Like the proverbial London buses, you wait ages for a full-scale Scottish poll, and then three come along all at once. Hot off the press is Panelbase’s latest polling on independence…
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 47% (n/c)
No 53% (n/c)
Now this is a really interesting one, because I know some people will take a casual look at the numbers and argue that the no change position means Panelbase have failed to detect the same surge that YouGov found. But what we have to remember is that this is no change from an unusually good Panelbase poll for Yes last December. Panelbase have recently (along with YouGov) been one of the more No-friendly pollsters, and the 47% in December was the highest share they had reported for Yes in more than two years. In fact, between the spring of 2017 and the autumn of 2018, they had never reported a Yes vote higher than 45%, and the more typical figure was 44%.
So that would tend to leave the impression that there has indeed been a significant rise in Yes support, although it muddies the waters as to when exactly that increase took place.
More details and analysis to follow…
