Just over a week ago, YouGov released results from polling that showed how the Scottish public would vote in an independence referendum in a variety of hypothetical scenarios. The specifics of these results should be taken with a huge dose of salt, because hypothetical polling is notoriously unreliable. For example, we had polls a few years ago suggesting that Brexit, or a Hard Brexit, or Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, would all propel Yes into a strong lead. But when all of those events came to pass one by one, there was actually no sudden or dramatic change in independence polling. People often think they’ll feel totally different in a hypothetical scenario, but ultimately the change is quickly ‘normalised’ – however unwelcome it is – and thus there isn’t always the anticipated knock-on change in their attitudes to other matters.
That said, although we should be suspicious about the extent of the changes indicated by the hypothetical polling, it can give a useful pointer about the likely direction of travel. Of most interest to us is that Yes is shown as having a substantial majority if “independence offered a route to re-joining the EU”. In that scenario, the results are: Yes 49%, No 39%. There are no figures with Don’t Knows excluded, but a rough recalculation suggest they would be: Yes 56%, No 44%. The point here is that even if the potential swing is being overstated, it would only take the tiniest of swings to put Yes into a slight lead. So as long as YouGov are right about the general direction of travel, it does look as if the enticement of EU membership could be enough to produce a pro-independence majority.
I know some people in the independence movement think we need to be really cautious about being too strong on a return to the EU, because we might throw away the crucial minority of voters who support both independence and Brexit. But this polling suggests that could be an unwarranted concern. If independence would lead to EU membership, the percentage of Leave voters from 2016 who would vote Yes only drops from 33% to 27%, whereas the Yes support among Remain voters (who are much stronger in numbers, remember) jumps from 46% to 57%. It may be that tying ourselves up in knots trying to hold on to the Brexiteer Yes vote is actually quite foolish, because in doing so we’re not fully capitalising on the huge potential for Remain voters to be won over to the independence cause.
The flipside of this is a separate finding that suggests support for independence would sharply drop if border checks were imposed between Scotland and England. This is essentially a contradiction in the polling, because it may well be that you can’t have EU membership without border checks of some type, notwithstanding the existence of the Common Travel Area across these islands. So how do the SNP leadership square the circle? It’s not easy, but they could perhaps emphasise the trade-off between very minimal border checks at the English border and much smoother travel to the continent after a return to the EU. Or they could stress that there would be no border checks immediately after independence (unless the London government insists on imposing them, in which case that wouldn’t be Scotland’s responsibility), and that any change following a return to the EU is purely speculative and a good few years off.
Similarly, there’s a finding that suggests independence support would fall if “Scotland was unable to continue using the pound”. I think this is one of those occasions where you just have to be strong enough to go against poll findings, because we know from the 2014 experience that the practical steps required to cater to the public’s emotional attachment to “the pound” create far more problems than they solve – and unfortunately the SNP leadership are currently repeating that mistake with their sterlingisation plans. I’d suggest instead making it clear that an independent Scottish currency would continue to be called “the pound” and would build on the concept of a “Scottish pound” that voters are already familiar with in the form of banknotes.
There’s an absolutely atrociously-worded question asking how people would vote on independence if “Scotland was no longer represented in the G7, NATO and the global trade division at the UN”. The whole point about the G7 is that it’s an exclusive club of the largest industrialised nations – meaning that an independent Scotland, just like the vast majority of European countries, would not even be eligible to join. By contrast, it would be perfectly realistic for Scotland to join most other international organisations, including NATO. So tacking on a specific reference to the G7 to a question about international representation seems to be a cynical attempt to artificially produce a poll result that can be used to give the false impression that Scotland would vote against independence unless something utterly impossible occurs with the securing of G7 membership.
Bad show, YouGov. Very bad show.
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