Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[Loud Whispers]

Eh. Eurovision IS something to be ashamed of.

Polan #1

[TD1]

what! They had double...the amount of talent....they bounced back towards the....they gave a rounded performance, okay!

[Helgoland]

fool and mate

How I Met Your Mother is over - go back to the asylum, Barney.

[Owlbread]

The latest independence opinion poll, commissioned by the Daily Record by Survation from a sample of 1013 Scots, shows support for independence at 47% and the union at 53% with Don't Knows excluded.

The Scottish media's most popular psephologist, John Curtice, said this:

“This is now the 66th or 67th poll to show the No side ahead. If there is to be at least some prospect of the Yes side winning, I’d want a poll giving me 50 per cent or above in the next four weeks, not in the last four weeks.”

I thought this was a strange thing to say. Why would a poll six weeks before the referendum be any more accurate than a poll two weeks later? Especially since a lot can happen in six weeks. I would have liked a poll showing 50% last month or this month, but I'd also like to win the lottery; if we get a poll only showing 50% or 51% in the last four weeks I'd be happy.

The SNP only got a majority in the polls among quite a few pollsters including Yougov, ICM and TNS just two weeks before the 2011 Scottish General Election, the same election where they won 44% of the vote over Labour's 26%. Four days before the vote TNS had Labour at 39% and SNP at 38%. Three weeks before the vote an SNP commissioned poll by ICM (their last 2011 election poll I believe) had the SNP at 35% and Labour at 39%. If this was an accurate representation of the Scottish electorate at that time Labour lost 13% in three weeks. We have 10 weeks to gain 3%.

[Wolfhunter107]

Snip

Good luck.

[XXSockXX]

Why would a poll six weeks before the referendum be any more accurate than a poll two weeks later?

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.

[mainiac]

We get it Scotland, you can wear kilt!

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.

[Owlbread]

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.

[Criptfeind]

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.

This seems like a strange thing to me, I would think people making snap decisions would go with the 'safe' option. Since yes, at least at a base level, represents change for better or for worse and no represents things staying the same for better or for worse. Doesn't it? Also, yes, to my mind at least, seems like a bigger and more irreversible thing then no. I would think if someone doesn't know what to say, that they would say no.

[Owlbread]

This seems like a strange thing to me, I would think people making snap decisions would go with the 'safe' option. Since yes, at least at a base level, represents change for better or for worse and no represents things staying the same for better or for worse. Doesn't it?

It seems like that at first glance and I worry that people will see it that way. In truth it's nothing like that at all. If we vote Yes nothing will be the same. If we vote No nothing will be the same. The status quo will die in 2014 no matter what. If we vote No, the people of Scotland will ask for what they actually want - some kind of federal model or full fiscal autonomy. We won't get that, however, because no political party in Westminster besides the SNP and possibly other groups like Plaid Cymru would actually back it.

Instead we'll get a watered down, awful model of devolution, the kind that's being proposed by Labour and the Conservatives that consists of being made "more responsible" (Labour accused us of being a "something for nothing society") whilst not giving us any more meaningful powers. Labour are more like a "nothing for something" party. This paltry offering of compensation for signing away the chance to gain maximum powers will do nothing to protect us from the onslaught of cuts and austerity that will take place over the next few years as the British try to keep the economy afloat. Indeed, we haven't even seen the worst of it yet, and Labour will do nothing to prevent them because they agree with them in principle.

Those cuts will begin to bite hard in Scotland. As the English and Welsh NHS will become virtually non-existent within 5 years, so too may the Scottish NHS within 10. The fact that it is a devolved matter does not protect us from the same lobbies that exist down South and any Scottish government would be under immense pressure to change the structure of the NHS so that Scotland and the rUK do not diverge even further.

By 2020 people will think back on 2014 and the way things were before the vote and they will realise they will never, ever see them again, no matter what the outcome of the referendum will be.

Also, yes, to my mind at least, seems like a bigger and more irreversible thing then no. I would think if someone doesn't know what to say, that they would say no.

A No or Yes is just as irreversible as the other. I think people need to know this as it may help them along a certain path.

[mainiac]

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.

Isn't that selection bias?  A competent campaign would have isolated a swing population months ago and focused efforts on that group.

[Owlbread]

Isn't that selection bias?  A competent campaign would have isolated a swing population months ago and focused efforts on that group.

We have isolated the swing population and have been focusing efforts on them for some time. They're the Scottish working class, the majority of whom support Yes with a good number of undecideds in their ranks. The middle classes and upper classes are strongly Unionist, though our "upper class" is basically non-existent in terms of electoral power due to how small it is.

If we actually get a very, very strong majority of Scottish working class people registered to vote and out there on the day that will make a world of difference.

When I talk about "going door to door" I just mean canvassing and trying to gauge where people are at right now at this stage in the game.

It's interesting though that you keep talking about things we needed to do "months ago". This campaign is unusual in that we have literally done nothing for years. Since 2011 we have spent all of our time growing a grass-roots campaign (which is now the biggest Scotland has ever seen), developing arguments and basically just waiting until the last minute. Better Together in contrast fired off all their best arguments and ran out of steam earlier this year, leading to a large rise in the Yes vote in independence polls that basically put things on an even footing. Now we have 10 weeks to try to secure the swing we need. We are playing the "last minute" to our advantage in order to catch the Unionists off guard; it has worked before with amazing results.

If we win this everyone will be caught off guard. Shockwaves will be felt around the world.

[Criptfeind]

Well, I understand all that you said to me owlbread. I don't disagree with it. I'm just saying that saying you think people who clearly don't know or agree with that to vote yes is probably unrealistic.

[mainiac]

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/scottish-independence-referendum

I don't see a strong enough trend to put weight on in the polls.  I think you are too close to the issue to make a judgement.

[MonkeyHead]

Y'know, I just remembered that I'd said earlier that I was beginning to think independence would be good, but that it was probably because I'd only heard OB's side.

Well, apparently, constantly stating your opinion can (emphasis on CAN) make other people begin to see your way, even if you provide no evidence. One of the weird things about human psychology I guess...

Anyways, carry on.

Heh, political campaigning in a nutshell.