“Bombshell poll” screamed the traditionally Labour-supporting Sunday Mail, and I just knew that had to mean they were gloating that the run of twenty-two consecutive Yes majorities had come to an end, and that they had probably commissioned one of the two least Yes-friendly firms (either Survation or YouGov) in the hope of producing exactly that effect. But here’s the odd thing: there isn’t a No lead. They must be genuinely gutted about that, because both of the last two Survation polls showed only a two-point Yes lead if Don’t Knows were left in. If the Sturgeon-Salmond controversy had produced a really significant effect on public opinion, you’d certainly expect a swing bigger than the trivial one required to take us to 50/50.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation)
Yes 50% (-1)
No 50% (+1)
That’s potentially just margin of error noise, and suggests that public opinion has remained fairly static since the Survation poll of early December. There’s no particular reason, therefore, to assume that a poll produced right now by one of the more Yes-friendly firms (Ipsos-Mori, Panelbase, Savanta ComRes or perhaps JL Partners) would no longer show a Yes lead.
The reality is that the sequence of Yes-majority polls was always going to be broken at some point – unless there was a further swing to Yes. Why? Because previous polls by several firms had put Yes on either 51% or 52%, which made it statistically inevitable, due to the margin of error, that an individual poll would eventually produce a figure of 49% or 50% even if public opinion remained static. So in a sense we’re just getting the inevitable out of the way today, and we can now look forward to future polls which still have a very decent chance of showing a Yes lead.
And in one sense the unbroken run for Yes actually continues – because this is the twenty-fourth consecutive poll to show Yes on 50% or higher, ie. either ahead or level. That sequence stretches all the way back to a Panelbase poll commissioned by Wings last May which also showed a 50/50 split.
