enough people change their minds in the last four weeks is a shaky prospect. I guess last minute decisions are going to be less likely than in a regular election, because this is too important. You'll have to fight a lot in the next six weeks to be able to win this.
You would think that. It's the way it should be too, this is an incredibly important decision. Do you know the answer I get when I go door to door in my county, though? "I'm undecided, I haven't had enough time to make up my mind because I've been so busy. I think we'll all make up our mind closer to the time". Sometimes they even say "we'll all make up our mind on the day". They make up the majority of people in the area that I live from what I can tell from door-to-door work with a majority Yes vote in the more working class areas.
I think there will be a staggering number of people deciding to vote a particular way as soon as they get in the booth. That's my theory. I also think if people are going to make a snap decision they'd be far more likely to say "ach, to hell with it, I might as well vote Yes" than "aaaactually I'm going to vote No". If someone's going to make a snap decision, surely they'd snap to the crazy option than rejection? Maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to put myself in the shoes of a true undecided at this point.
We get it Scotland, you can wear kilt!
I should wear the one I've got hanging up in the wardrobe more often.
But seriously, there is a measure of uncertainty in polling so if the first poll to show a lead for yes comes out at T minus 28 with every other poll showing No, it's safe to say that No still has a strong lead and the poll is just an outlier. There's no reason to think of the referendum as having tactical voting like a primary so momentum isn't a meaningful concept and we should give past polling a lot of weight. So if I see the very first poll with Yes +1 at 21 days, I'm going to conclude that the real preference is probably somewhere around No +5. The closer the vote is the less time there is for things to change. A No +7 at 6 weeks is more likely to go yes then a No +4 at one week.
This is very true. Tactical voting was key in the last general election, leading to the SNP's massive swing. We don't need an enormous swing like 13%, however - just enough to take us over the mark. If we win by 51% we will win.
There are other problems with the polls - from what I have heard, I apologise if this is completely wrong, first-time voters have not actually been polled yet. These samples have always been taken from people who voted in the last election. There's been various polls of the newly-enfranchised 16-17 year old teenagers done at various times (showing a majority No on a number of occasions, probably due to them voting the way of their parents, while people in their early-mid 20s seem to have a sizable majority for Yes) but nobody's really done a full, comprehensive poll including first time voters in the referendum. There will be people who never vote in general elections, or indeed at any time, voting in the referendum. I have met lots and lots of people like that. Exactly what way they're going to vote - nobody knows.
Things are going to heat up soon. The first big televised referendum debate is taking place on the 4th of August between the First Minister Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling, the dark lord of Unionism and leader of the Better Together campaign.
I don't want to make any predictions but Alex Salmond would utterly wipe the floor with Alistair Darling; Darling is basically a kind of strange Scottish John Major clone with less charisma whose biggest problem thus far has been his tendency to lose his temper when things don't go his own way. In recent months he has been the centre of a number of hubbubs due to the fact that he compared Alex Salmond to Kim Jong-il and basically called all Yes supporters Nazis, or at least people who are supportive of "blood and soil nationalism". He's not very competent and he has nearly been deposed as BT leader a few times this year by high-ranking Tories.
The problem is he is the "darling" of the Scottish press who absolutely love him, same as Gordon Brown. All he needs to do is hold his own somehow against Alex Salmond and it will be seen as a victory by them - I just hope that the people will see past it all and make their own mind up instead of reading the opinion of some political hack.