Someone asked me on the previous thread if I had any analysis of the new poll in the “Scottish” Sun. I hadn’t heard about it, so I looked it up and found the headline “UNION POLL BOOST: Support for Scottish independence plummets since Queen’s death”. Now, I must admit that for a second or two my heart sank, because we’re living through an unprecedented period of BBC-led state propaganda seeking to ruthlessly exploit the Queen’s death in order to weaken the independence cause, and it’s far from implausible that would have had some effect, at least in the short term. However, you won’t be surprised to hear that all may not be quite as it appears.
The “exclusive” poll was conducted by Deltapoll, and supposedly finds 42% would currently vote in favour of independence. So the first issue here is that the Sun are weirdly vague on whether that number is before or after Don’t Knows are stripped out. It’s probably the latter, in which case 42% would indeed be unusually low for recent times, but I’m certainly not going to take that as read until we have confirmation – it wouldn’t be the first time a newspaper has cynically led us up the garden path about an independence poll. (Never forget Scotland on Sunday and #Matchettgate.)
Even odder, though, is the Sun’s claim that 42% represents a 7% drop in the Yes vote. I don’t see how that can possibly be true, because there’s no sign of Deltapoll having previously conducted an independence poll for many years. Presumably the Sun must be making an apples-and-oranges bogus comparison with a poll conducted by a different firm using different methodology.
The reality is that major events such as the one we’re currently living through can often produce unusual polling figures that are reversed within a few weeks. Even if the Sun’s claims turn out to have a partial grain of truth in them, what will matter far more is what the polls show once the BBC hysteria has died away.
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