YET again a set of local elections has served up a curate’s egg for the SNP – the results have been very good in some parts of the country and mildly disappointing in others.
AS the day on which Scotland was dragged out of the EU disappears in the rear-view mirror, it gets harder to retain our focus on two important facts. The first – that Brexit remains the principle reason for an independence referendum being on the agenda, prior to the fabled “generation” passing by. The second is that that any referendum that does take place is likely to be dominated by arguments over whether Brexit has harmed the Scottish economy and whether independence is the remedy.
ONE of the difficulties of devising a question for an opinion poll is that respondents may sometimes not be very familiar with the subject they’re being asked about, which means the question also has to function as an explanation.
YOU almost have to feel sorry for the anti-independence pressure group Scotland in Union. They must have thought the path was clear for them to use their now-familiar tricksy poll question about “leaving the United Kingdom” to convince the media that support for independence has dropped.
THE new full-scale Scottish poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies offers some good news.
ON Thursday, the SNP took 48% of the vote on the constituency ballot – an all-time high for any party in a Scottish Parliament election. Why, then, did they narrowly fail to win an overall majority, given that we know from the 2011 experience that a majority is perfectly possible under the voting system?
THERE was a lot of chatter on the BBC election show suggesting the first batch of results weren’t in line with the opinion polls, and that the SNP appeared to be underperforming against expectations. I’m not sure that’s really true. The final polls had the SNP anywhere between 42% and 52% on the constituency ballot, with a median result of 49%.
Winner in 2016:
AS I sit down to attempt to forecast the outcome of the Holyrood election, I'm haunted by the knowledge that almost everyone who engaged in the same exercise just before the 2011 and 2016 elections got it wrong.
