Is this the point at which we can stop mourning the loss of the unbroken sequence of Yes majorities which stretched from last June to this February? Without wanting to tempt fate, we now appear to have a new little unbroken sequence – the latest in Ipsos-Mori’s regular series of telephone polls for STV is the fifth poll in a row, across all firms, to show some kind of Yes lead.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 52% (-)
No 48% (-)
Of course another way of looking at it is that if Ipsos-Mori’s methodology is right, Yes never actually lost the lead in the first place. There was a dip in Yes support earlier in the year and the position has now stabilised – which would explain why the less Yes-friendly firms are flipping back and forth between tiny Yes leads and tiny No leads.
Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:
SNP 53% (+1)
Conservatives 20% (-3)
Labour 18% (+3)
Liberal Democrats 6% (+1)
Greens 2% (-1)
Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:
SNP 38% (-9)
Conservatives 21% (-1)
Labour 18% (+4)
Greens 12% (+4)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-)
Alba 3% (+3)
That’s arguably a pretty encouraging result for Alba. The danger was always that online polls were overestimating them due to volunteer polling panels containing a disproportionate number of politically engaged people. If that had been the case, you’d have expected Alba not to trouble the scorer in a telephone poll. Instead they’re registering on 3%. Obviously they’ll need to come close to doubling that to win a decent number of seats, although even on 3% nationally they could pick up one or two seats if their vote is distributed unevenly across the country. Incidentally, telephone polling does make all the difference as far as George Galloway’s anti-independence party is concerned – they’re languishing on less than 0.5% of the list vote and don’t appear to be in contention for any seats at all.
This is a rare occasion when a poll shows the Greens on course for a significant breakthrough and I don’t have to put a health warning on it – as far as I know there’s no question mark over how Ipsos-Mori pose the list question. However, it’s only one poll, so caution should still be exercised.
