This isn’t strictly a Scot Goes Pop exclusive, because the figures were attached to the Scottish Independence Foundation press release that went out several hours ago. But as far as I can see no media outlet, even on Twitter, has yet picked up on the fact that the new poll includes the first GB-wide voting intention figures from Panelbase since last year.
Westminster voting intentions (GB-wide, Panelbase):
Labour 40%
Conservatives 40%
Liberal Democrats 8%
UKIP 5%
SNP 4%
Greens 3%
Plaid Cymru 1%
Which is all very interesting, because of course most other polling firms have been showing a modest Conservative lead recently. It may be that Panelbase’s methodology, like Survation’s, is closer to the Labour-friendly end of the spectrum. (And, as we all remember, Survation’s results were rubbished in the run-up to last year’s election, but they ultimately turned out to be the most accurate.)
Christian Wright asked a question on the previous thread about the treatment of EU citizens in current polling, which was rather uncanny, because I was always planning to address that very point tonight. At the weekend, when I saw the original datasets from Panelbase, I queried whether EU citizens and 16 and 17 year olds had been included in the sample – because it seemed to me if they had been, that in itself could be sufficient to explain why the Remain vote in Scotland had apparently risen slightly from 62% at the 2016 referendum to 64% now. I didn’t see Panelbase’s response, but it was read out to me. If I understood it correctly, they said that 16 and 17 year olds were excluded from the EU referendum question, but that they were relying upon a “how likely are you to vote?” question to screen EU citizens out. That seemed to me to be a bit unsatisfactory, because it means that you’d need all EU citizens to be fully aware of their right to vote in Scottish elections, but not in Westminster elections or in any repeat EU referendum, to be sure that you’re interviewing the right sample for each question. It’s highly likely, I would suggest, that some EU citizens are unclear about the likely legal position. So they may, for example, be wrongly screening themselves out of indyref polling, but also wrongly including themselves in EU referendum polling.
Later, Panelbase agreed to recalculate the results in line with the concern I had raised. To be perfectly honest, I was hearing about all of this second-hand, so I couldn’t quite make sense of which particular concern they were addressing or exactly how they had addressed it. Apparently the methodological tweak made no difference at all on the GB-wide numbers, and only a 1% difference on the Scottish numbers – but, again, I’m not quite clear about which question the 1% difference occurred on.
The important point here, of course, is that it seems intuitively likely that EU citizens have swung disproportionately from No to Yes on the independence question because of Brexit. If independence polls aren’t incorporating EU citizens correctly, it may be that there’s a little something going on beneath the surface that the polls are currently unable to detect.
Here are the other numbers from the Panelbase poll…
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Scotland only):
Yes 45% (+1)
No 55% (-1)
Westminster voting intention (Scotland only):
SNP 37% (-1)
Conservatives 28% (+1)
Labour 25% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 7% (+1)
Greens 2% (n/c)
UKIP 2% (-1)
EU referendum vote (GB-wide):
Remain 53%
Leave 47%
EU referendum vote (Scotland only):
Remain 64% (+1)
Leave 36% (-1)
Holyrood constituency ballot:
SNP 39% (-2)
Conservatives 27% (+1)
Labour 24% (+3)
Liberal Democrats 6% (n/c)
Greens 3% (n/c)
UKIP 1% (-1)
Holyrood regional list ballot:
SNP 37% (+2)
Conservatives 26% (n/c)
Labour 22% (+2)
Greens 6% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)
UKIP 2% (n/c)
